Mourning # 23

Mourning # 23

 

You had muscles, you had flesh

I touched your hair, I felt your breath

your clothes remain, that mattress stain

you’re in my heart, in my brain

you’re all I had left

now gone.

 

We couldn’t hug, we couldn’t kiss

what a shame, what horror is this

all contagious, it’s outrageous

getting victims from all ages

go on, make a wish

be gone.

 

---- Josephine Schirripa’s son Michael

was being treated for coronavirus at

Staten Island University Hospital where

he is a doctor treating coronavirus patients

and Michael’s mother, Josephine, aged 90,

was a coronavirus patient at the same 

hospital at the same time, but Dr. Michael

Schirripa did not learn this until just before

he was to be released. Michael was feeling

poorly when the nurses wheeled him into

the hallway to go see his mother. “I touched

her knee, she opened her eyes, looked at me

and lipped, ‘You’re OK,’ and I said, ‘Yeah,

I’m OK,’” Michael recalled. “She seemed

at ease.

Josephine Schirripa, a homemaker from

New York, died on April 11, 2020.