The night stars glitter over a city asleep,
while a dim light glows from a hospital bedside,
and a woman watches vigil over her dying husband.
Across town in a different medical center,
a thirty-something man squeezes his wife’s hand,
as she labours with the product of their love.
I lie awake, conscious of the irony of life,
anxiously awaiting news of passages:
one life ending while another begins.
I find myself wondering what lies beyond,
and whether they are not both experiencing
the loss of one life and the beginning of another.
What I do know for certain is this:
Lives, at this very moment, are changing,
irrevocably, for the better or the worse.
And that as my mother mourns her loss,
my daughter will be celebrating her gain –
grief and bliss will coexist within these walls.
One Woman's Quest 