Touch: The Journal of Healing

 













































 

A Good Death

    by Art Heifetz


A good death,

the hospice people had told us,

was the best we could hope for,

which meant at home,

in her own bed,

her legs drawn up

like a sleeping child,

no hospital staff rushing in

to resuscitate,

the morphine administered

by my own hand

to ease her passing.


By morning's light

her breath had stopped.

It was a good death, I suppose,

but I waited for more:

a sigh of regret

at not meeting her grandson,

a final absolution for my failings,

one last whispered "I love you."

Maybe that only happens in movies

but how I yearned for it.





© 2014  Art Heifetz





Art Heifetz has published over 100 poems in 10 countries. In 2013 he was nominated for a Pushcart and won second prize in the Reuben Rose competition in Israel.

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Touch: The Journal of Healing

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