On September 27, 2020, I drove into the city of New Orleans under the light of a waxing moon. It was nearly midnight, and I was a bit delirious from having spent 16 hours in the car to get there. My aunt was dying and she had entered hospice.

The day before, my last lucid conversation with her, the nurse I had found for her helped her face-time me because she wanted to see “my beautiful face” before I got there. Her cancer had spread to her brain, but I think she knew by the time I arrived it would be too late.

When I did arrive, she was already actively dying and in her final sleep state. Even though it would be another five days before she passed, I knew it was the end.

This happened in the throes of a newish pandemic. Only one person could be in the room with her at a time, unless “death was imminent.” There were some nurses that allowed more of us to be present, but overall, I stayed in that room as much as I could.

It was peaceful, with a back patio, tucked into a quiet nook in the Garden District. I was amazed at how silent the streets were given the nearby businesses and bars — ones that I frequented with my Aunt when she was full of life and dancing. The hospice was small, maybe 10 rooms, and looked surprisingly southwestern in its adobe styling with stucco walls and clay tile roof. I thought it was a lovely nod to the time she spent living in New Mexico, and it was comforting to me too as it held sense memories of my childhood in Arizona.

I held Doretta’s hand, and played soft, upbeat music for her that first night…though in life she’d want the sound turned all the way up as she danced wherever and whenever she felt like it. I remember stepping outside onto the patio and looking up to see the nearly full moon directly overhead.

A poem formed in my head, a mantra of sorts. Someone could say it was a spell to wish my Aunt peace in her passage and us presence in our grief.

You can see your horizon -
We’ll stay here, we must.
Moon guide you to your peace,
Moon watch over us.

Thinking about that poem now reminds me that we are all in the active stages of living and dying. Life is here right now and death is always imminent.

The words that whisper to us from the inside are the ones that we must heed and honor. The world is a mirror and we are its reflection.