I sat in your room and felt my life leave my body with yours, and everything inside that was good, or real, flew toward my fingertips and left in an explosion of anger, resentment, and hurt, not at you, but at something greater than all of us. Or smaller than us.
Just collected there, and then lifted above my head to a place that, could I move my hands, I couldn't quite reach, and the only emotion I could find was an empty one.
I cried to the Earth Mother and to my mother, and to his mother, and felt my tears mark the dirt beneath my sodden feet, and I collapsed, a heap of bones, and hair, and wetness.
I found a peace in the ground with the trail of ants passing by my feet, and the bitterness of the sea air, and the gentle, rhythmic pull of the water. I sat up and my lifetime passed before I could catch my breath, or perhaps seconds, or months, as time, while inevitable, can slow and speed up at will [or against will] and I craved for time to reverse itself and allow me one more moment by your bedside with your hand in mine.
Within moments of life departing your body, death became you, and your chest was still. Unnaturally still. I held my hand over your chest hoping to feel an imperceptible beat, just one last attempt at proving the unprovable, to tell the doctors in the room [your husband and son] that they were wrong, your heart and your mind and your blue eyes were still there, awake, in that quiet, bent shell, and we no longer had to mourn.
Instead, all that was left to do was hold what you left in your wake, your shell, that ashen, pale shell, to prepare your body to be lowered back to the earth, to resume that unholy cycle.
I became a heap of bones, and hair, and wetness, as I held my hand over your chest hoping to feel an imperceptible beat.
Rest in peace.
