Would it be
better if we didn't get sick? Translated
back from Japanese, Atul Gawande writes of the dying: “My
own way of my own in the end of the story I want to display.” On
Anuhea Circle Drive in Volcano I walked until I saw the mountain ahead of me,
a molting longhorn sheep grazing
in the
field,
its neck tied to a long clothes line. Halfway there, a house had
fallen in the rain forest, its
timbers stuck through the ferns, all akimbo.
“Triangle,” the 3-year
old girl
said with
delight,
and this was one, lacking hypotenuse or clear angle. Beside the road,
heaps of trash: a stroller, fast food packaging, broken chairs, and
two old cars. I glanced at the silver Neon, rooted in the mossy
sponge that covers lava rock. Someone was looking back: an Asian man
with silver hair and thin beard. I waved twice, once
on my way to the mountain view, and once on the way back. He was
lodged between the
steering
wheel and old upholstery, eyes
open to the road. My former student's wife sits propped up
in palliative care: “I'm imprisoned,” she tells him. There's a
small window in
the white room,
a few flowers, and a button to push for a nurse's care.
That's
a separate photograph, and another that shows her hand only, resting on the bed's rail.
--8
August 2016
#30, Jan Zwicky
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