Six minutes a widow.
The sun kept shining,
the clock kept ticking,
but your heart stopped.
Absolutely stopped.
I remember my screams,
ambulance sirens.
They rushed you away from me.
Ushered me into a private waiting room.
I waited for forever it seemed.
Then that humming, beeping room.
Monitor glowing with moving lines.
Lines becoming peaks and troughs and blips.
Shroud-like sheeted, eyes closed.
Your face obscured by ventilator and tubes.
My God, so many tubes.
Family somehow there, tethering you to earth.
Doctor talk. Jumbled words to me.
“. . . his brain . . .may not wake up…not the same..”
No. No. NO.
Forty-eight hours later
your eyes popped open, staring fear.
Nurse told you firmly, wiggle your toes.
Move your right hand, now your left.
Moments of sheer joy.
We came home end of that week,
you, the real you, cognitively you.
But we were changed forever.
We live life more slowly,
love more deeply,
thankful for every day.
Written for dVerse , the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Will be submitted for possible publication in their anniversary anthology.
lillian the home poet 
Thank you for sharing this time of your life, Lillian. I’m so happy he came home, and that the experience changed your priorities.
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What an emotional read! By the time I got to the end, I felt tears of joy! That is a stunning photo of you and your husband, Lillian.
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I’m so glad he came home, what a joy for you both to have more time in each day. Lovely.
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I remember you’ve written about this before, Lillian. This is so incredibly moving. How fortunate you both were that he survived and that he was still him–though the experience changed both of you.
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It’s a philosophical practice to visualise going through situations like this to help prepare for their possibility. But….going through it… who knows how we might react. “No. No. NO.” hits hard.
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