A Notch on Your Life Belt
Just into June and already
you are counting days
whittling down the size
of your life
cinching it up like
you’d take in a notch on your belt
squeezing life down
from 75 or 74 or 73
to wondering if you’ll even make it
to 72, only a few weeks away.
I want to push you towards peace
since I do not pray.
I can help you wash up,
I can scrub the bedside toilet
fetch your clean clothes
and your toothbrush
but I cannot evoke any gods
I believe could save you.
That’s all on you, your head
clearing out enough to see the truth,
the cancer and a bad heart
brought together on one playing field
and nothing is in place yet
that can be relied on to save you.
Drugs and a Bedpan
What I am doing
while you are dying
looks a lot like scrambling
to cover the rough edges
jostling to make sure
it is all in place,
the comfort,
the meds,
urinals and bedpans.
Funny how these things
become the comfort,
things that let you
lie yourself down
without worry, let me
feel like I am doing something,
really, however stupid it feels
to think drugs and a bedpan
could ever make it right.
The Simple of Ordinary
I woke up this morning
without you to face,
without your illness to care for.
Now only the mundane
shapes my day. I can do dishes,
find a place to put the flowers
they sent in your name.
I can clean the toilet, put away
the sheets we used
on the hospital bed you died on.
I can do this simple of ordinary
for as long as it holds me
to this earth. Otherwise, I am
untethered, let go of
by the gravity that had held us
together for so long.
My husband received a cancer diagnosis of esophageal cancer in spring 2022, which was complicated by a long-term heart condition. Over a period of years, starting in 2001, he’d had three heart attacks, open heart surgery and an internal defibrillator, all of which complicated and modified some of the treatment he was receiving for his cancer.They had to cut his chemotherapy treatments short because it was just too hard on his heart. “A Notch on Your Life Belt” is a reflection of the conflicts we went through, balancing his cancer and its treatments, the drugs it took to keep him in remission, the constant need to tend to his heart and the medications it required. “Drugs and a Bedpan” tells the story of how I was learning to be his caretaker through this period of time and “The Simple of Ordinary written soon after my husband died, in July 2023. It is basically a reflection on how I would cope without him to take care of anymore.
This post was written and submitted by Mary Sexson. The article reflects the views of Sexson and not of CURE®. This is also not supposed to be intended as medical advice.
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