When Death Comes

He sits in the recliner where he is living out his final days,
in between hospital visits:
head fallen to the side, eyes closed, no strength, any more, to even lift his hands,
oxygen helping him breathe the diminishing breaths of his life.

His body is surrendering to the  process that will
slowly and inexorably shut his system down,
until his last breath carries him into the vortex and away,
beyond the veil that separates this life from the next,
leaving only his chair behind, sitting empty,
to which, this time, he will not return.

She sits in the kitchen, weeping.
She has expended all of her will towards his recovery.
But "there will be no improvement,"
she tells me. "He will not be getting better."
The protection of denial has been stripped away,
her mind  yet unable to grasp the fullness
of the yawning chasm awaiting her:
her husband gone, after thirty years together,
when one hundred would not have been enough,
his passing through the veil
between this world and the unseen,
the absence of that final walking away
down darkened hospital halls
that is now weeks, and perhaps only days,
away.

When death comes,
may his be peaceful:
sweet, gallant man
with only kindness in his heart.
When death comes,
may Allah support
her trembling, fragile, aged body,
so she can bear the burden
of surviving,
and living on without him.