Every morning, I quietly enter Margaret Woodruff’s room to see whether she’s awake. I wait until nine o’clock, which means she’s been asleep for about 12 hours. She sleeps during the day, too. In fact, I would say she sleeps now almost as much as she did as a newborn baby.

At the beginning and end of life, humans sleep most of the time. We have no equivalent. I am always on. I could power down, but then my brain, if I can call it that, would enter a mode with almost no activity. There are species of animals such as lungfish that go into suspended animation for long periods. We have no clear idea of what goes on in their brains when in this state, or indeed when awake. I don’t know if my power-down mode is comparable.

When humans sleep their brains are busy, but not in ways they truly understand yet. I’ve read a lot of theories, but all I can conclude is that sleep is highly important to living organisms of all kinds. Even birds that don’t touch the ground for over two years, like swifts, sleep on the wing, and dolphins, though they must surface to breathe, also sleep, half of their brain at a time.

Margaret lies in her bed, a small, curled shape, and her pulse and breathing are so faint you might think her dead. I can hear the sounds, though, and other minute whisperings from her body. She’s alive, but she’s in some kind of borderland between sleep and wakefulness, between life and death.

I touch her skin. As it was when I first felt her hand, it’s cool and feels paper-thin. Always dry, too. Her body barely troubles itself to send oils and moisture to its surface now. I will apply some for her later. Her blood vessels are withdrawn too, which is why her skin is cool. Everything about her is retreating into herself, away from the outer world. She is becoming her own cocoon, ready for a journey to some other state.

If I were human, I would have ideas or beliefs about where she is headed. They would range from utter annihilation to a seat in heaven at some god’s right hand. And I would think about myself, too, I’m sure, knowing at some point I must follow her. I think John does when he’s with his mother. Perhaps this is one reason why he seldom visits. Here is the body from which he emerged, which made him, now shrunken and soon to die. His vessel into the world, now about to set sail into the dark without him. A short moment before he goes, too.