Getting There: A Ramble

3 a.m. I wake up thinking
about those patches on your body,
those flesh-colored stop-smoking patches,
you lying in the hospital bed near
death, an oxygen mask on your face,
your eyes rolled back in your head,
body stripped naked except for the loin
cloth someone fashioned for more privacy,
you looking like Gandhi, you my brother-in-law,
whose arms I don't think I'd ever touched
until that day, when your wife, who had not
slept for days, asked if I could please keep
rubbing your arms and forehead with cool
water so she could just talk to you, could hold
your seven year old daughter in her arms
as they both talked to you, saying over and over
Your girls are here, Daddy, Your girls are here,
and then could I just continue a little longer
so she could lie down for just a minute's
rest, and so I started with the cloth, up and down
your arms, wondering why in the hell anyone
would put patches on your body, you less
than an hour from death, and though those patches
troubled me and though I felt I was violating
your right to be left alone, though I felt something
close to sacrilege, I wanted to help, so I kept sponging
and talking to you, asking you if you remembered
my wedding day and how you tried to talk your brother
into a quick getaway, asking if you could recall
the day you came in to tell me how badly
injured your brother (my man) was in the bulldozer
accident, me screaming He’s dead, isn’t he!!!
and you assuring me he was very much alive
and asking to see me, me asking if you remembered
that tall tale full-of-bullshit-as-they-come story you told
once about Jigs, your daddy’s bulldog, playing dead
then jumping up and killing those two beautiful show
dogs of your uncle’s, me there rubbing up and down,
up and down those tanned arms that would never
see the sun again, trying not to break, letting myself
tell you I was going to miss you, you who I never
got to know very well in the twenty-five years
I knew you, all the while wondering about those
patches, which I now remember were on your back,
which I know now were there to make you a bit more
comfortable on your way out, which may
have kept your body from craving a smoke,
which may have made your brain a little
less reluctant to keep fighting, which freed
up those few moments in which your breathing
became a bit less labored as your beautiful
daughter wept there next to you, which gave
her some comfort and others too--your mom
and wife, your brother and son, and even me,
me the one you wanted not to like but grew
accustomed to, me, the one who presented
a nephew, a niece, and another nephew
to you, the Me you knew loved ragtime
so you played Maple Leaf Rag or some other
Joplin tune every time you came to the house,
you telling me once that you were a piano player
in a bordello in a former life, you whose genius
few others could touch, you who I think of often
when I wake in the night, unable to sleep any longer,
up and down all night asking questions I can't answer,
falling back into an uneasy sleep, getting up the next
day still wondering about things like patches
and what's humane, about how it's not the dying
that scares me so much, it's the getting there.