Part One- Feeling The Shadow
In The Final Analysis
In the final analysis
I am living my dying
Aching step by aching step
Tremble by tremble of my hand
Pill by pill (when I can afford them)
And hand by helping hand.
I carry my body now – it scarcely carries me
And the ‘I’ has to fortify itself to keep it moving.
In the final analysis, tomorrow I will be gone.
Losing Control
“I look around, and ask myself, when did I lose control of my life?”
Andaiye, telephone conversation, 2012. Cancer survivor of
over 20 years, indomitable organiser and advocate for justice
and rights, she had slipped into that zone where continuing to
live and keeping her ill father alive meant depending on others
for care, where sitting quietly in your space, knowing where
your things are, spending your time as you wish, moving
where you want, when you want, how you want, were the
indicators that defined her loss.
Dear Mama
Dear Mama,
There will be no-one to lovingly wet my parched lips with ice,
as I did for you. No-one to sit by my bed just for company,
as I did for you. No-one to doze nearby in the night, waiting
for my calls, as I did for you. No-one to take my head in her
hands and lower it, as I did for you, while you took your last
breath.
There will be no Ruby-Doo to serve me soup and sit
unhurriedly while I sip right to the end, put the dish in the
sink and return to me, as she did for you, leaving the dish to
wait.
No-One Wants To Speak Of Death
No-one wants to speak of death
And yet
Songs and prayers of eternal life
Will not make it forget
To come to you
Will not shift the moment
Into transcendental otherness.
My bones are dying
And my muscles are giving way
Gymnastics notwithstanding.
Part Two- Fighting The Shadow
Coffee In Bed
The 1st. of July. They take the cast off tomorrow. Time for a
new start: a new day is coming, a new phase. Time to prepare.
Today I am going to try something I have not tried for almost
6 weeks. I am going to bring my coffee to my bedside table and
sit and read the Sunday papers that have been sitting on my
bed since yesterday. A first step towards the past and into the
future that I want to have again.
I raise the leg, set it down gingerly with the other, lean over
and reach the crutches, mount myself, stick-walk to the
bathroom, pee, wash my hands, and decide “no wheelchair
today”.
A Feminist Bends To Time
My brother is 66 years of age and he is living the process
of his dying. So am I. I am 68 this year. Those looking on
assume he will die before I do: my dying does not enter their
thoughts. I am not so sure … (Journal entry May 12, 2013)
I prepare to visit my brother in an upbeat, joyous mood,
having crossed the threshold from agony to acceptance of the
role that conscience and connection have propelled me to
play in his life.
It is a weekend, Sunday in fact, and his partner is off to look
after her mother, who can no longer walk. I sense that this
is a welcome escape from the burden and misery of living
with my brother, who can still walk, insist on driving his old
jeep, sometimes into trees on the sidewalk, and pursue the
tinkering with car parts and construction rescue missions for
relatives and friends that has filled the bedroom with tools
and car parts that keep him connected to life, and gives it
meaning.
My Brother Is Travelling
My brother is travelling, slowly but surely, fighting valiantly
more than I have ever seen anyone fight a shadow that is
part of himself. He is fighting the intuition of the inevitable
reality, its imminence, the sinking into nothingness away
from the light and beauty and busy-ness of this world.
Today I felt that moving away, that imminence, that
inevitability, more emotionally than I have up to now, more
deeply. I feel with shock and a new consciousness that the
meaning of time must change, has changed.
Blame and hurt and logical analysis mean
nothing now. All of that has been washed away by the flood
of absolute empathy, not only for his physical pain, but for
the complex emotional, mental and spiritual jungle through
which he is journeying. And there I may go too one day …
but that’s another story.
Body Talk
What yu mean yu not feelin good,
Yu feelin droopy-droopy,
Yu have pain all ova
An di foot-dem nah move as dem should?
Look ere, yu betta get up an get movin
Because di “I” inna yu an me caan go nowhere
If yu no move.
Yu hear?
Me a go gi yu a Panadol
Fram di bedside table
Since yu decide fi move di han
But yu betta git up afta dat
Because me nah
Tan right ya so.
“I” an “I” inside a yu,
An if yu nuh move
Mi caan run!
Me have tings fi do
An me caan do dem widout yu;
Part Three- The Shadow Is
What You Meant To Me
(For Sonja Harris)
Style: Rasta feminist 70s hippie mix At once rebellious and sedate.
Seated, you rapped
About the strapped Black women, Red women
White women dynamics
And through it all
Knew your friends
Stretched to meet their seeking arms
Wrapping them in the vibrant
African roots colours
Of your inner sanctuary
Then danced with them
Through your smiling eyes and face
Stepping out of the inner you
Into the shared light.
For Nancy
(Adapted from “Words for Alice after her Death” by Angela
Peckenpaugh)
We have made room in our busy lives
To deal with your loss
As we had your illness.
You asked so little.
I am stumped with your elegy.
I’d rather rub your back
At your request
Or get your glass of rum and coke
With lots of ice
Or run to the pharmacy or the shop
for something you needed.
This Poem Is For You
(For Sonia Rochester, fighting for life)
This poem is for you
Because I know
The dark, hovering shadow of death
That no-one names but you,
And only in your mind.
This poem is for you because
I know we have been blessed
With test-runs when we sank
Into the depths, and faced the end
And summoned God
To pull us back to life.
Last Words
(For Minnie Phillips, after the Hope Garden Remembrance,
October 2018)
You are remembered now
For what you did and who you were
The panegyrics and the tributes abound
Not one word about those last years
Of pain
Of caregivers grudgingly acceding
To your needs and desires
No empathy to soothe your rebelling mind.