Goodbye: Upon the Death of Sibling
Once, I’d stood beside a man
Who, with heart and soul o’erwrought,
Silently searched for answers, but answers found him not.
His sister recently had passed from Earthly life to next,
And left her brother standing, filled with emptiness.
We stood within a classroom, throbbing with life and youthful confidence,
Listening to strangers speak of futures in terms of choice and providence.
When above the din of music and deafening teenaged discourse,
I thought I heard his spirit cry
“What choices do we truly have-when comes the time to die?”
How? and why? His queries all began
Echoing voices of a preceding time, to which my mind sped swiftly in reverse
To that moment when I’d stood besides another man,
Who, with sighing, held his sister in his thoughts, and in
Speechlessness did he with her converse,
Wondering, each, about his dying.
We’d stood within a bustling airport crowd,
Listening with half-ears to strangers chatting,
With boisterous busy-ness about their day’s importance.
While I, in their unawareness, sought a way to say goodbye
To a man whose life linked mine; by merit of our birth and love.
Fore’er, our hearts entwined.
I looked then to my brother’s face and thought
How does one rout this wretched misery?
Where does one turn to quell the pain?
What choices do I really have to make my loved one well and whole again?
From all cancerous affiliations, a remedy we then sought.
So now a brother and a sister stood, reflecting upon what went before.
From science and from God, we asked from both a comfort and a cure.
My friend, the questions asked by you
Were those the same by me,
And though we asked the questions,
The answers to the whys and hows
Unheeded they did go
Though in their stead One Truth was given-
It is not in the dying that choices can be made,
But in the way we do our living.
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