That Friday morning when Alice woke up
and the woman came to help her with her pills,
something was not all right.
The woman left and came back with a nurse
who found Alice in her bedroom on the floor.
There Alice was when the phone call came in to Mark,
and we all went to her apartment
and said goodbye to her body.
The staff had wrapped her neatly in a blanket, like a gift.
We sat quietly. Mark washed her hands, feet and face.
Alice would have approved, I thought.
Though she would have asked for one more art course,
one more poetry class,
one more visit with her children and her grandchildren.
Receiving an answer in the negative, responding,
“That’s okay, I had a very good life.”
In my painting class that Monday
her bedroom took shape on my canvas.
Colorful fabrics, artwork on the walls, sculpture on the floor,
cat under the bed.
The picture window looks out onto the snow-covered woods,
but the sky has painted itself a moonlit night.
It tells its own version of when it was Alice’s time.
In the middle of the night, she wakes up out of sorts.
She gets out of bed, grabs a blanket from the closet,
and settles down on the floor.
Decades ago, she and Bert slept there when backs were cranky.
Now, as she drifts off, she thinks,
whatever will happen, will happen,
it will be another adventure.