I am a hospice nurse. I follow my patients from the moment treatment stops, until their last breath.
There is a part no one talks about. Not about the dying or the family, but what happens after. At the end of every death, there is a moment when everything goes still. The room quiets. The body is no longer fighting. The tension leaves. And just like that, it’s over. And then it comes. Not the sadness or the grief.
Something else. A kind of emptiness. A silence that feels… wide. I don’t always cry. Sometimes, I just feel the need to step away. To be alone and to not speak. And sometimes without warning, tears come. Not heavy or dramatic. Just there.
There is an image that stays with me : A drowning man. Holding onto a straw. Clinging. Not letting go. And in that moment, I realise something. I am that straw. Not saving or trying to stop what is coming. Just there, for them to hold onto before they let go.
And when they do, there is nothing left to hold.
That is the moment I feel.
The emptiness.
The absence. Not loss in the usual sense.
Just…nothing.
I used to wonder if something was wrong with me.
Why no strong grief?
Why this distance?
Why this need to withdraw?
But over time, I understood. This emptiness is not absence. It is letting go.
For a while, you hold something with them. Their breath, struggle and presence. And when they let go, that holding ends.
And for a moment it feels like something has been taken from you. But it hasn’t.
It has simply been released. And then I began to see something more. This feeling, this emptiness does not belong only to death. It appears anywhere we have given everything. A vessel emptied completely.
A painter finishing a piece and not wanting to look at it again. Not because it is not good. But because there is nothing left to give to it. Everything has already gone into it. This is the same space. After full presence. After full giving. There is a drop. From intensity— to stillness.
And that drop, feels like a void. Most people don’t stay there. They rush to fill it. With noise. With distraction. With meaning. But I have learned to let it be. The quiet. The distance. The tears, when they come. Not as something to fix. Not as something to explain.
But as part of the cycle.
To give fully.
To empty completely.
And to sit, for a while, with nothing. And then, slowly life returns.
Reflection
Not every emptiness is a problem. Some of it is what remains when something has been fully held, and finally released. You don’t need to fill it. You don’t need to make sense of it immediately.
Sometimes you just need to sit with it. When you eventually let go, you are left holding… nothing. No ritual. No performance. Just direct encounter.
April 10th, 2026
