Yesterday after my aunt’s memorial service I checked my cell phone messages. Before playing the new message, my phone plays any old messages that are about to be erased. I heard a message from a spiritual godmother of mine who had called the day my aunt entered hospice care. Her message radiated with love and care because that’s the kind of person she is, and I couldn’t bear to delete it that day. Yesterday the message was flagged to be deleted, which means that forty days had elapsed since I originally saved it.

Forty days.

Forty days from the beginning of hospice care
until she was put to rest.

Forty days in a wilderness, with minimal water,
and with bread that failed to nourish her,
bread that turned to stone in her mouth.
Forty days in the wilderness where the wild beasts were with her,
peering at her through dark, kind eyes,
tiptoeing silently through waking sleep, then scurrying, afraid
of death, which is wilder still than they.
Forty days where angels tended to her
with pills and liquids, then with
quilts, pillows and soft moistened cloths.

Forty days.

Forty days buffeted about on nauseous waves,
waves that pounded and pushed, day and night,
giving way to brief moments of tranquil floating
that were cruel in their own way—
giving a false sense of stability,
a hope that the waters of chaos were finally ready to subside.
Forty days locked into an ark
that seemed spacious enough in the beginning
but soon became airtight, claustrophobic, shrinking day by day:
A house that contracted with the passing of the time
and the rising of the water,
giving way to a room within that house,
to a bed within that room,
to a body within that bed,
to a mind within that body;
a mind secured by the flimsiest of moorings,
until finally, something gnawed them loose.

(Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away,
a man heard the word Cancer,
and entered his own unique wilderness,
boarded an ark bound for storm-tossed oceans.
“How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?
How long?”)

Days ago, I had a dream:
she was close to death.
We called for Life Flight.
I rode with her in the small cabin, and
it was just the right size.
I perched at her head,
while a quiet, faceless pilot glided us, unhurried, on gentle air
and she peered out a window on the landscape below.
And there was no flood,
no roiling waves,
no scorched wilderness,
no stones for bread,
no endless “how long?” cries:
just a glittering city,
new, clean, adorned.
Just home.
And she was happy at what she saw.
Silent, but happy.

Mark 1:9-13: 40 days in the wilderness
Genesis 6 and following: 40 days of flood
Psalm 40, and “40,” by U2
Rev. 21:1-4: The New Jerusalem