I wrote this poem many years ago when my mother and my second mother, my mother-in-law, were both dying of cancer.  They died a week apart.  It was helpful to me then and is helpful to me now.  I hope it can be helpful for some of you.

Children of the Light

We are children of the light,

Burning crystals,

Each fracturing the light

Into his own incandescent dance of joy.

Blinded by our senses

We do not see the light that binds us.

Flames in the wind

We flicker to forces we do not know or comprehend.

Fragile as alpine flowers,

Ephemeral as moonbeams,

We glide like quicksilver

Across the face of reality.

Our kinship not with wood or stone or cloth,k

But with fire bright and starlight,

Sunsets and rainbows,

And each other.

Like sunflowers following a sun

They have no eyes to see,

We yearn for the light--

Exiles in an alien land.

Deluded by the veil of reality,

We mourn our evanescence,

Oblivious to the steady vigil light

Of our existence.

Weep not for the dead.

They have shed their shadowy cocoons

And dance in the light -

Brilliant, burning gems of joy.

Weep rather for we who are left behind

In our blindness and our pain.

We are children of the light -

Let us be kind to one another.

That's what we are here for, in this community, to be kind to one another for we are all bruised and hurting.