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(The 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival is coming up soon. This was written before the 2008 Festival, but carries the message at the end I want everyone to know today. The poem is newer, and I share that with you too)
I am hoping for beautiful weather for the weekend for the Dodge Poetry Festival. I want a sunny and warm invitation to let me lose myself there for two days. I need all the poetry I can get. I need to spend more money than I should on books. I need to see all the familiar faces and give them a hug. I need to hear the ones I don't know and escape in their words. I need to figure out how not to feel guilty and sick and sad about wanting to have all of the above.
I went to Dodge 2006 trying to remember every moment to bring back to Steve because he was too weak to go. I called him on the way home while it was all still fresh to report and brought him an armload of books and an extra program.
This time I go having learned that my brother's brain tumor is "end stage," and the doctors say three to six months. He has outlived his prognosis by two years, but that’s not enough for me. I'm selfish. He's my baby brother and my only sibling.
I want my buddy Steve alive and talking non-stop all over Waterloo Village. I want my brother's brain with no malignant cells and for him to tease me like the little brat he always was. I want him to play, “Do you remember when?” with me at my dining room table as we linger for hours after a holiday dinner.
Right this minute, I want certain market-watching idiots in my workplace to stop whining about it and just go on up to the counting house and shove their investments someplace really uncomfortable. I have all I can do to keep from screaming. I wish them just ten minutes of knowing someone you love is dying, and to hold their hand and know that they know it too. I'm sick of all the crap that never mattered.
And to my friends who read this blog…I love you...right now... for all the things that do matter, and for however long we have.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Did You?
I wondered if you knew me at the end
when I dropped morphine into your cheek,
watched the clock,
the undertaker’s card tacked to the wall.
I wanted you to reach over
and poke me in the ribs
until I smacked you back
so you could call Mom
and she would tell me to stop –
stop what I was doing.
“Just leave him alone,” she’d say
“Ignore him and he’ll be fine. “
Linda Radice July, 2010
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It is really really really impossible to get through to finish reading without this getting all blurry. There must be something wrong with the screen. I've cleaned it twice and it doesn't seem to do a spit of good. You need to fix this problem with your website host because even now it's doing it again as I try to finish this comment.
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