The Size of Life and Death

"She thinks of how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in our gestures and movements, in breathing. Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest." From: "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham (1998)

I remember standing at the side of my father's coffin, looking down at him, and wondering when he became so small. I think I always carried the child's-eye view of him with me -- the one that remembered the bigness of him. Yet there, in that box, I realized, for the first time, how little space he truly occupied. What was so large, almost larger than life, was, indeed, the aliveness of him.

Now that I am working in hospice I see this again and again. The body comes down to very little. I few feet long, a few feet wide. I have garden beds that occupy more space. Yet, I can always sense that there is this enormous aliveness no matter what level of consciousness the person before me may currently be in. Each person's life is vast but our bodies are really so very small. When death comes where does that vastness go? Into the memories of those we leave behind? And, over time, as those memories fade, what, then, is the true size of our life?