Last Train Home Poem by Sue Stone

We sit as we arrive at the terminal.
Diagnosis.
It sits, unblinking, between us.
Hesitation on both parts.
You, because your stop arrived so early.

We were distracted as stations past us by.
Me, because this isn't my turn to alight
On the footpath to our left.

We were walking three weeks ago
A conversation filled with missing words
I hastened to fill your gaps
Word scrabble
With tiles missing and no blanks
No triple word scores

You were alive and vibrant and funny
And all those things you always were and
Just because today
some white coated doctor tells you
You're ill
Does that really make things change?

My friend
How can something ‘the size of a tangerine'
Sit behind your beloved sweet face?

You taught me how to nurse
To Mother (but then what was the difference?)
To be the best a friend can be
You tell me of your life
Cataloguing memories
Of your man and your boys,
your pride and joys

You enquire of my beliefs of an after life
What can I offer?
Feeble thoughts
At first
But then this growing certainty

Energy cannot be extinguished,
It merely changes form
And, for all who follow after,
recognition will draw them home.

Then you turn and wave
and give that glorious grin
'If we never see each other again you'll know
how much I meant to you
and how much you meant to me'

And your love still shines out
Like a beacon