wildbillsdreamscape

The Snow is too Damned White

- William J. Gibson -

shovelling the snow

is a reminder of the deaths of January

both parents  went in this month

the snow is too damned white

the third and the nineteenth

are the days she died and he died

she four years after him

he walked out in the snow to get the newspaper

after fast shovelling the day before to make a walkway

for the public health nurse

she in the final coma in the hospital

her last words threatening  to punch a nurse in the nose

if she did not go get her husband

the snow is too damned white

to make up for the lack of sun

I am always glad to get out of January alive

Way Past Midnight

I look at my hands by electric light.
They are becoming the dry wrinkled hands
of an old office man. Not yet my father’s hands
Not my mother’s
which became deflated as she almost made it to 80.
The wrinkles deep,
her skin on her wrists
paper thin
so fragile when they took the blood tests.
She would bruise like they had used a coal shovel on her
We should grow old in a big old house
surrounded by grandchildren
not in the white sheets of the fucking hospitals

I hate the thought of it.
sitting beside her as her breathing in the coma
shuddering slowing
more work for each breath
I sat in the ugly metal and vinyl padded chair
my hand under the sheet holding her leg below the knee
her good leg
not the left with the stroke twisted ankle
feeling the warmth of her in my hand
and the shudders of her breathing growing harder
and slower and slowing
to nothing
her mouth still open
the IV pump with saline and the other line morphine
I listened
and listened for another breath
then I walked around to look at her face
half turned from me
my hand brushing her hair
still brown, just a line or two of grey
then I sat back down in the chair
and put my hand back on her leg below the knee
and felt her warmth and it was quiet, January quiet
then I got ready to go find a nurse
to check for a pulse, a heartbeat, and to find neither sound,
just the shell still, three days short of her 80th birthday,
and then to tell me that
my mother was dead
officially
and then the doctor who I had never seen before
came to tell me
that my mother was dead
officially
for the second time
the doctor a young woman
younger than me
following her training
having put on the doctor face
with emotion tucked away
explained to me that my mother had passed away
I said, “I know. I was there.”
The nurses on the floor looked at me as I waited
for my sister to arrive
they looked at my face
my hands spread out held high
holding the metal doorframe of the room
so that the building would not explode
the metal was cool
and had no wrinkles.