The Final Call

As family and friends gathered

Around the deathbed

Someone silently hollered,

At my moribund being, to embed

The 10-minute final warning

Only I could hear the calling

 

For my final thoughts to start pouring

Others in tears, grasping at straws

Desperately, ardently pleading

Another fate would be the draw

Ten minutes more for sharing

With a loved one about to forever go

 

Amid all the tears, the grieving, the love

Warm clasps, loving kisses never before

Felt or sensed as though from up above

What feelings could I honestly pour

Onto a life all condensed in one final moment

With muddled memories of a life in torment?

 

My cat of years looked up at me jaded

Yawning, sticking out its tongue

Away from the angst, sauntered nimbly

A grim reminder, little would change 

Snub futile dreams of immortality

Death the leveler is finally in range

 

As images of the past furiously flashed by

I smiled at the fulfillment I had sown

By the outpouring of love of those nearby

Forgiveness and grief leaving me forlorn

Happy that the ordeal would soon end

Sad at unknowing what lay around the bend

 

Darkness would soon descend

On my being that I couldn’t defend

Departing from loved ones onto the unknown

Yet all of those millions now gone

Had suffered a fate just as my own

All mostly forgotten, now ash or bone

 

Yet we may fear death as reprimand

Dread her as highest agony to understand

Truth is we die longer than being around

And when we pass, it is the climax

Of solutions, and problems for death to ax

No more bills or adrenalin, no more tax

 

Ready to leave now

Let me go now

Pain be gone

Life be gone

Into nothingness

Into painlessness

 

Peace will always remain

In Death’s eternal domain

As the soul’s sole terrain

No more sighs, no more breaths

After the certainty of death

Endless silence, as demise creeps in with stealth

 

©Alwi Shatry, June 28, 2017