Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears

I have lived with companion animals for my entire life. Cats, dogs, a variety of bird species ranging from finches to chickens, parrots and lories, tropical fish, goldfish and koi, hermit crabs, ants, stick insects, golden hamsters, dwarf hamsters, mice, rats, guinea pigs, bunnies .. and that's just the short list of animals who lived in my bedroom with me! So you would think that I am an expert at dealing with the death of a companion animal, but honestly, nothing could be farther from reality. I still have not gotten over the deaths of several of my pets (and cannot even say their names aloud), years and years later. So I empathize strongly with my friend and colleague, Orac, a surgical oncologist, who is facing an impending loss of a family member -- to cancer. Please go there and provide him a little comfort.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~ Dylan Thomas, The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD] (New Directions Publishing Corporation; 2003)