Mourning # 12

Mourning # 12

 

Remember the shopping list as today

we’re allowed to go out to a grocery

write it down, my English teacher

used to say, then at home put the

books back in alphabetical order and

the meds by date of expiration

the dread will still be there

there’s no palliative for the black dread

hanging with the weight of souls in

purgatory unable to translocate because

they died off-time – part “natural”

causes, part intentional incompetence

i.e. murder – one Poirot could never solve

there is no solving, even shopping is

no solution, it just must be done.

 

---- John Garvison, 95, had chronic obstructive

pulmonary disease, a pre-existing condition

yet after a week in the hospital with COVID symptoms

he had improved enough to go back to his nursing

home, his son Paul drove him, the next time Paul

visited his father he had to wear a full hazmat suit

his father did not recognize him and died soon after

John had worked in social services with adopted

children in Santa Cruz, California.

The obituary Paul wrote for the local paper began:

“His death was due to neglect of the vulnerable

by the Trump Administration, which had consistently

downplayed the dangers of this terrible disease.”