THE PARTING

We've come to see our friend who's dying in a hospice.
We've known her for years - around 36, I suppose.
We met her through the baby sitting circle,
her boy and ours being toddlers,
Her life was packed with dramas,
the telling of which she made entertaining.
She married a man twice her age,
and after he died we got to know her better,
discovering a person at the top of her profession;
well-to-do, confident, bossy, generous spirited,
and in her head a brain
capable of cracking walnuts,
even when she slept.
So here she is, a beached, bleached whale,
cancers in her bones, her lungs and
god knows where else, causing such pain
in the last few days that she's almost
unconscious from the drugs she's been helped to swallow,
Lying still, eyes closed, she's aware, no doubt,
of the visitors grouped around her bed,
chatting, getting up to date, and pretending
not to see she's very nearly dead.
We're spectators, on the steps
spiralling up the sides of a shaft
with daylight at the top and
a black void below, and we're watching,
of and on, Shelagh falling past
in very very slow motion, her arms outsretched,
her white nightie twisting, and her mouth open
in a silent scream.
She's falling inch by inch, just out of reach,
from the light above into the black below.
We know that soon she will be out of sight
and that we'll never hear her voice again;,
see her face, drink her wine, eat her food,
consider her size or have to decide

if the story she's telling's
as tall as it sounds.
She knows we're there,
watching her fall;
the disc of light at the top of the
shaft is growing steadily
smaller. Our faces are,
and distance is shrinking
all her life's experiences.
There's only one reality now;
and it's rushing up to take her.

The child in white frock and socks
who once laughed and danced in the street,
her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright
with an abundance of life,
has had her last excitement.
We've come to say goodbye.
and to hear her last "goodnight"