Words of Comfort - March 30 2022

 

Words of Comfort

March 30 2022

She is at rest

no longer with us

passed away.

Went to the great beyond

gone to her just reward.

Has left this vale of tears

and is now at God's side.

I'm not sure

who is truly comforted

when it's put like this.

Nevertheless, we refuse to say dead, died

expired,

will not hear of it.

She was 99, when she left us,

a ripe age, a full life.

Her time had come.

But we are partial to round numbers

and isn't 100

a more fitting end?

A final milestone

a centenarian;

the club we all want to be asked

to join.

So, to celebrate or mourn?

A long life, well-lived,

and she was ready for it —

left on her own terms

when it was time,

shed her mortal coil

crossed to the other side.

Loved one, dear departed

the funeral director called her;

but why not lived well

has died

is dead?

There is no hiding from death;

the grim reaper, in the end

comes for us all.

As I was turning the page to the sports section, an obituary caught my eye. No one I know. But she died at 99, and I thought about the stories of people who hang on: to defy death for a few more days until a close relative arrives from out of town, or a significant holiday gets celebrated. And wondered, was there anything in it for her to hang in and make 100? Could her final act have been a kind of disappointment because she just missed that singular age?

I avoid writing poems about death. Too morbid. Perhaps, in a way, too easy. So when I finally gave myself permission, language and euphemism gave me the perfect opening to take on this prohibition: to challenge the sensitivities around and avoidance of a subject we all think about, but rarely discuss in a frank and open way.