Oh Angel of mercy and Angel of pain.
Mercy for the dead
Pain for the living
You are with us now are you not?
Do you stand at the foot of his bed?
or do you float over it’s head?
His hand reaches out,
is it for you?
His lips speak jumbled words
Are they only for you to hear?
He speaks to loved ones long gone.
Have you brought them with you for his journey home?
Oh angel you are here
Then I pray that you release his suffering
Cut our family with the double edged sword
Give us the temporary pain
So that one of us may have an everlasting mercy

This was a depiction of an actual scene in the hospital during the last month of my father’s life.  He had gone in for a procedure that was to assist in with the fluid that was filling his lungs and to quote my father he said that he was tired of being a pin cushion as they would have to drain this fluid ever so often to keep him from drowning.  At any rate, my first wife was sleeping in the chair and I was sleeping in the floor at the foot of his bed when I was awoken by him talking.  His arm that was paralyzed was stretched out and he was talking.  Every now and then I’d catch a name I recognized.  It was at that point I knew my father would not be coming home from the hospital.  It wasn’t the scene alone, but the feeling in the room, the air had changed, it was just noticeably different.  About a month and a half later he was gone.