My life flashing by

This is a poem that makes my stomach ache. It twists my soul into an impossible knot of pain. Annie had surgery three years ago around this time (June of 2011). Westy was a baby, Miles was Westy’s current age. We were all numb, not knowing how it would turn out. She’s healthy, happy, and safe now, but it was hell. I feel sick to my stomach typing this introduction, it’s that fresh still, after three years.

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My life flashing by, but not really, after Annie’s surgery

I’ve heard stories and so have you of how

A person’s life flashes in front of her eyes as she

Lays dying, inhaling and exhaling slowly… goodbye.

I don’t know if I believe it, although it could be true

But not in those last breaths. Rather, now, in this minute,

Parts of my life go by, floating like bubbles that burst suddenly into nothingness.

I make myself look back, look ahead, then from side to side to

Keep from rolling into a ball of pain and sadness

Then: A little girl, rosebud lips, pink cheeks, sleepy and warm tucked in her bed, under the thick cabbage-rose quilt. In the sunny garden of her room, she is beautiful, peaceful, innocent.

Now: The same little girl all grown, same lips and cheeks, sleep forced upon her, tucked in a bed in the middle of the afternoon, wearing a hospital gown. Surrounded by digital read-outs and connected to IV’s and drainage tubes, she is beautiful, peaceful, innocent.

6/19/11; Rev. 9/11/11 and 11/14/11; 6/2/14

PS  A few days after I put this poem on the blog, Annie told me that Weston was exploring her face with his little hands and asked her why the spot where she had surgery felt the way it did. She explained that she had a bump there, and the doctor removed it. he asked where the bump came from. She explained that grew there. Westy suggested maybe she'd bumped it, and Annie patiently explained again that it had grown there.  Westy was trying to make sense of it, how it got there, and he decided in the end that they could just say that she bumped herself. It obviously made the most sense to him, since that's how he "grows" bumps.