Ain’t that a kick in the head, you remarked to those assembled
as the doctor explained the x-ray to you.
….and you see this right here, this big.....well, big dark spot
The options he presented,
and you frowned them away
as the immensity, the ultimate outcome,
settled in like ashfall upon the hushed room.
No, I don’t think I’ll do any of that.
I think we need to go take a trip, huh?
Yeah....that’ll be swell.
Your youngest daughter slips out to the hallway
to sob next to the cafeteria cart
and its plastic maroon lunch trays
heavy with roasted chicken, runny mashed potatoes (no salt),
pale green peas with a smattering of carrots diced into little faded orange cubes,
and teetering blocks of bright red jello, stacked as if for a child.
Oh, you were never one much for doctors or hospitals --
despite the open heart thing
and the abdominal aorta aneurysm thing
and the second open heart thing --
what with all their poking and prodding and temperature taking
when you were just falling to sleep.
Just leavemethehellalone, will ya?!?
as the doctor explained the x-ray to you.
….and you see this right here, this big.....well, big dark spot
there on your pancreas.....
The options he presented,
and you frowned them away
as the immensity, the ultimate outcome,
settled in like ashfall upon the hushed room.
No, I don’t think I’ll do any of that.
I think we need to go take a trip, huh?
Yeah....that’ll be swell.
Your youngest daughter slips out to the hallway
to sob next to the cafeteria cart
and its plastic maroon lunch trays
heavy with roasted chicken, runny mashed potatoes (no salt),
pale green peas with a smattering of carrots diced into little faded orange cubes,
and teetering blocks of bright red jello, stacked as if for a child.
Oh, you were never one much for doctors or hospitals --
despite the open heart thing
and the abdominal aorta aneurysm thing
and the second open heart thing --
what with all their poking and prodding and temperature taking
when you were just falling to sleep.
Just leavemethehellalone, will ya?!?
And now this...
So we took you home.
And for weeks you were fine, as if nothing amiss.
You tended even to some backyard tomato plants --
I’m going to grow something.....just like George Bowen across the street --
and thus you held up the shiny red produce of your labors for all to see.
But mostly you sat in your recliner and tapped on the armrest,
worrying it for some solution to the unspoken dilemma.
Eventually, you took to the bed and never left it --
reliant upon you daughters to change you
and put you in fresh pajamas, grimacing all the while --
Just leavemethehellalone, will ya?!?
Like that time in the hospital when I had to point you to the toilet
but we missed and you hit the suture where they’d
removed your saphenous vein for the bypass.
-- Goddammit, Michael!!!
Your room, your house,
but in a cold metallic hospital bed you lay,
eyes straight at the ceiling
staring at God only knows what -- some dot, a speck of dust, a memory.
A withering gaze.
The hospice lady is kind and gentle.
She explains the “comfort box” with the morphine
and the schedule 2 drugs….because he’s really
in a very lot of pain right now,
but he can’t really let you know,
so you can’t really give him too much....
It’s about making him comfortable.
Occasionally you would rally --
pissed, usually...
angry that someone was trying to roll you,
to change you, to clean you,
and we could see some life flash back in your eyes --
or when I held the phone up to your ear
and you struggled to make a sound, any sound,
for your youngest granddaughter on the other end.
….Hey, big girl.....but your eyes said it all.
Eventually, though,
the breaths became too labored for even that --
heaving swoops of air, then a pause,
then a gurgling exhale.
Congestive something or other, the nice hospice lady explained
.....fluid builds....lungs fill up.....slowly drowns.....
(Mother bites her knuckle and turns away --
back to the kitchen to fiddle with the spoons
and the papers....the arrangements.)
That awful gurgling sound --
like the last bit of water
struggling to drain
from the faraway end of a hose pipe.
So we took you home.
And for weeks you were fine, as if nothing amiss.
You tended even to some backyard tomato plants --
I’m going to grow something.....just like George Bowen across the street --
and thus you held up the shiny red produce of your labors for all to see.
But mostly you sat in your recliner and tapped on the armrest,
worrying it for some solution to the unspoken dilemma.
Eventually, you took to the bed and never left it --
reliant upon you daughters to change you
and put you in fresh pajamas, grimacing all the while --
Just leavemethehellalone, will ya?!?
Like that time in the hospital when I had to point you to the toilet
but we missed and you hit the suture where they’d
removed your saphenous vein for the bypass.
-- Goddammit, Michael!!!
Your room, your house,
but in a cold metallic hospital bed you lay,
eyes straight at the ceiling
staring at God only knows what -- some dot, a speck of dust, a memory.
A withering gaze.
The hospice lady is kind and gentle.
She explains the “comfort box” with the morphine
and the schedule 2 drugs….because he’s really
in a very lot of pain right now,
but he can’t really let you know,
so you can’t really give him too much....
It’s about making him comfortable.
Occasionally you would rally --
pissed, usually...
angry that someone was trying to roll you,
to change you, to clean you,
and we could see some life flash back in your eyes --
or when I held the phone up to your ear
and you struggled to make a sound, any sound,
for your youngest granddaughter on the other end.
….Hey, big girl.....but your eyes said it all.
Eventually, though,
the breaths became too labored for even that --
heaving swoops of air, then a pause,
then a gurgling exhale.
Congestive something or other, the nice hospice lady explained
.....fluid builds....lungs fill up.....slowly drowns.....
(Mother bites her knuckle and turns away --
back to the kitchen to fiddle with the spoons
and the papers....the arrangements.)
That awful gurgling sound --
like the last bit of water
struggling to drain
from the faraway end of a hose pipe.
It is a regular, constant rattle
as your daughters fuss around you
in their vigil --
smoothing the bedsheets
and holding your hand
and telling you that you don’t
need to keep fighting.
That awful gurgling sound,
gnawing at everyone in the room.
We come in with a rattle,
and so we leave with a rattle.
And then,
as your daughters fuss around you
in their vigil --
smoothing the bedsheets
and holding your hand
and telling you that you don’t
need to keep fighting.
That awful gurgling sound,
gnawing at everyone in the room.
We come in with a rattle,
and so we leave with a rattle.
And then,
in the middle of the night
the rattle stopped,
--total silence--
and everyone wept.
--Michael McIntyre
Dacula, 2011
