Waking Up Around Midnight

Waking up around midnight from a sound sleep,        
I hear Dad shouting "No, no, no, I won't accept it,"        
Followed by sounds of him crying, sobbing, bawling.      
Then there is silence, but its only a pause.        
For  the whole-hearted weeping picks up again in a few minutes.        
   
My mother had been sick for a long time with liver cancer.        
Earlier that same night, when I kissed her good night,        
I was surprised at the corpse-like coldness of her forehead.        
I had never seen her like that before (comatose),          
I had not noticed just how yellow her skin had become.      
         
Then Dad would start in again.        
"You're not dead, Kathleen."        
Followed by another round of sobbing, heart-rending sobbing.        
"I refuse to give up, it's not true, it's unreal."          
(We were into Christian Science at the time,      
which teaches that disease and death are not real.)        
         
Without knowing it, my father was a Dylan Thomas figure.        
For he proved there really is such a thing as to,        
"Rage - rage  against the dying of the light !!"                
Yes, my mother was undoubtedly the love - the light - of his life.        
 
It was almost worth it for her to die an untimely death at 39 -        
For it led me to hear Dad's sobbing, his stubborn protestations.        
It enabled me to see just how much he really loved her.    
No music, no aria from an opera could ever seem as beautiful to me        
As the sounds of unbearable loss I heard the night my mother died.