Maren Tirabassi visits with a woman who is dying. She has lived inside that tender space we call hospice. She has cared for four parents there. She knows how difficult it is for some people to choose hospice for themselves. She has felt the “frantic counting out of weeks” and “her own coming of spring”. And today she shares her prayer with the CASA community. Thank you, Maren. —Rafael Vallejo
Wake me up, God,
not to some frantic counting out
of weeks,
but to a precious february of days
for seeing all the shadows —
the outline of childhood,
a shaded place
where I meet old friends
awkward, clutching, like children
with brown lunch bags,
their “good-byes,”
and the biggest shadow of all
that bully, my illness,
that makes me want to go back to sleep.
But do not let me miss it — this wintering
and growing of the light.
Let me find in a new community
of compassionate strangers …
not a crazy movie where everything
happens over and over again
until we get it right,
but a sweet foolish letting go
of right and wrong and a thousand
other adjectives
that mean nothing now.
Do not let me miss it —
long-delayed, too early, or much feared,
my own coming of the spring.
