“That looks like a joint,” I say. “Yup,” she says.
All tagged death
“That looks like a joint,” I say. “Yup,” she says.
I pulled it onto the dock and bent down to remove the hook, then I watched as it flipped around next to me, first briskly, then slowly, and then limply, something I had never seen before.
At first I thought it was a burlap bag left on the road by workers; summer is the only feasible time frame in Michigan for construction.
Not quietly at ninety, a few mourners, a cleric using dismal platitudes. But disastrously. Throngs crammed into pews.
“There’s nothing more that we can do here, ma’am,” one of the paramedics said.
I comb through her closet, a history of her body and life before dementia and heart failure.
Mom was in the ICU for three weeks. The doctor suggested moving her to hospice.
“I’ve brought you some red roses from my garden, Mum.” “I don’t want those. They symbolise death,” she retorted, grumpy as ever.
No blood, but no movement either. Ambulance has already arrived.
My patient's oxygen levels were stable, yet he hunched over the edge of the bed, laboring to breathe. His eyes searched mine for answers.
My sister lies dying. She cradles a rag doll. “It looks like you,” she says.
Guests whisper and I hear. “She’s in shock.” “Foreigners don’t cry.” “Immigrants lose their roots.”
When I pick up the phone, she’s sobbing. CW // suicidal ideation
Tears stream down the face of the woman behind us. She repeats softly, “I don’t know why I’m crying! I’m just crying because you’re crying.”
The cries rise to a crescendo just as the casket is lowered into a pit. A chorus breaks out in lament against a stifling air heavy with the scent of grief.
Tripping over her tongue tumor, my mom croaks out a few words. “You fold socks the right way, Emily,” she manages.
There’s an earlier flight! Running full speed through the airport, we plop our exhausted butts down for the final leg of our trans-Atlantic trip.
A few years ago, I was volunteering removing ivy from an area around the tool yard of Tryon State Park south of Portland Oregon. Two police cars showed up and informed me that they had a coyote with a broken back that had to be killed because the injury was fatal.
When I was six years old I made a promise with my grandpa. “I want to live to be one hundred, so you have to live to be one hundred and fifty.”
I returned to the airport with my student after an instructional flight. The airfield had been VFR earlier; a cloud ceiling developed while airborne. A recall of solo students that were launched earlier had been initiated.