I said I would come that summer.
Finally, I’d be back for a visit, long overdue
considering who you had been to me.
You always seemed to understand my need
to pull it all together, to make my re-entry
a triumphant, joyful celebration – most honor due to you.
So when I called it was with a sense of urgency,
ready after so long to look into your eyes
and announce that I had made it
because of you
after all.

I knew instinctively it had to be now
just as I knew in the few seconds
it took your secretary to recover when I asked for you
that something terrible had happened,
that something had been lost to me forever,
a door clanged shut, forever, too soon.

I would find out later that
you shared the news with almost no one
that the cancer had come back,
just quietly telling the doctor you’d had enough.
And so you went on living full of all the love
you shared with everyone you ever met. I know…
I could not have held on to tenuous hope had I known.
And now I am filled with so much love; I see
how much you loved me
in your leaving
after all.