The Things Prepping for a Colonoscopy Procedure Prepares You For…
The pre-procedure, a to-do list equal parts ordeal
and ritual preparing you for what will happen, is
A preparation of sorts for the many other things
you can expect, short and, you hope, longer term.
This preparation prepares you for mind-numbing
medications, for hospitals and those who fill them.
For paperwork and percentages covered by insurance,
but first it prepares you to be prepared for the things
You have no business being aware or afraid of when
preoccupied by what you spend your life preparing for:
Such as getting old, incontinence and the stoic allegiance
of a loved one—and/or your loneliness if that’s lacking.
In the dark, awake when you needn’t be; afraid when you
shouldn’t be (unless you should), and unable to disregard
A familiarity with the feeling of death, or those scents
emitted by aging bodies aided by chemical cruise-control.
Even if you’re lucky longer than you have any right
or intention of being, the end of one’s life is a menu
Of unsavory options, the worst being when death is
what you most desire to release you, finally, from life.
As Opposed to Prayer
i.
Nervous and unnerved this evening, alone:
Searching for solace, something not unlike prayer.
A hope that the past will not repeat itself,
Progress: a preemptive strike, this procedure
(They call it a procedure when
They expect nothing unexpected).
Precedence and percentages: our family has a history,
meaning that some part of someone who has died
might be alive and unwelcome and somewhere inside.
Remembering: immeasurable moments, IVs and all
the unpleasant things you can’t force yourself to forget:
Bad days, worse days, glimpses of serenity then grief,
A flash focus of forced perspective—this too shall pass.
Then, inevitably, earlier times: I recall
when doctors and dentists handled us with bare hands.
Still living, then, in a past the future had not
crept up on, a time when the truth was believable,
because the only lies that children can tell
get told to escape tiny troubles they’ve created.
ii.
And so I am uneasy and it’s not even myself
I am thinking about: frightened all over again
for my mother, and I can do nothing for her
now, just as I could do nothing for her, then.
A cycle: she had seen her own mother suffer
while each of them made their anxious inquiries:
Appeals entreating the darkening clouds, out of time.
Like her son, she eventually became acquainted
with the white-walled world of procedures
and all that happens—before, during, after and beyond:
Hope and fear, faith then despair—the nagging need
to believe in men and the magic of machines,
or the things we say when no one is speaking.
iii.
I’m so scared, she said, to anyone who was listening.
I know I was, and we hoped that God was,
the God who may have done this and a million other things
in His austere, often unaccountable way.
In the end: she feared the truth but not the reasons why
awful things always happen to almost everyone.
Me, I envied the armor of her fear, I understood
I could not even rely on those lovely lies
about a God I can’t bring myself to believe in.
We were there: a child and the man
who brought me into this calculus.
(We are made in God’s image, they say,
But it’s your parents’ faces you see when
You look at pictures and see the future.)
He said what needed to be said: nothing.
And I said what he said. After all:
What were we supposed to say, the truth?
The truth was this: we too were scared.
iv.
I’m so scared, she said, and we told her
it was going to be okay, we told her
we had reason to believe, and we told her
other things when the things we’d already told her
Turned out to be untrue. We never told her
the truth, which was that we were lying.
Fear and faith are useful if you can afford either/
Or, fear is free and lingers always, longer,
after it has served its purposeless point,
like a stain on the street, days later.
Dying is nothing to be daunted by, it’s living
that takes the toll: living with death,
living with life, being unprepared or unwilling
to be unafraid when it’s finally time to die.
v.
I’m so scared, I say, to anyone
who may be listening in the silence.
Wondering if they can do more for me
than we could manage to do for her.
There is no one left to lie to—yet
the truth, as always, is immutable.
And so, if you are out there, please help me
to absolve this dread that no one can hear.
The Ambivalence of a Near-Death Dream
According to legend you’re supposed to die
or come to upon impact.
I survived!
Upside down
car, broken bridge, shallow creek. Didn’t feel a thing.
(Too good to be true or else I’m already gone.)
All right.
Here comes the ambulance, right around the corner.
Only in a dream.
My father gets there first, older overnight.
He’s been here before: a hospital.
Dealing with the departure of someone he loved.
His father, his mother, his wife. But now: his son?
Unacceptable. You make deals after what he’s endured:
No one else goes before me or else
It’s a perversion of the natural order, an affront
to everything fair.
But who said life is fair, the doctor doesn’t say,
having seen it all and learned all the ways
they don’t prepare you for how indiscriminate death is,
indifferent with regards to who, where, when, and especially why.
Everyone disappears and I’m in a hotel lobby.
An industrious staff does everything but tend to me
because, of course, this is a dream.
After a while I’m aware:
they’re making me wait—or else I have to earn it.
Am I worthy of life? Am I worthy of death?
I begin to protest and then understand: what better time
than now for questions of this kind.
My old man, who can’t possibly lift me at his age, is
carrying me up steps and between buildings,
impatient with paramedics who never arrived or
maybe I imagined that other stuff. He’s angry;
either afraid or simply asserting control.
(the only thing more crucial than who stays or goes.)
Eventually I implore him to get assistance and he puts me down
in despair disguised as disgust: This all used to be so much easier.
Blameless bystanders stop and watch and I feel ashamed,
half-naked, baptized in blood and mud and tear-stained sweat,
what was earlier relief now an omen, or something worse—
suddenly unable to speak. My worst nightmare: maybe
I’m actually dead but I’m still me. That must mean something,
there’s somewhere else after all…
(another thing I was wrong about, as usual.)
Where is everyone?
I’m alone and that’s even worse than dying or living
through death: being aware and nothing to say or anybody
to explain myself to.
Where’s my sister?
She should be here by now, and are her kids old enough
to see me like this?
How do I look, I wonder, because I’m either one extreme
or the other: nurses can afford to ignore me since there’s nothing
to do, for better or worse.
So, I wait. Is this limbo? I feel like I need to get my story straight,
just in case.
Finally, someone walks into the lobby. It’s my father,
his return implying something about prodigal sons.
But wait!
How or why be damned he’s got my mother with him
and she’s smiling, resplendent and above all, alive,
about to tell me everything’s okay…
And then I wake up.
