By Robina Afzal
Still can’t believe it. It’s not sunk in. You’ve left us.
How quickly it all happened .. the phone call, the dash to hospital..
Racing against time, not knowing if you were still with us.
Met by the closed doors.
Each of us standing at a distance, each of us carrying so many emotions, bodies full of pain from the virus and a breaking heart from not being able to see you one last time.
They tell us, it’s too late.
My heart is screaming why, how, when?
We scuttled around to speak to some one, anyone who goes past
Anyone , someone please tell us something, anything , give us some glimmer of hope.
Finally he comes out “it’s too late” he says.
“He passed away shortly after we called you , he was taking his final breath when family were coming and we thought it unethical and insensitive to call you while you must have been driving to get here”
In a blink of an eye you’ve gone.
How strange it all is….
no hugs, no tears,
Just a white plastic bag with some clothes and a phone in it
Head bowed,
bewildered, glistening eyes
and a lifetime of memories to cling to, we leave the hospital one by one with so many unanswered questions and broken hearted.
I like the urgency that begins in this one, the reminder of how tenuous life is during
these times, and the drama of how we’d react in a dire situation like this. And I like
the human emotion that goes into it, the sense of loss at the end; to me that’s what
made this a good poem.