With you go Archaic patterns
of a home you will never come home to again.
Like an amputation, it will haunt and hurt me.

Only a small death, of course,
not the full ceremony with mourners, a hearse,
residuary legatees and a coffee table after the ritual.
Just a small, fully-conscious end.

Never again will you sleep in this room,
see sun rise through glass at this familiar angle,
never again adjust to the shape
of this bath, the smell of this cupboard.

You have died expected, yet suddenly.
The arrival of the undertakers made me realize
this is for real. Their muscular detachment
dissolves bonds between chairs and rooms,
shelves and their books.

The house offers its own valuation of you.
Dirt appears in embarrassing contexts.
If you were still alive, you would feel
the need to apologize.

Casual adjuncts of ordinary living,
dustbins and drains, the unremarkable
clergyman, haloed in the otherworldly glare
of the last rites, achieve reality
just as you end with them forever.

Neighbors, paying a deathbed visit,
acquire the tender resonance of friends,
while I stand non-existing, dumb.
But die as you go, birth exists
on the edge of extinction.

Goodbye my dear husband,
on your way to your Maker now.
I will respect your wish not to wear black
You have found peace.
With the Lord's guidance, I live on.


Marjon van Bruggen
July 15 2018, the day of your departure.