Mourning # 11
I couldn’t stop crying if I wanted to
my relief check did not arrive
our town is in extreme lockdown again
yet the virus cuts down people like
wheat under the reaper’s scythe
my country’s taken over by madness
threatening charging good to fight
we’re already fighting, out of breath
I’m still shoveling mud out of the basement
and the landlord’s kicking me out on the curb
since I lost my sweeping job at the gym
I sit on the carpeted step
and get weak, weakened, break down
get down, wet-eyed.
---- Pamela Caddell had no funeral, that was the deal
her husband, Richard, wrote a plea for the newspaper
“It was her fervent wish that everyone take this horrible
disease seriously.” Pamela and Richard met as teenagers
while she worked as a carhop at a root beer stand
they married and had a son and a daughter, Pamela
worked for many years as a nurse and then as caregiver
for her sister Debbie who had lung cancer, Debbie got
coronavirus first and died, then Pamela followed her
she was 71 years old and had been married to Richard
for 53 years, he now lives alone with the couple’s elderly
dog and is having trouble adjusting, “She never took away
from people and her greatest satisfaction was helping …
That’s the type of person Pamela was, and people should
know that. And she should not be dead. She should be
alive.”
