In the Waiting Room

In the waiting room, brightly adorned

in a leaf motif, symbolizing life, perhaps,

the television breaks the otherwise silent air,

some talk-show host droning on about some ill

interrupted by the canned praise

of an unseen audience. Here

we wait for her elderly mother,

my mother-in-law wasting her time,

if you ask her, “no need for this”

despite her chronic complaints

on the perils of old age, of getting older,

this slowing down, her inability to do now

what she’s always done,

or a body that just stops, ceases

to function as it habitually has for her,

as she expects it to, old habits

that never die, dying, dead.

So we wait for this newest battery

of tests to verify what she already knows,

yet hopes she’s wrong, that old age

is taking its toll, exacting its payment

for a life long lived. But she’s pleasant

about it, tells her life story once again,

her medical history, the medications that keep

her going, submits to the litany of questions

and probing hands touching her, feeling

for abnormalities normal for someone of 88,

searching maybe for something else, something

new, something for which there is relief,

but not a cure, another pill or potion to add

to the diet of pills she already takes,

four times a day, morning and noon and night.

This is not what she wants, confirmation

and assurances, or more pills; what she wants

is a respite, some release of age’s hold

that holds her back, holds her down,

keeps her there, keeps her old;

for what she sees and knows and desires

is the young woman wielding an axe and splitting again

her own wood, building up the camp stove fire,

and her own, or long walks over the hill to other side

and into town, the warmth and sunshine on her face

anew. And her license back, too, that freedom to leave,

to do for herself, no meddling children guarding her life,

asking for this or that of those who dole

out her meds, check up on her, like a child,

helpless in some ways, the child she has become,

like the old people in her life she has fought becoming,

weak and infirmed, a burden to herself and family.

So in the leaf motif waiting room, symbolizing life,

we wait for her and a doctor’s declaration,

a pronouncement on her health, her age, her life,

we but a silent audience praising her,

her longevity, yet we are not able to give her

what she truly wants, only another pill, trying

to understand and worrying about our own mortality,

growing older ourselves, like her, perhaps, afraid.