I have just re-discovered this piece I wrote for my wife, Sue, when her beloved younger brother was facing his final days with us.

Remember not

his lostness in space,

his days, numbered and unnumbered, annihilated through ingestion,

his false stairways climbed in hope of heaven

his roads travelled to others’ horizons;

he knew the sun would always rise.

Remember

his dreams, real or otherwise,

his boyness, in beard-wreathed disguise,

his soul, forever in for repair,

his joke of a world, now slapstick and now ironic;

all is there for you as long as you draw breath

and you remember.