During my long walks, whether commuting to and from work or strolling along Vancouver’s seawall, I often memorized poems and lengthy passages. In October 2024, I chose “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley to be the poem I’d memorize as we were entering into the winter phase. Little did I know it would be the last for awhile. On Christmas Eve, December 24th, 2024, I stood at the foot of my mother’s hospital bed at Montreal General Hospital and recited it. She lay unconscious, unrecognizable, numbed by medication against the pain, her face was heavily bruised by a brutal fall, unaware of my presence or the mechanical symphony around her: the rhythmic beeping of monitors, the steady pulse of machines breathing for her. The nurses and doctor watched with quiet sympathy, knowing I was the only daughter, the only child of the body lying there. I stood with my cousin, all of us understanding what we couldn’t speak aloud: there would be no recovery, only an inevitable end. Hope had already left the room.

I haven’t recited that poem since.

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley