A Love That Spans A Lifetime - Poem

A Love That Spans a Lifetime

The paint is faded and the wallpaper is hanging off of the walls
The air is cold and the room smells of damp
A single bulb hanging from the ceiling with no shade lights an otherwise dark room
The windows are covered by a piece of worn black cloth
Cobwebs dangle from the corners
Dust thick enough to write your name in covers the sparse furniture
The smell of stale urine hangs in the atmosphere
Death is everywhere in this house
A bed old enough to be an antique is positioned in the centre of the dirty floor
An old mat full of holes covers bare floorboards, woodworm infested
A small wooden chair offers a place to sit and rest
A small electric heater heats the room as best it can
It is old and worn out like everything else in this house and is unable to do a very good job
A clock on the wall is frozen in time
The hands on this clock go round no more
It is probably years since anyone cleaned in this house
In the bed lies an old man
He is pale and weak
He has been in this bed for the best part of five years
Struck down by illness his bed has become his prison and his sanctuary
Home helps and nurses visit every day to offer their support
The doctors do all that they can but basically it is case of sit and wait
His wife sits by his bed and patiently waits for him to die
She is old now; caring for her husband has exhausted her energy
Before long they will both give up the fight for life and die together
Invisible chains tie her to his side
She refuses to leave her home or her husband
They could go into a home and receive proper care but they are both too stubborn to go
They have spent the best part of fifty years in the same house
The only way they will leave is in a wooden box
She tries to sing to her husband
Her voice crackles with old age
Her eyes are dark and her body is small and fragile
The old man in the bed coughs and tries to speak
A few grunts and groans escape from his dry mouth
His mind went years a go
He lives in a fantasy world now
It is hard to imagine how he used to be
He was a fine upstanding man with good looks
Today he is just a shell of his former self
The hum of traffic outside can be heard in the room
It reminds her that there is still a world outside
The only world she sees every day is the four walls of this dark, damp and depressing room
Every day she prays for her life sentence to be over
She hates to see her husband suffering so, all of his dignity gone
At least he doesn’t realise what is going on around him
His wife cries tears of sadness and pain
Once they were so in love now he can’t even remember her name
She finds it hard to breathe; the walls appear to be closing in
She feels like she is suffocating, drowning in despair
Night and day seem almost the same
Life is nothing more than a chore these days
She holds her husbands frail hand and watches him drift away from her
The waiting is finally over
At last he is at peace
She squeezes his hand and tells him she loves him and will see him in heaven soon
It is getting harder and harder for her to breathe
Her chest hurts, her heart is breaking
She tries to smile but she can’t make her lips move
She sinks down in her chair and falls onto the bed
Still holding her dead husbands hand she drifts peacefully away
When the home help arrives later that day she finds two dead bodies in the room
One died from an illness the other one from a broken heart
In heaven they are reunited
Once again they are happy and very much in love
The pain of the past five years has been finally taken away


This piece was based by a number of songs that mention long lasting love affairs and how people cope when faced with death.