It is one of life’s most profound invitations: to sit with the mystery as our parents leave their bodies. We grew up seeing them as our anchors, the ones who set the world in motion for us. And now, we watch as they step closer to that doorway, that great unknown. It is tender, raw, and heart-wrenching. But if we allow it, it can also be sacred.

Ram Dass often spoke of the dance between form and formlessness. Our parents, these beautiful souls who took on bodies to guide and love us, are now shedding the form we’ve known. They are not just the person we call “Mummy” or “Daddy.” They are divine beings, just as we are, walking each other home.

To sit at the bedside of a dying parent is to witness the ultimate surrender. It is a lesson in impermanence, in letting go of control, and in opening to love beyond form. They may fight, resist, or embrace the process in their own way, but they are teaching us even now. In their frailty, we see the inevitability of our own journey.

Grief arises, yes, and it should. But beneath the grief, there is a stillness - a quiet awareness that all of this is part of the play. We are not losing them. They are simply moving beyond the roles they’ve played in this life. If we can see with the eyes of the soul, we recognise that they have always been more than their body, more than their personality.

As Ram Dass reminded us, “Death is not an error. It is taking off a tight shoe.” When we stop clinging to their body, their role, their presence as we’ve known it, we can feel the love that never dies. That love, that connection, is what they leave behind—not as an absence, but as an essence that infuses everything.

To watch our parents die is to learn how to live. It is to realise that the only thing that truly matters is how open our hearts can be, even in the face of loss. Can we sit with them, breathe with them, and simply be? Can we trust the process, knowing that they are moving toward freedom, and that we, too, will one day follow?

This is not the end. It is a continuation of the eternal dance. And as we hold their hands in their final moments, we can whisper to them, and to ourselves: “We are all just walking each other home.”