poetry wednesday : it might have been otherwise
I flew home from San Diego on Sunday after two amazing engagements there–a speech to the California Association for the Education of Young Children and a workshop that Jane LaFazio and I created, combining writing and art-making about grief. Full, intense, wonderfully tiring days. Then up early in pouring rain and whipping wind to take an o’dark-thirty flight to Houston. Then a flight delay from Houston to Asheville, arriving around 6pm on Sunday evening. I was exhausted, and so ready for a shower and bed that I could feel it, taste it.
John turned to me when I met him coming off the plane. “Your brother is in the hospital. He’s had a heart attack.”
There is no one in my family for whom those words don’t bring back memories of a father dying at 53 of a heart attack, the last of many heart attacks at a time when angioplasty didn’t even exist. Or memories for me of speeding through our small town as a teenager late at night stopping at no lights with my blinkers on and my father in the back seat having a heart attack, but refusing to go in an ambulance because they scared him.
My brother, Mickey, was being transported from an hour away to the hospital in Asheville. It was a big heart attack. He was lucky to be alive. I went to the hospital, arriving 10 minutes after he did.
Three days later, he has had bypass surgery–they planned for seven bypasses, and were able to do five and repair the others by cleaning the blockages. He is in Cardiac Intensive Care, but moving to a less scary room today. And all the while, I knew–and know–that it might have been otherwise. Thanks to everyone for all the prayers and lit candles and love.
Hug the people you love. Tell them you love them. Because one day, it will be otherwise–and it will be too late.
Otherwise
-Jane Kenyon
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
from Otherwise, 1996
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
[family photo of me and Mickey]
