Breathless

     About a month ago, I was informed the my dear friend Miss Charlotte had stage four lung cancer with only four to six months left to live. What you have to understand about Miss Charlotte, she was like a grandmother to me, one of the best grandmothers I could have ever hope to have. About a week or two after that, I was told that she was worse, that she only had two to four months. As it turned out, she only had one.
     When I think about how I feel about all of this, all I can think is breathless. I try to breathe, but the breath does not sustain. My heart feels like lead, and my mind is swimming in memories and words of an unfinished poem. Emotions, memories, rhymes surging through my veins...

Breathless

My heart is drowning from tears previously shed;

My soul is weighed with sorrow now its fears come true, with nothing left to dread;

Now she lays sleeping without breath, now she lays dead.

My heart, hopelessness begins to smother;

To this cureless disease I have lost yet another;

Through years of trust and kindness she became my true grandmother.

She looks so at peace there upon her cushioned bed;

Her hair falls in curly, white, aged locks about her head;

There she lays sleeping without breath, there she lays dead.

Here in my mind tightly she holds me;

There she lays upon her cushion, light as can be;

Now she ascends to Heaven to take her place beside Thee.

In my heart I try to remember all that she said;

Before she was taken by Thee from her death bed;

Where she laid sleeping without breath, where she laid dead.