The process of shutting down has begun. It’s so hard to feel so helpless when someone you love has to go through a process like this.
I keep reminding myself that the struggle to enter the next life is not that different than the one to enter this one was. Only the perspective of us as spectators is different.

Birth and death for God’s children is so very similar —
Extreme stress and pressure force you out of your safe, familiar world into a strange new world where your arrival is anxiously awaited and applauded by those who have preceded you. They are so excited about the wonderful new life that you’re about to embark upon, that they barely even consider the discomfort that you are experiencing. But you are overwhelmed and freaked out when you arrive, because it is really awful going through the birth process. — So much of what has sustained you up until now is abruptly shut down or cut off. It has to be, in order for you to be equipped to function in the new world. Your heart and circulatory system reconfigure themselves in an instant so your blood can be oxygenated in a whole new way than before. I’ll bet that hurts!

You have to breath air instead of water which must be a whole lot like drowning only backwards. But does anybody really care about that? No!! You take that first awful breath and scream out in pain and terror and they actually erupt into cheers and laughter and light-hearted excitement while you continue to scream at the top of your lungs. They actually rejoice that you are crying! The more you kick and scream the better they like it! How rude!!

But watching someone enter the next life – being on the back end, all we see is the pressure, the stress, the pain, and the fact that they are entering a world that is completely alien to them and to us. And like the proverbial twin left in the womb, we feel empty and alone and traumatized by the negative side of what we have just witnessed and by the ominous sense that it will soon happen to us too. Yet, while we struggle to make sense of it all, our brother has already calmed down, been embraced by his parents, and is looking with wonder and amazement into their adoring eyes. He has already forgotten the struggle he just went through only minutes before because of the love and comfort of his parents. He has been launched into a broad, bright, wonderful world that we, still cowering alone in the womb, cannot begin to fathom.

What a beautiful analogy.

– Connie Caronna