Motivated By Spirit

    As I was sitting on the edge of my bed playing solitaire, listening to the commentary on the politics channel as white noise. I was not paying much attention. Then I sat up with a jerk as I heard the law professor lady say having a still birth is an abortion. What? I have always lived under the presumption that an abortion was an overt deliberate act, not something that happened during a natural physical condition. Yet from the lawyer lady's statement, my mother had one. This happened when I was about eight or nine, I cannot now remember the specific year. Mama had slowly gotten fatter, and everyone was talking about a baby coming. Mama started gathering items for the baby. I instinctively knew they were not for me, because they were laundered and folded in the top bureau drawer by themselves. Every time Aunt Kathleen came over, she and Mama would sit on the bed and examine the contents of that drawer and admire them before, refolding them and placing them back, after much...

( The poem honoring my brother also shared the cultural tradition in my community as a child that a boy was not declared a man until he was given long pants by his parents.)  My brother was in short pants then    Although he won't admit it To hear him tell He'd never been a boy always a man. We'd roam the hills to shoot at  birds With sling shots made from branches We'd catch at some To roast on sandy gully floors Over fire made from twigs. My brother was in short pants then. Come mango time we'd pick and eat And eat all we could hold Mama never said a word  She'd always let us do it He'd save the nuts from cashew trees In gallon kerosene tins The feast we had on roasting day Precluded eating dinner How he would scream And hit at me For eating and not saving. My brother was in short pants then. He'd fetch the wood to build the fire The fire for cooking dinner He'd make two bundles of the twigs One for him a smaller one for me We'd balance them up...

  Yesterday, my bubble of anticipation shrank a wee bit. My ride arrived on time, then drove me and the niece to the dentist's office without incident. I almost bounded into the office greeting all I saw with my now familiar toothless smile. What I was there for was the teeth to change that condition. The wonderful assistant came to the door guarding the inner parts of the practice and invited me to come in. I fumbled for a minute but grabbed my walking stick and followed her in. Sit down she invited me, I gladly did so. She opened the case sitting on the attachment of the chair and pulled out the bottom teeth with the pink gums glistening under pearly white even teeth on top of them. Open, she encouraged, I obeyed, and she inserted the longed-for lower denture. She reached in the case again and extracted the upper denture which I had given them on my previous visit and inserted that in my mouth. She then produced a small mirror held it up to my face and asked me to close my mouth ...

  There is a shift in my body. It is just past 1am and I am rearing to go. I have moved things around in the middle drawer of the small chest of drawers holding my folded clothes. I dug through all the drawers searching for a particular cap that I want to wear to the dentist tomorrow. The reason for wanting that particular cap is it present the look I wish to have when I take the selfie with my new dentures. I am reveling in the same sense of anticipation I get when preparing for a big event the next day. This is a forward looking feeling I have not had for the longest time. Truth is I can't remember feeling this energized since the second round with the cancer began. Instead, my prevailing mood for the longest time has been a low-grade malaise so familiar, I did not notice, nor acknowledge it for what it was. All during this stretch I would have bubbling moments of dancing energy, but never true anticipation. Because most of my focus has been on doctor's appointments and phone...

 I am becoming aware that I have been experiencing my physical body somewhat differently since going on Hospice. During the two years leading up to becoming a client of hospice I was experiencing the body through the rhythms of cancer medications, pet scans, MRIs, infusions and the effects those procedures had on and within the body. Then, towards the end of those cycles, severe pain.  Saturday night, that changed drastically and perhaps I did not handle with as much grace as I would like to boast about. It started with copious sweating, not the famous hot flashes women are supposed to get, but a drenching sweat which forbad sleep all night long. accompanying the sweating was a debilitating weakness, which asked nothing more than I lay down with my eyes close. This malaise followed me into Sunday. I called my wonderful nurse, and she comforted me and encouraged me to eat something when I confessed, I had not eaten for the past two days. Toward nightfall on Sunday a smidgen of ...