COVID: Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNR)

 You don’t need a weatherman to tell you COVID turns off the lights.

Ralph Bowman isn’t ready to die just yet, but he is getting prepared. The pink sheet is on the refrigerator. 

Ralph is raging against the dying of the light.

Bowman

I consider Ralph a poet because some of the rants he sends this blog read like Walt Whitman. Others, ones angrier about prejudice and the financial squeezes on seniors and working people, sound more like Allen Ginsburg. I am of the generation that encountered beat poetry indirectly, through Bob Dylan, especially his song the Subterranean Homesick Blues. It is a rambling beat-poet type protest against the miseries, fears, and threats of his moment, 1965. Then, as now, the government wasn't your friend, there isn't enough money, people are sick, drugs cost money, work is hard, and a guy can feel ground down by everything and be angry about it. 

Ralph is in his eighties. He is a retired school teacher and videographer. He lives with his wife in an assisted living facility in Southern Oregon. He does not have COVID but people around him do. He is sheltered, isolated, worried, and he sees what is ahead, COVID or no COVID.

Guest Post by Ralph Bowman

Brain has gone to sleep

Recycling thoughts. 

Waiting for it to be over.

Long wait ahead., I’m afraid.

Dying, the final prize, a winning moment?

Got the instructions on the refrigerator.

When they come for me, will they read the pink paper

Or just slap an oxygen mask on my face to muzzle my heaving breathing?

How long will I last? How long will I have to suffocate?

Did I pass it along? Who did I contaminate?

My wife, of course! With the underlying conditions. Who else, when, where?

To your relatives, you are more than a national number.

When will they start rummaging through old pictures

And documents looking for money and a keepsake to remember you?

What will they choose?

Pictures of themselves? Maybe the one of you smiling with a twisted smile holding the cat.

Will they find your DNA analysis interesting? Where will they take your ashes?

Sprinkle me up a forgotten logging road. Which I never traveled.

Or will they let the Neptune Society do the job. I paid for it.

What will happen to my darling wife, my ancient dog, my battered car, and sales trophies?

They will have to come and clean the garage and make a hundred decisions. No hundreds of decisions, if they really care. But time is of the essence. Got to go back to work.

Take it all to Good Will or the Salvation Army. Pawn the cameras to pay a few bills.

A lifetime of stuff 

What will they remember? Your laugh. Your critical face. Your absence as they were growing up.

Your generosity. Your stinginess. What will they feel guilty about. Not seeing me at the end.

Not saying goodbye. Obligated. Or relieved.

So Sorry, my lovely G., my disabled G. I left you to the care of the kids to be pushed aside in their rush to be responsible, to care, to be in charge, to boss, and grab.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy COVID, Amen.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mb3CoWwNyY