Thoughts at a Funeral Mass

Death can come as a whisper
a welcome breeze that
ends the oppressive heat
of August in a Southern clime.
Or it crashes in
stealing away the vibrant, the healthy
and leaving in its wake
an emptiness,
a small hole
that slowly fills
with passing time.

Did she live her life?
I think not.
Rather life took her
through a maze of days
that soon became
one like another
in housework
and children,
and pleasing
a man she thought she loved
because to think otherwise
would have been
more than she could bear.