Someday-Dying
Someday-dying is what I used to do.
It used to be the only kind of dying that I personally knew.
I remember it well: it was a weak and tepid kind of dying;
Not a great deal of despair, no great big fear, hardly ever any crying.
Just something called angst: existential unease; a sad feeling,
Felt every now and then, for this Scheme of Things with which we’re dealing.
I sure wish I could go back to simple, universally shared, someday-dying.
So much better than what I’ve got now; it’s very hard to deal with this,
Although I’m really trying. I’ve lost some glister from my life-loving happiness;
And sadness, sorrow, fear, despair--even sometimes terror and horror—rise--
Daily, nightly, sometimes hourly--flooding in my heart, and filling up my eyes.
For what I have now is knowing how I will almost certainly die.
Barring an unlikely accident to take me out first,
My death will be fearful--increasingly debilitating--in pain and tearful sorrow.
And still I hear the Job’s comforters say: “Everybody has to go, you know.
Everybody is dying. Everybody has to go some time. We’re all born dying.”
I used to have that same kind of dying. Even then I often had to wonder why.
Why anybody should ever have to die. But some-time dying leaves the feel
Of good future life in your heart, the gleam of a new bright tomorrow.
Someday-dying leaves in place the dream of dying in painless peace--
And the dream is real.
When I dream of painless-peace dying, it is a fantasy that cannot come true.
Even the least bad cancer is still bad.
Late-stage cancer can make you sad and drive you mad.
My kind of cancer lets you live a few more years,
As it slowly but surely becomes a mediaeval torturer.
What I have now is knowing how I am almost certainly going to die.
And a shortened shine of time. I no longer have nebulous someday-dying.
I have far-too-soon-day dying. Too soon. And terribly bad.
I face a dying future of torturous final time, one of the worst.
Which fixes fear and fright to day and night--
Pulse-beats of life, rapid rhythm of time—fast--and faster--flying.
How I wish this had not happened to me, to be caught in this spider-web;
To have to feel the shaking strands, as the spider races down the web to me.
How I wish I could go back to simple, universally shared, someday-dying.
Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 11:10 am
Temperature: 60 degrees F. Humidity: 44% Forecast: overcast
Copyright © 2011 by Michael L.P. All rights reserved
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