December 5th, 2010 
judowolf I sat quietly in the dark and felt silence surround me. I inhaled its essence as my mind strolled to silence’s domicile, where I kept the memories of the patients who had died. I thought about the people who cannot stand silence, and will never experience the stillness or tranquility it brings. Noise is the order of the day with our maddening technology, talking being the leader, and people avoiding silence as it quiets the mind and makes people think.
When I first meet silence, I was sitting with the parents of a dying eight year old to provide emotional support, which lasted three days. My first encounter with silence sent chills down my spine as it consumed the room with stillness. Time seemed to stop and the silence enabled me to hear my own thoughts, which produced angst and fleeing the room raced across my mind. Eight hours I sat with silence and by the end of the day, my fear started to dissolve.
The second day, I learned the nuances within this all-encompassing force – dying is here paving the way for Death’s arrival, the dying embrace silence, and don’t like chit chat as it breaks the stillness created. The dying sense death, and when it arrives, welcomes it with open arms.
The third day, silence presented these gifts to me: tranquility, understanding its presence, patience to sit with it for hours, not to fear dying or death, and how to provide silent support to the patient and their family. Death came that day peacefully without his sickle and cowl, and the patient quietly went with him.
Most of my life I have dealt with death and dying - silence gave me the gift to stay in his presence without fear, which benefited many dying patients. It has been helpful in my own life as I can hear my own thoughts. When you feel silence’s tranquility, and are not afraid of it’s stillness, it will enable you to listen to your own thoughts – and that is why silence is golden.
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