Aging is interesting. Like a first pregnancy, it takes us into unfamiliar terrain, prompts new perspectives and is tinged with both excitement and fear. Last week I had a cardiac calcium scan, where they look for calcium buildup to gauge the heart risk of high cholesterol. I got a score of 200. Yikes! One website said I have the heart of a 78-year-old. (I’m 74.). Another site said a score of 200 indicated that, without some change, I would have a stroke or heart attack within the next three to five years. My doctor just said he wanted to start me on statins. Interesting… Several years back a brain scan indicated that my brain was shrinking and had white matter. Both scans put me deeply in touch with my mortality. The idea that my brain is shrinking was particularly disturbing. I’ve passed whatever apex I’ve aspired to and it’s all downhill from here! No one who knows me will be surprised. I find the heart business comforting. My family has two natural paths out of this life – heart attack and cancer. At age eighty-two, my paternal grandfather had a heart attack while driving in Wilmington and came to a stop against a telephone pole. No one else was injured. My father was eighty-five when he got up one morning, poured orange juice for himself and mom, sat down in his chair and died. If the statins keep me around for ten more years, a heart attack sounds just fine. Of course, none of this is known. At each doctor’s appointment, we work to continue in good health knowing that one day the other shoe will drop. It is not given to us to know the how or when. Scans only supply intimations. When I shared the cardiac scan info with my son, he said, “Mom, you have the heart of a lion.” How could I not adore this man!
Tag: death
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INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY
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MATTER
Matter persists they say – not just the stain on your favorite sweater or the mole on your arm. Molecules themselves have endless lives in a material soap opera. This week one’s Christ, then Mozart then Charles Manson. That’s what they say. Descartes believed he thought hence he existed – something his laundress and wife doubted not his dirty socks evidence enough. Who would use his atoms next be thoughtful or obtuse a tree, a bird, a slug? I die therefore I live. We’re each on loan from earth’s library one size fits all pretty or dull, fast or slow joyful or sad. Cinderellas headed to the ball when the clock strikes twelve, we become someone else. Relentlessly frugal earth wastes nothing in its global recycling. So too must the light which animates us continue its journey becoming the sparkle in other eyes or the ache in another's heart.
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THE TALL STRANGER
When the tall stranger steps into my kitchen in his tux asks for coffee and brioche, I’ll slip up to my room don my gown, plait my hair curl with a favorite book in my reading chair. With wind brushing my skin soft music in the air, I won’t invite him in. But when his face appears, I’ll smile and say “Darling, I’ve been waiting here.”
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VIGIL
She is sixteen when leukemia claims her a girl of nut-brown hair and letter sweaters the brightest star in the local firmament. She outshines her brother even in death. The church overflows onto Route 12 the April afternoon of her funeral. She leaves behind a mother, a brother, a father. Each evening the family sits at her graveside as if awaiting benediction. That summer her friends bring picnics to her grave. The red votive lamp on her headstone is always lit. It shines in easy view of the family’s kitchen window and glows warmly through blizzard, rain and star shine. Deer walk daily through the churchyard years sift down like snow. The son graduates, moves to Bradford. The father works and works and works. The mother sits by the glowing lamp. Deposit Photos Image 124351762_xl_2015.jpg
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PERSISTANCE
Why so many rules, Shepherd? Have you no faith your flock will return Wiser and grateful for your fences Glad of food and shelter? Our boundaries are our own Close or far, sharp or smooth Set by instinct, fear or faith Curiosity or passion. Not all live long Some return their bodies early For soil to recycle but Matter abides - ours and theirs. And what of spirit? If the world wastes nothing Do not spirits too persist Awaiting their next vessel?
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PROMISE
Please no box, no steel
to seal me from the earth.
Return me when it is my time
to all I was and wish to be again.
Release me to be born anew,
green and wonderful each Spring –
shoots sprouting from my heart
each part of me blooming.
Promise me. -
FLYING FREE
To go in a puff of feathers, a glory of days,
Soft as clouds of air
Gone – gone – gone.
There are worse things,
Lying there
Suffering in white sheets – tethered to machines’
Endless beeping – intake and outtake monitors -
The blue of fluorescent lights pulsing about you.
A constant parade of people checking, checking, checking,
Reluctant to let you go in case they might save you.
‘For what?’ is the unasked question.
‘For what – please?’
It’s late in the day for golf.
Americans fear death like quiet.
Both are becoming hard to find.
Shop Rite makes me bless my deafness.
Feathers and glory
It isn’t all bad to explode out of life
Black feathers against a blood moon.
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FOXCROSS FARM
When I think of the farm,
it’s the stone bridge and country
road curving by the low barn.
It’s Tony’s tomatoes, white peacocks.When I think of the farm, I see pine
trees, green pastures, the
bramble roses by the creek
sheep standing in the field.When I think of the farm,
I watch women spinning wool
the whir of wheels descant to
soft voices and gentle laughter.When I think of the farm, I see
Airedales, Romney sheep,
a rabbit and Rhode Island Reds,
a well-fed Peaceable Kingdom.I do not think of the ground
we walked last night when
one of their flock went missing
fearing death had stalked a lamb.When I think of the farm,
I don’t see Anthony striding the fields
Julie peering into corner and cranny
in tense, sweaty anxiety.Death’s but a hair’s breadth
away each day. It makes
sweet our brief walk through time
I don’t think of that. -
SMALL ABANDONMENTS AND LEAVE TAKINGS
I thought elephants danced in the car
as my aunt clasped me, age two with pneumonia
and mom drove to hospital – I screamed when they
left so the doctors forbade future visits.
I was alone with nurses and needles
for two long white weeks.Pat left me tied, age five, to a phone pole.
She didn’t do it. Gerard and his buddies did
but my sister, my protector, walked away
left me bound ‘til dinnertime alone
next to the street, a kindergartener
in suspenders and red Keds.In 9th grade, Sandi broke up with Tom.
He asked me out – the blond boy of my dreams!
Sandi coached me for a week on
dancing, clothes and French kissing.
Then, outside Grunnings, his friends laughed,
teased me – the date was a joke. Didn’t I get it?Jamie had a sister – institutionalized.
I had no brother. We were siblings for each other.
I felt safer with him than anyplace I know.
He married young, grandson by 52. A mole grew.
Jamie, who could corral whole rooms with laughter,
called one afternoon to say he did not feel
like he was dying. But he did.Glenn “with two n’s, like Glenn Miller”
had wave blue eyes I swam in.
Knew me better than I knew myself.
Is married now to someone else.
He called to make amends –
apologize for choices he knew better than.
Said he loves me still – he always will.I saw the color fall from mom’s face.
“She’s going!” I said.
Pat and I grasped her hands.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy name.”
This is it. So gentle.
Then gone. Her final gift to us.
Death, fearless, light as air. -
PASSAGES
Midnight wings unfurl
into updrafts of spirit.Does seed fear the ground?
Waves the sea?A dog barks in a mountain village
as color falls from treasured face.What’s the weight of a breath?
The heft of a sigh?A husk drops to the ground to
rattle and roll down the hedgerow.In their earthen den, two cubs root
for a nipple as the sow awaits spring.
A WELL TRAVELED HEART 