Brother

 

 

 

You were simple in your outlook on life; never needing to impress
Loving football, eating, collecting pocket knives and scary movies
More inclined to do for others, you never wanted to rock the boat
Just keep it sound and steady, not liking when things went adrift.

We were never close but were brothers all the same,
Growing up in a home without a father
Still there was a loving mother and our beloved Gram
Then your simple world shook to pieces by one big wave
Cancer and the slow fading that come with it.

What’s the purpose when life comes to such an end?
Some believe we’re called in life to overcome our failings
I wondered what were your faults as I read the eulogy
And it was then that I knew what you had mastered… patience;
Patience that’s pure and doesn’t come from being self-centered.

You spent the last two years of your life going from doctor to doctor
Learning patients with yourself and forgiving of doctors, nurses and others
Thus, patience evolved into lovingkindness, gratitude, and compassion
Witnessed on the last day when you seemed not to want to pass on
Waiting for others to accept what you had already accepted.

This is enlightenment; you can’t learn it in a book
When it’s normal, when it’s unquestionably a part of you
You can’t even describe its knowing or not knowing
Enlightenment will never admit enlightenment to itself
It sees with the heart before the mind can enter the room.

They say to embrace death is to live wisely, to the fullest
My question is, “what is expected of me? What is my lesson?
I know that the answers will eventually come and I may still never know
Answers often travel light as the wind without fanfare bringing more questions
Maybe all I know is that I don’t know and this is a good place for me to start.

©jc2016-9

(Originally published in March 2015 under a different title and format.)