Machines beeped
Monitoring your life
Every beat, body weak
Your heart struggled to keep you alive
This shouldn't come as a shock
We've known for months
I knew you weren't here anymore
Simply existing physically
Your body wiped clean of all mental capability
Like an ocean tide batters the shore, you were diminishing
Until there was nothing else to take

Reminiscing back to the signs we ignored foolishly
Never thinking it was more than a slight lapse of memory
From a call to confirm your location
To forgetting the youngest generation
Temporary confusion faded to permanent loss

I wondered
As you laid unconscious
The mask on your face providing oxygen
If you could hear me
Were you silently screaming for me to shut up so you could rest
Knowing you , you were concerned with my school and why I was at the hospital instead
Did you remember my name?
Could you conjure up my face?
Behind those delicate eyelids that hadn't done more than fluttered in days?
Remember reading to me as I sat on your knee?
How we'd admire nature with a hand full of bird seed?

I though I'd accepted the fact you were gone
When we first suspected the disease
The one I wish was never created, never existed, that erased my existence from your mind indefinitely

As I stared at your face, peacefully sedated, I felt a twinge of pain
How is it this woman I knew to be so strong
Might as well have had fragile stamped on her face

A being so loving
Was now so faint
Like a painting left in the rain
Your colors had began to fade
Until they were white
White like the sheets, the walls, and the floor
The absence of life that exists behind hospital doors

Your body slowly tried to quit
Hard headed as always . You said not yet
So frail you held on to the little life you had left
Until Heaven loosened your hold

I find solace knowing you're in a better place
Where you can remember loved one's names
Watching over us in the paths we take
I'm resigned now to the fact you had to go
But as long as you could
You made God wait