Loss

The prompt for this week's 100-word challenge at Julia's Place is Parting is such sweet sorrow. Yesterday we heard that my mother-in-law had suffered a brain haemorrhage. She is in a coma and will not live. 
Parting is such sweet sorrow. So they say. But where, I wonder, is the sweetness? Where, in the body on the bed, is the person that once vitalised it? Where is the lifetime of memories? What happens to the  hopes and the hates and the secrets when a mind closes down? Back at home on his piano, the Vicar is painstakingly mastering the tune that evokes a boyhood outing with his mother and, as the chords float upstairs, I realize that there is indeed a bitter sweetness to parting, for loss, with painful potency, defines the forgotten power of love.