[HokeyReligions]

If light has weight, then heat doubly so.

The warmth of the day was baking-hot, yet I was frozen, a rock of ice, trembling on the precipice of a glacier and staring down, only down, into an abyss that no one could predict.

Pounding I heard, but a soft rapping on the foyer door was all it was about
And I thought ‘foyer’ what a strange word, and my mind jumped again to that precipice.

Creaking and the gentle rush of air pushed out of lungs and voices soft behind me.
I was on my knees, next to her favorite chair. She had her blanket around her and she was alert considering all the drugs in her system, forcing her nerve endings to cease their endless vile attack of pain.

We almost didn’t need the doctor or the nurse. It wouldn’t have been much longer anyway, every second can hold an eternity of joy when one is clinging.

She looked at me in the brief spats of conscious thoughts that randomly passed her through the pain and the drugs.

I was holding her. On my knees – I didn’t feel the pain in them then. She lifted her head as the doctor adjusted the IV line. To be plugged in to something so unnatural at the end of life. It tore at me like thorns, I felt as though my eyes would burst forth in blood because I’d held that dam too long.

I felt her incline her head to mine drawing me forward to her face, her beautiful, sweet face. She kissed me as she closed her eyes. I held her so tight and my lips tasted her childlike perfume – the one she had before she was sick. I smelled it then – she smelled of sand and sunshine, laughter and spring blossoms under a clear blue sky. She fell asleep as I chanted “I Love You. I Will Always Love You. Forever I Will Love You” and her daddy sobbed “Sweet Dreams Baby Girl, Sweet Dreams” through his own tears, which fell onto my shoulders, weighing me down.

Her pain ended as mine began. The machine to keep her alive slowly ceased its ticking and clicking and whirring and there was silence. The medicine that kept her from pain, kept her dreaming also. She slept and died in my arms. That last kiss still trembling on my heart.

The ice rock slipped off the precipice and began its eternal crashing journey down into the abyss, breaking and splintering, yet still moving, still ‘being’ while feeling every splinter, every boulder break off and shatter, ripping itself apart, but not ending.