Page 50 of All the Way to the River

I thought she was going to die on Christmas night.

It really felt like she was going to die on Christmas night.

Rayya’s ex-wife, Gigi, was driving toward Michigan from New York City in a blinding snowstorm, driving hard and fast, determined to arrive before Christmas was over in order to see Rayya one more time.

And it felt like Rayya was waiting for her, to say that last goodbye to one of her dearest beloveds.

All that day, Rayya had been sprawled out on the couch, sleeping far more hours than she was awake. She would wake up for a few moments at a time, ask if Gigi had arrived yet, and then say, “This is so good, this couch. Is it okay if I just stay here?” and fall back to sleep.

She was uncharacteristically soft and compliant. She took her medications without resistance. She said thank you again and again, with such sweetness. She seemed to have no more demands, only love.

“I love you all so much,” she kept saying, to anyone who came over, to anyone who called on the phone, to anyone who brought her a glass of water.

“I love everyone,” she kept saying.

She reached for Stacey’s arm as she walked by and said, “I know that I love you so much, but in the last few days, I feel like I just can’t … like … show …”

“It’s okay, honey,” Stacey said. “I know. We all know.”

Then Rayya fell back to sleep again, in a way that felt like she was well and truly finished.

That’s how it had felt all day—the drifting in and out of various layers of consciousness.

Rayya seemed to be here but not here—seeing and hearing things that the rest of us could not see or hear.

It was like she was testing the waters of the other side and then returning to our mortal shores.

Twice in the previous few days she had reported that she was seeing “orbs”—glowing purple orbs that seemed to startle her as they rolled out of the closet or rose from the floor.

She also saw a white tiger come out of the bathroom, cross the living room floor, look at her carefully, and then walk through a wall, vanishing into the night.

On Christmas morning, I had been talking quietly on the phone to a friend when Rayya woke up and suddenly said, “Baby, I see a beam of white light pouring out of your forehead!”

“Oh yeah, my love? That’s cool!”

“Yeah, it’s really cool. I love it when I see that. That’s how I can always know you’re telling the truth.”

Later that day, when I was dozing with her on the couch, she’d said, “I just had a vision of you telling this story to someone in the future.”

“Who am I telling it to?” I asked.

“Somebody really lucky,” she said, and fell back to sleep.

She’d wanted me to pray over her multiple times throughout the day, and asked me to chant the prayers in Sanskrit that I had learned at the ashram in India.

Her own prayers were becoming more beautiful—dreamy, but strong.

“Dear God,” she’d said on Christmas morning, “thank you for giving me this task, this work to be done. Thank you for giving me this partner, these friends, this family, to help me in this difficult task. The work of dying, it is an honor. People think it’s a burden.

But it can be an honor. I have always loved taking charge in a challenge.

It’s where I belong. This is where I belong right now.

I belong at the doorway of death. This is where you want me, as I die.

I am huddled in partnership with this work, with these women, and with you, God.

I will ride this work to the end, God. Amen, God. Blessed be.”

She hadn’t wanted to eat anything all day, or to drink anything.

I called my mother—who is a nurse, and who has sat at the bedsides of many dying patients—and asked for guidance.

My mother said, “Try not to encourage her to eat if she doesn’t want to.

When someone who is dying doesn’t want to eat, it’s because their body can’t process it anymore.

Forcing food into them only brings its own problems. Same with liquids. Don’t force her to do anything.”

As if anyone could ever force Rayya to do anything!

Gigi arrived only moments before midnight, and Rayya was radiant with joy when she saw her walking through the door.

“You came, baby,” she said. “You came!”

“Of course I came, my love. Merry Christmas, my love!”

And they hugged and wept, and we all wept.

After that, Rayya let me tuck her into bed, and I told her stories and sang her Christmas carols until she fell asleep.

A few hours later, she woke me up to say, “I can see the opening into the box of dreams.”

Then she fell back to sleep.

At 4:00 a.m., I tried to wake her up to give her another dose of painkillers, but I couldn’t rouse her.

This had never before happened. I waited an hour and tried to wake her again, but it was impossible.

And now I could see that a physiological change was coming over her body.

Her hands and feet were blue and cold. Her lips, blue. Her breathing, ragged.

It was time.

I felt sure it was time.

I went to the other bedrooms and woke Stacey and Gigi.

“I think it’s time,” I whispered, and they both rose immediately, without a question or a sound, and came to Rayya’s room.

As though we had rehearsed this moment for a thousand lifetimes, we prepared the room for her death.

Stacey lit a candle and Gigi put on some sacred chants, very low.

Then we all three crawled into bed with her—her ex-wife, her ex-girlfriend, and me, her last and final lover—and wrapped our warm bodies around her cold body.

It was a freezing-cold night, with wind and snow whipping at the window.

We took turns telling her how much we loved her.

How much she meant to us. How magnificent a human being she was, and how we would never be the same for having known her.

How grand she was. How she had taught us to be brave and honest. How fiercely she had protected us.

How grateful we were. How we would never stop saying her name.

The clock ticked, time slowed.

Outside, the light was changing.

A gray dawn was coming, and with it, more snow.

Then we became quiet, because it felt like a change was happening in the room. A deepening silence, a deepening presence.

And that’s when Rayya opened her eyes and said in her regular voice, “What are you guys doing ?”

Shocked, we quickly wiped the tears from our faces and tried to act perfectly normal.

“Nothing!” I said. “We’re not doing anything!”

“Babe, why are Stacey and Gigi in our bed?”

“I don’t know!” I said. “They aren’t! They just came over to drop off some mail.”

“What’s that music? What’s that smell? Are you guys burning fucking candles in here?”

“Absolutely not!” I said. “No candles. That’s just Stacey’s perfume.”

(Stacey was now furiously blowing out the candles while Gigi scrambled to shut off the Gregorian chants.)

“You guys are really weird,” Rayya said, nonplussed. Then she sat up in bed. Turned on the light. Lit a cigarette. And sounding exactly like herself, she said, “Hey, babe—what day is it today?”

“It’s December 26th, my love.”

“Cool,” said Rayya. “I wanna hit that sixty-percent-off sale at Lululemon.”

And so that, dear reader, is what we did.

We helped Rayya rise up out of what we had been certain, only moments before, was her deathbed.

Then we showered her, dressed her, gave her some breakfast, and took her shopping at Lululemon—where she proceeded to spend an hour trying on athleisure wear for some future imagined life, I suppose.

A life in which she was not dying. A life in which she would need a lightweight windbreaker and a new pair of leggings—for all those long walks she was planning to take on the beach in the bright summer sunlight.

A life in which the winter would end, and the seasons would change, and we would drive to the ocean, and all our friends would be there, and everyone would be joyful, and everyone would be together, and everything would be beautiful.