He is almost gone now —
not in presence,
but in substance.
Skin clings like a last thought.
Bones speak louder than voice.
His breath — raspy,
a thread unraveling from the spool.
He no longer speaks with words
but with a kind of translucence.
A flicker at the corners of the mouth,
a half-formed smile
that still carries the scent
of mischief once beloved.
No need to remember the stories —
they linger in the curve of his cheek,
in the stubborn glint that refuses
to vanish with the mind.
This is not absence.
This is the art of subtle remaining.
You sit beside him
not as child to father
but as soul to soul,
caught in the strange intimacy
of this slow tantra
of unbinding.
He is not dying.
He is undressing
from form.
A ritual of undoing,
layer by layer,
memory loosening its hold,
flesh folding back into the elements.
This is not the failure of life,
but its final performance —
where gesture becomes sacred
simply because it may be
the last.
Hillman once wrote
that old age is not decay,
but character in force.
And you see it now —
the compression of a whole myth
into a single breathless glance,
a raspy whisper
that names nothing
but still means everything.
There is no grief here
yet.
Only the reverence of watching
someone become less visible
but more eternal.
This is the tantric path
no one teaches:
To sit inside the withering
and not run from it.
To witness the body forget its name
and still recognize the soul.
You hold his hand
not as comfort,
but as grounding —
as if to say:
“Yes. I see you unravel.
And I will remember your thread.”
His breath is a bell
without sound.
His presence —
a hush
that sanctifies the room.
Nothing more needs to be said.
You are already
inside the poem
of his leaving.
This post is part of The Book of Glamorous Unbecoming, a tantric soul-making grimoire curated by Notitia, where death is not an end but a ritual disrobing.
All writings emerge from the scent of memory, dream, and disappearance.
Notitia Health 
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