The Twilight Space: Bearing Witness to the Crossing

Throughout my life, in moments of challenge or loss, I’ve always turned to intuitive journaling and integrative self-inquiry as a source of comfort and clarity. Writing has been my way of making sense of the things I couldn’t control, of finding some grounding in the chaos. It’s a process that has helped me navigate the darkest corners of my life. And so, I share from that same vulnerable space now—sending out a smoke signal from the void I find myself in, hoping that by sharing this raw moment, I can begin to piece together the fragments of my experience.

There’s a distinct hue that colors the twilight space where life and death entwine, and I see it now in the yellow cast of my sister’s skin. Her body, in its slow, deliberate defiance of life, begins to lose its vibrancy, becoming something almost unrecognizable. Her urine, dark and scant, quietly signal the inevitable—her vital organs are faltering, their once seamless function now giving way to the strain of impending shutdown. Her breath, irregular and uneven, whether she is awake or asleep, holds me in its grip. I promised her I would be with her until her final breath, yet now, I find myself on respite, trying to reclaim a sense of balance after seven weeks of being her primary caregiver. Still, even as her body shuts down, there is the unsettling persistence of life—moments where she stirs and asks for food, as if clinging to the small routines that once anchored her to this world.

But her eyes tell a different story. There’s a distance in them, as though part of her has already crossed over, lingering in the world that calls her but hasn’t yet fully claimed her. She hovers there, somewhere between. At times, she emerges from this fog with sudden clarity, moments of consciousness that astonish us and remind us of who she is. Then, just as quickly, she slips back into the tangled web of delirium and agitation, pulled into a chaos only she seems to understand.

This space—the hospice, the dying—feels like a place where time itself falters. It stretches and warps as her consciousness flickers between awareness and oblivion, as the drugs they administer carry her away from us, away from herself. These drugs meant to comfort, to ease pain, bring with them questions I can’t easily shake. What do they really do? Do they offer her peace, or do they simply numb her, hiding her suffering from our view? We see less of her agitation, her confusion, her hyperactive delirium. But is it truly gone, or has it just been buried beneath a chemical fog?

I wonder what happens to her consciousness under the influence of these drugs. Is she trapped inside herself, unable to escape this medicated dream state? Is her spirit locked inside her body, struggling against the very thing meant to provide her comfort? In medicating the outward signs of suffering—her restlessness, her disorientation—are we unintentionally forcing her into an undisclosed internal agony? What is her soul experiencing as we intervene in these final moments?

Science and medicine provide answers about how these medications affect the brain, how they dull pain and calm the mind’s anxiety. But what happens to her consciousness in these final days remains a mystery. Science speaks of neurochemical shifts, but what of the soul? The spirit? Many spiritual traditions suggest that in these moments, consciousness is preparing for transition, navigating unresolved emotions, or accessing other states of awareness. These are realms science has yet to fully explore. What happens to consciousness as we near death remains in the domain of personal experience and spiritual interpretation.

As her body weakens, it seems that the patterns of her life—the unresolved struggles, the unhealed wounds—push forward with a new ferocity. They don’t go quietly. They demand attention, even as her body tires. Long-buried parts of ourselves—our ego, our fears, the lies we’ve told ourselves—emerge in the dying process, demanding resolution. But death doesn’t offer easy resolution. There’s too much resistance still—resistance from the body, the mind, the patterns we’ve lived by. The masks we’ve worn to protect ourselves are too heavy to uphold now. They fall away, exposing the raw truth of who we are and perhaps who we’ve always been behind the façades.

In watching my sister, I’ve come to understand that this space of lingering death, this prolonged waiting, may be an opportunity. Maybe it’s the last, desperate chance to grapple with the unfinished business of our lives. The things we abandoned, the pain we buried—perhaps it all comes rushing to the surface, asking to be dealt with, even as the body slowly releases its grip on life.

I see it in her, and I feel it mirrored in myself. We grew up in the same home, shaped by the same dysfunctions, though we carried them differently. She, the eldest, bore the brunt of the early family chaos, while I, the second youngest, found my own way through the fractures. We were both imprinted by the same forces, though time and circumstance carved different paths in us. And now, as I sit in this space, watching her slip away, I see the reflections of our shared history and our shared wounds, surfacing in her final days.

This space—the twilight between worlds—asks us to witness not just the death of a loved one but the death of parts of ourselves. Parts that we may not even realize are dying until we are here, standing vigil. We die a little, or perhaps a lot, with those we love, but we are also asked to live more honestly, more vulnerably, in the face of their passing.

Death doesn’t release us from life’s patterns—it magnifies them. In this twilight space, we are called to bear witness, not only to our loved one’s final journey but to our own unresolved business, the parts of ourselves that remain unhealed. And so, we wait. We wait for her suffering to end, for our suffering to end, for the release we all long for but dread. But this waiting is not passive—it is an act of bearing witness, of presence, of holding space for the mysteries of life and death to unfold. And when the moment comes, when she lets go and slips into whatever lies beyond, we, too, in some way, are set free.

In the end, we are left with the mystery. Science offers explanations for the body’s decline, but consciousness remains a sacred frontier, one that defies easy answers. Until the moment of release comes, we remain here, in this liminal space, learning how to die alongside the ones we love.

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