| |
Five Poems
The impact of Mom’s pain on my stomach while I alternately held my head and harassed the emergency room doctor distracted me from telecast against the waiting room walls. Pain deep as bunker-buster bombs. Severe lying still and worse when touched. She clutched the gurney rails and waited while I prayed for a decent bed for her, for me. At dawn, the wars were going poorly. The docs didn’t know why Mom was bleeding. Smoke clogged the air round but the Marines didn’t care. They sped along the highway towards it, regardless as morphine’s devil-may-care-attitude. Part of life to lose it. Ask the mothers of the dead Marines struck when they met missiles on the skyline instead of goats and camels. Shall I give in, let my mother go? Sign a petition to impeach the president? Write a letter of protest? I could write her how I love her but we’re not like that. I can hold her hand. Not let go. Other than that, I don’t know what to do And I’m not even the one under fire. I’ll be a faithful soldier, marching wherever I must go standing up to doctors and the system fighting for what’s right for my mother to die in dignity. To die easily. To finally have something go her way after a lifetime of letting it, giving it, making sure it went someone else’s.
Monday Mom and her broken back checked into the nursing home. Tuesday she fell and broke her hip. Wednesday they got around to operating in between other people’s knees and hips. Thursday, I spent the day begging social workers to extend her stay at least until she woke up. Friday they sent her back to the home in a medicine fog that makes wars’ look like a clear day. Mom said, “The floor is my nemesis.” There was anguish and pain. Hers and mine.
Eavesdropping on the war on I feel complicit, sick, thrilled. Let’s check in, live, with our man in Dan, how’s it going there? The pilots are delivering packages, the Defense Department’s euphemism for the job of shock and awe. Their euphemism for the job of blowing up a country. Dan, from the midst of the war zone, reports urgently, “I can’t see anything from where I’m standing.” Thank you Dan. Now ladies and gentlemen, we take you back to the basketball game.
Mom is limp as paper today. Pneumonia is putting pressure on her heart. I’m waiting. Urging God to take her. We’ve done all we can here. She’s done more than a woman should have to. Simultaneously in Children. Mothers. Men. Vehicles. Walls. In In the peacekeepers, the ones most apt to help. Scattered their body parts. There is no peace anywhere. I told Mom heaven is lined with streets of gold and Jesus lives there. He knows our names. We will be with people we know. God will wipe every tear from our eyes. I know she agreed. She squeezed my hand. EVENING So this is it? Pretty much. There’s no way out? Is there a lot of crying now? Some. And some laughing. We do a lot of laughing. Yes. What’s the funniest thing you know? Bonnie flying on her sled Into the lady’s cellar hole! Stay with me. I will. So is this the end. Just about. It’s up to you. Can I go home with you? Maybe when you’re feeling better. Home. She’s never asked as much of me. Books, music. The gardens. Safety in the dark, family in the morning. Mom, come back and teach me all the things I wouldn’t listen to when I was arrogant.
|