And we instead
Shall all grow old and die of so much lesser things,
Wrinkled and tired and feigning to relive
The battles that were never big enough to measure us anyway.
We will go quietly, quieter than we had hoped,
Ignoring the ignoble things, the obvious and the boots
That we never lived enough to die in anyway.
We will surely leave here a little too late,
A little too slowly, dropping the broken things
And the pretense
That we could ever be done with this life anyway.
And those few we must leave behind,
Those few whom we should have died for
Not in front of,
Those few will surely gather to shovel the dirt and casserole
And to comfort the living in small voices about this “blessing”
That was our passing
That was us losing the right of the dying to die fighting
So the living might live through the losing of someone worth knowing
And our passing too
Would really be no blessing at all.
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July 2016
Lilly Was 32
Burke T. Bradley, M.D.
Burke T. Bradley, M.D.
From the U.S. Anesthesia Partners, Houston Methodist Hospital System, Houston, Texas. burketbrad@yahoo.com
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Accepted for publication February 10, 2016.
Anesthesiology July 2016, Vol. 125, 250.
Citation
Burke T. Bradley; Lilly Was 32. Anesthesiology 2016; 125:250 doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0000000000001079
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