The grace of loss

I told her I’d see her later, Those are the last words I would say, Before she died……before she went away……I knew it but I didn’t know it that she was sick, I couldn’t imagine she would leave us so quick, One evening in May, I asked my mother if she was okay, She started to cry and say, “No, Gamma has stage three colon cancer”, All I did was hold her, there was nothing I could say, So we stood there quietly, while I tried to keep my tears at bay, Seven days after my twenty-first birthday, my mother would get a call. This would be the beginning, of the end, of it all.