To look upon death

And so, as I started to prepare this dear one as I had been instructed… to do… to hide… to disengage… I stopped. And gazed upon this small, small death instead. I called to my roommate. And when she reported with the needed items for the next step of our instructions, I said, from idk where, “No. We shepherd death”. So instead we sat. We gazed, and pet, and loved, and cried. We stated our sadness out loud. We silently held space for our grave disappointment.