Isabella

by Patricia Hawkes


Original Language English

Her body heaved,
she rattled the rails on her bed.
Nurses were in a meeting.
Death was near.

I sat down facing her
and started to sing the song
we had sung together so often:
“Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry.
Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air;
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,
Follow they will not dare.”

She sang along, lustily, pitch perfect.

Then I switched to a hymn:
“Blessed assurance .. “
She knew all the verses.
We sang it again, and again,
and again, and again,
each time as though the first.

Now she was calm.
“See that light over there?”
The shaded fluorescent bar
over another resident's bed.
“I'm going to go through it.”

This dignified Scot,
whose foremost memory
was of men coming
and her father leaving with them,
when she was six.

She, who had exhorted
her friend in the bed across
from her to resist death:
“Fight it! No one will remember
you when you're gone!”

Isabella, who loved to sing,
was finally crossing over,
riding the ferry of light
in faith, hope, and love.

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Isabella