Strangely, there was so much
life about that day--
White flowers, blossoming along a grassy path
beyond the glass, outside the door of this
room that seemed more like
a lobby--

And there we were
waiting,
knowing...

knowing that this child
was never to see the grass outside
along that green and living path

And there she was
my sister, waiting,
waiting in an empty room,
prepared for her--
(no grassy path, no blossoming life)
sterilized nothing...

she had been sent here
for this, she'd felt something was wrong
and she was all too right--
no heartbeat, no heartbeat
and now, here she lay,
knowing
and waiting

waiting for them to to induce
a fruitless labor
waiting in that sterile bed,
(her then husband beside her)
my mother,
his mother
waiting

After the "procedure"
(what else can one call it...?)
there was more waiting
and more white reflected
off the faces of this family
trying to be and say and do
whatever one can or does--
No one really knew.

Then the white nearly blinded
my mother's face
as we were told my sister
had insisted on seeing her child,
her dead birthed son.
(They cleaned him up as best they could
after she wouldn't back down)
And she was brought to him,
to her son, David.
He was called David.

She held him
we were told,
afterward.

We were told also
that he looked like
his father, whom we all
wanted to hold as he fought
his own pain, trying, even to
smile (that funny kind of half-smile
of his) through tears that seemed caught
in his helpless eyes.

He too lost a son that day
and he too was lost--
lost in that glass blown
painted lobby of windowed light
surrounded just outside with color
and life.

He held his mother.
He held my mother--
He simply held on before
he went back to that room...
my sister's room. how empty
that room must have seemed
to them.


And later, with a lump in our throats,
we all somehow, also
carefully paraded into that room.

Memory strains as I recall
touching her hand, holding it,
touching her as she lay there and
holding back my own grief for
those brief moments spent with her.

I remember a strange mixture
of life and death and color that day
I remember how it all seemed as if
we were living within a painting gone awry
with color and nothingness.
I remember that room, that lobby, which
was of course not a lobby at all.
It was in fact a place
of mourning
in waiting
for
David...