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
