XXX. If I Were to Prophesy
Mother has her daily bouts with death, only to recover
when she remembers that no one would be able to come to her funeral,
and that all her planning would have been for naught.
I remind her of this gently when her mood darkens,
and she relents, and tries to help me in the kitchen,
where we talk about her worries and the state of the world,
just to clear the air.
She's still mourning Uncle Ed, and the card that I bought
for her to send still lies by her bedside,
waiting for her to compose the right words.
We could not attend his funeral, as we had for his wife the year before,
and Mom is torn by guilt.
But she is still living.
There is a tear in the skin around her stoma that has not healed in a week.
Ointments and bandages have not worked to speed the healing.
There’s a fire beneath her skin, but there’s nothing more to do,
than to deal with the daily blow ups, to calm her clouded mind,
to change her soiled clothes again, to cleanse and redress the wound,
to launder her house dresses and her bedding, and to wait
for the ultimate redress of grievances that never comes.
She must go on.
What she waits for is ultimate peace, to address God before His throne,
with Jesus at the Father’s right hand to lift her from her mortal bed
and fly her to the Heavens on the whirlwind of Elijah and his chariot of fire.
There He will assign to her a place in the company of Mary,
her mother, who left this world 25 years ago.
You cannot fight the wind.
There are many sorrows in the world,
and many hopes, of heroes and fools alike.
A doctor committed suicide in New York City.
She had treated many patients, a masked hero in the ICU,
and she had fought and beat COVID herself,
but her voice is silent now.
Four Amish children died in Kentucky,
thrown from a buggy into the river,
and another is missing, presumed lost—
the words of all swallowed by the water.
Vice President Pence did not wear a mask
when visiting the Mayo Clinic.
If he’d tried that shit here, at Mom’s house,
I’d have turned him out without so much as a “by your leave!”
Some promising drug and vaccine candidates have surfaced
in recent days, but it still may be months or years
before they are available for widespread use.
I do not need to tell you this, if you have read the news.
I did not dream last night. Or rather, I dreamed
but the dream died, vanishing before I woke.
Only whispers remained. I thought I heard Mom
call me from her bedroom, as if I were the young boy
in the first book of Samuel, chapter 3:
“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
I listen, and I hear, and I speak of what I know,
but there are many stories that I cannot tell.
I tell you only what I know, but I am not a prophet
like Samuel or Elijah in the stories from the scripture.
If I were to prophesy what the future might hold,
I can only tell you that Mom will need dinner tonight,
and breakfast in the morning, that she must be patient
and wait for her wounds to heal, that she must live long enough
to outlast this virus, if she wants her funeral plans to be followed.
Would that it were so.
I’ll be here beside her, wearing a mask, as needed,
and I will make her laugh by asking her to dance,
and she will tell me again that Dad could not dance,
but when she was a girl of nineteen, she would go to the hop.
But nineteen was almost seventy long years ago, and she is tired,
and very much out of practice—maybe next time.
You know the drill.
---
BrianIs 
AtYou
Reply With Quote
