When I was a child

Through raging fevers

Chickenpox

Measles

Coughs and colds

Tonsillectomy

You were always there

Gentle and kind

Comforting

Decades later

The ache from your absence

Remains

Yet in any illness

Thinking of you

Brings comfort

As on that miserable flight

24 hours to the USA

After the worst food poisoning

In my life.

Weak and a little afraid

I had sent out fervent messages

into the ether

To anyone who might be listening

to help me through the flight

I dozed in and out

Of consciousness

My family next to me

In the row behind us a man and a woman

With an empty seat between them

Then there was a shadowy figure

In that seat

Silent, leaning forward vigilantly

Somehow there for me

It was you

Dropping in from the ether

To watch over me

And to see me safely through.

I made it.

As always, because of you.