Medicine Music

I was around twenty when I first touched a dead body. My aunt was pretty young when she died of cancer. I was at the hospital the evening they gave up hope and stopped doing anything for her. I was standing near the doorway when I saw her take her last breath. I remember hearing her struggling so much to breathe. Every sound that escaped from her mouth sounded painful to my ears. I asked my mum to hound the nurses and tell them to check on her. They came around, took a look at her, gave a resigned shrug and told us they could do nothing.
A few minutes later, we heard the last long breath and I knew she was gone. I was afraid to touch her because I'd grown up with her, seen her laugh, eaten numerous lunches with her, seen her share tons of memories with my family and I couldn't quite believe that she was gone. With a lot of difficulty I went close to her body and touched her arm for only a second and then I walked away from her, out of the room, crying and ashamed and certain that I never wanted to touch a dead body of someone I had known and loved. I didn't want to accept the fact that life had just left her and all that was left was this body I knew but it couldn’t move, it couldn’t do anything that I had known her to do.

When I had returned home, I pulled out three songs that sorta helped me through this time.

Sarah Maclachlan- I Will Remember You

Garth Brooks- More Than a Memory

Kansas- Dust in the Wind

I listened to them and thought of people I had once known and cared about and how they were off on long journeys, how they left this place forever, who dreamt of having better things and living better lives and how they are in a place far better than they would’ve ever dreamt of.