Feeling Squeezed at the Grocery Store I Conclude that the Propensity to Ignore Pain is Not Necessarily Virtuous, but Continue Shopping and Gather the Ingredients for Ham Fried Rice because That’s What I Cook When My Wife is Out-of-Town and I’m Not in the Mood for Italian, and Dammit I’m Not Ill, Merely a Little Inconvenienced, and Hey, in the 70’s I Played Football in Texas, and When the Going Gets Tough…
I answer work email in the checkout line. Drive home, take two aspirin.
Place perishables in refrigerator. Consider collapsing in bed. Call wife.
Let in dog. Drive to ER, park. Provide phone numbers. Inhale. Exhale.
Repeat. Accept fate and morphine. Ask for lights and sirens, imagine the
seas parting. On the table, consider fissures and cold air, windows and
hagfish. Calculate arm-length, distance and time. Expect one insertion,
receive another. Dissonance in perception, in reality. Turn head when
asked. Try reciting Kinnell’s “The Bear.” Try again, silently this time.
Give up. Attempt “Ozymandias.” Think of dark highways. Wonder about
the femoral, when and how they’ll remove my jeans. Shiver uncontrollably.
The events in this poem took place seven years ago. A lifetime ago.
this is an amazing read
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Thanks very much, Beth. It was an interesting experience, to say the least.
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Happy ❤️ Day! I couldn’t be more thrilled and blessed by, or grateful for, your getting going when the going gets tough… You amaze me!
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It’s a good day to celebrate! Much has happened in the last seven years…
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Would give anything to have a transcript of my son’s thoughts through his MN hospitalization encounters … he likely focused on what was about to become of his attire (and hair!)
Reading this is oddly comforting for me – glad you wrote it, glad you reposted during my “now”.
[Poetry like water, shape-changing based on surroundings.]
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The event changed my life for the better. I should not have been able to remember anything about the procedure, as one of the iv drugs was an amnesiac, but for some reason or another, it didn’t affect me that way. But the mind does wander!
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This reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s line about the prospect of hanging concentrating the mind wonderfully. Your mind certainly remained engaged during those moments!
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Ha! It was a strange, almost surrealistic setting, at least to my addled mind. But I remained awake through it all.
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Honestly, RO, knowing where you are now, this message in a bottle is going to get me through the whole week. These days, a week is something like an epoch.
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It offered me an opportunity to see my life through a different lens. Changes had to be made. And now they have! And yes, some of these weeks!
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