Poem: Complications and Opportunities

Complications and Opportunities

My mother fell and bruised her ribs
One more in a line of setbacks
We have learned to absorb
Some time had passed between bad news
Enough for us to think we were
Almost back to normal
Steps from bed to walker to cane
Steady over the summer months
But now each breath a task
Each breath a reminder that she
Has so much ground left to regain
Before we can relax
She is knitting potholders now
Working on her fine motor skills
But still mostly sleeping
She does not eat enough and she
Gets lightheaded dizzy fuzzy
Which is what made her fall
Nearly a year since this began
Such a long list of things gone wrong
So much to overcome
We get closer to fine and we
Look at how much we have been through
How much we have to lose
We still have time to give to this
We can still reach recovery
But slow so slow it goes

– J.C. Hewitt

Poem: The One More Thing

The One More Thing

My mother’s heart could not
Would not
Beat the way it was supposed to
They had shocked her several times
More than a couple times
Trying to get things back in order
But it was not going to happen
So they put her in a coma
They shut just about everything down
That wasn’t shutting down already
To let her body get back into sinus rhythm
The natural moment
When the body and the heart
Are working together properly
And everything is in order
Because they couldn’t
Wouldn’t
Put the paddles to her again
She was already starting to gain weight
With her kidneys shut down she was maybe
Twenty pounds heavier at that point
Bloated
Unhappy looking
Even in sleep
They were worried about the fluid
And we all got together
To pray for her to pee
Because peeing would save her life
We were at the one more thing point
If one more thing went wrong
There was no return
No recovery to be had
We hovered there
Waiting for the one more thing