When Do You Say Good-Bye?

The recent announcement of a beloved author's diagnosis of Alzheimer's has touched many of my writer friends deeply. To me he's just another of many who have touched my life to fall to this and similar diseases. I have lost three aunts and an uncle to Alzheimer's and my mother to the lesser known Lewey body dementia. And yes, I worry about myself every time I can't immediately come up with that exact word I was seeking for a story or poem. Because I tend to express my strong emotions in poetry, I wrote "I Don't Know When to Say Good-Bye" when the first of my aunts died, and "A Slow Sinking Downward" when my mother died.

I Don’t Know When to Say Goodbye

What happens to the soul

When light fades from the eyes?

Does it flee the faltering brain,

Leaving the body an automated factory

That makes all the right moves

But produces nothing,

Until finally enough circuits are broken

To freeze machinery?

Or is the soul trapped within,

Imprisoned in a black cell

Where no voice, no light, of reason penetrates,

There to go slowly mad

Before death arranges the escape?

A Slow Sinking Downward

I used to think of death as violent,

Sudden—

Gunshot ripping night, or

Scarlet burst exploding heart

Or brain.

I never thought that death would be

Shedding of memories

And dignity,

One by one—

A slow sinking downward

Into darkness.

copyright Angela Parson Myers 2011