This time last year, I found myself
caring for two aging females
both literally on their last legs,
one with four furry ones,
the other a two-legged one
who hadn’t had to shave
her smooth legs for years.

This year as the sun sets earlier and
earlier, inching toward the shortest day,
I think back a dozen months ago,
when the two-legged one drifted
into mystery in the house
where she raised us.

I recall the many dusky drives
on my way to sit the overnight shift.
Other nights my sister was on duty
as I stayed home with the skinny kitty
who, as it turned out, outlived
our mother by a few months.

And I learned again the lessons that
only the dying can teach about patience
and fortitude with one who was never
easy, about sitting a vigil, ready to do
the smallest of things for beloveds
nearing the ends of long lifetimes.

Almost a year later I drive the same
route on a cold December night for
a happier reason—a holiday concert—
and gratitude infuses me like swelling
chords, a perennial hallelujah.

Dying, it turns out, is some of the hardest
work we ever do, and those who choose
to make the journey with ones on their way
undertake some of their most challenging
soul work, too.

Sometimes it feels like not enough,
that we can do so little, so imperfectly,
but it turns out to be everything that
was needed at the time,

just as those two- and four-footed
loved ones did for us
for years and years and years.

•••

(In memory of Poki cat and my mother, Darlene Haag)