The Strangest Hour

This past night a mother died.
She never saw her baby. Never held her, outside her womb.

I knew her in the way you know the close friend of a close friend. You see them from time to time as time goes by, and time goes by so quickly.

And then comes the day.
And the hour.
The strangest hour.
When you lay in your bed sleeping. Your baby waving his little fists in the middle of a dream. All is calm. Peaceful. And in some other part of the City, in a hospital room; a last exhale.
A heart stops.
Leaves behind a man.
A baby.
And a thousand tears.

And you can not understand.
Because she was here.
And now she is not.
She was alive.
And now she is not.

It is so incomprehensible the words go dry. All that remain is sadness.