Telling My Mother's Heart To Stop Poem by Valerie Laws

I said to my mother's heart, stop
Please stop. I said it when my father left
The room, weeping. Cups of tea, Co-op
Sandwiches, the toilet, divided up our days,
While her heroic heart kept up its pointless beat,
Knocking against my ear from beneath the beams
Of her ribs, as her stubborn breathing rocked me,
Fuelling her tangled brain which could not answer.

But death is a process, not an event, and first,
There is somatic death, the body no longer
Able to reach out, or respond. Stop, please stop,
I told her heart when we were alone, no-one
Is coming to put things right, give in, spare
Yourself this unbearable, long labour,
Pushing drying blood round a dying body:
But it went on, and on. On the third day, parched,
Still punching sluggishly, it retreated to its core,
Purpling her bone-white limbs with silting blood.

For first there is somatic death, when heart and lungs
Stop, and so they did, slowing, resting between
Beats and breaths, longer and longer, until
There were no more. And then her cells began to die,
Few by few, like streetlights going out, for first
There is somatic death, and then there is cellular
Death, and death is a process, not an event.

(‘Death is a process, not an event, ' Simpson's Forensic Medicine)