A beautiful poem by Andrea Gibson.

What does it mean to die? Where does one go after leaving this physical earth? Depending on your faith, you may already have an answer to this. But for me, this is a question that despite interacting with death and dying daily at work, I hadn’t dared to let myself ponder deeply about.

That is until I came across Anderson Cooper’s new podcast All There Is, where he holds candid conversations around grief and loss. In his interview with comedian Tig Notaro, she details her experience of losing her close friend and poet, Andrea Gibson.

I was moved by the beautiful poem that Andrea had written on dying before her death that provided, at least for me, a comforting answer to the question above.

Here's an excerpt from ‘Love Letter from the Afterlife’ by Andrea Gibson:

“My love, I was so wrong.

Dying is the opposite of leaving.

When I left my body, I did not go away.

That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here.

I am more here than I ever was before.

I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.

So close you look past me when wondering where I am.

It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted.

But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living.

Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?

Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer,

“How tall are you?”

You can read the full version on her blog, where she also has an audio version that brings the poem to life.

I think of the ways we keep those that have passed away with us, in the way we think of them, talk about them, remember them. Isn’t this precisely what Andrea Gibson is trying to impart on us, that “to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive”?

I hope this poem is able to bring some semblance of comfort as it has for me, to those that have lost someone they love from this physical earth.