Family Reunion

The day she told me, I saw the end in her eyes.
I saw the months of anguish, grueling nights
crawling into endless days of radiation
and nausea and despair. I saw her sitting,
her strength oozing away from her as slowly
as the drops from her intravenous bag dripped
silently into her tired veins. I felt my chest
tighten while I dropped the final rose onto her casket,
tears falling from the troubled sky as a boy
buried his mother. But on good days,
those precious times when hope abounded
and that knowing twinkle returned to her eye,
a mother held her child in her soothing arms
and death was a distant cousin to them.