My mother, died.
She waited, hanging on.
No longer conscious.
But for one last touch.

I knew she was alive,
when I arrived at the hospice.
She left the precise moment,
I opened the door to her room.

We touched, in spirit.
She left, in peace.

We met again, in my dreams,
that very night, and a few other nights too.

Our souls spoke, not in words,
but in emotions deeply aroused,
in the dream language of
fragmentary fleeting sights,
disjointed leaps, even bizarre things.

But of things only between us,
never spoken of, at all, in all of life,
neither known to anyone else,
mutually shared, unacknowledged,
in our deepest and most intimate selves.

There were shortcomings.
Things could be better, in hindsight.
But I had no guilt, just regrets.
For the little things,
that would have meant a lot, then.

Then I had a heart attack.
A&E, cardiograms, sonograms, angiograms, etc
Heart declared perfectly healthy;
No heart attacks likely in the next 5 years.

I knew then emotions are real: as real as sight and touch;
As material as the physical: Grief can ****.

And I learned to think
not just with reason but with emotions too.