Untitled Remembrance

I can see more vividly now 7 months’ after your death

what a hero you were, the way you fought to live through

those many months trapped inside hospital beds depending

on strangers for your food your safety your miniscule comforts,

discouragements again and  again pouring down on you

like huge boulders in an unpredictable landslide, that horrific

relapse in July when we’d thought wrongly all was finally safe.

But between the crashings of rocks onto uncertain ground

we also did taste hope-filled nourishing rations, and we talked

and feasted on a future of your cure, a trip by car through Ireland

one day, yes we imbibed these meals of optimism often,

and quite well I’d say.

I remember those many times in the living room where we loved

and loved some more, then waged our long bloody war against

the vile cancer in your bloodstream.

You went on through it all, those thousands of appointments

and ER visits, nasty side effects of toxic drugs, anonymous

persons poking and neglecting your needs, didn’t you?

The neurosurgeon’s error and the two days of seizures his haphazard

work caused. The oncologist whose flippant disregard

led to those same damn seizures when he pushed the chemo

straight into your unprotected brain,

your fragile time lost in a haze of scary grayness you, terrified,

described so clearly when emerging from such a hell. Even

in that bleak terrain of your medically poisoned mind you tried

to help the lost souls who wandered through the nightmare too.

But my dear you won Dr. P, your cancer doctor,
over in those four years with your smiling through
the pain and nausea and our well researched questions
and your hugging this shy man relentlessly
at each visit until your uncommon human beauty


became something he looked forward to; yes, you created
real alchemy with him, transforming a business-like doctor
into your advocate for healing, your quiet friend in the bland
white coat who learned to show he cares.


You lived out uncommon strength and love of life to journey
through dozens of drenchings by the storms of such a brutal illness,
and almost as brutal treatments meant to keep you alive
until the next hoped-for time of calm weather and possibility
of true and lasting cure.


Today while doing yardwork, trying not to think of your absence,
(harder on the weekend) I found one of your very small jewel-like dots
on the ground while pulling weeds, the ones you loved to use
by the thousands in your unique holy artwork.

I chuckled, recalling how we’d said how these tiny talismans

would outlast us both, then placed this purple gem gently in the birdbath

picked out by us in San Juan Capistrano after I bought my house

just months’ before everything changed forever,

just as Dr P said it would, with the diagnosis. That happy day of beginnings

feels close to me now, we’d stopped for Mexican food

and I can see you Heidi, long auburn hair in the heat of a Sunday

afternoon, later dancing that soulful delicious way you moved

and I relished, in the living room to Latin music, sparkling with joy,

with life, your truest self really present.

And in the end, if I can call it that, on that second Saturday in October,
all dancing ceased, you didn’t make it to the transplant and we,
we who travelled so far together, (I don’t know now what else to say),

except to say I shall miss you, my dear, forever.