If it had not been for the stocky woman helping me, my Mom would have ended up on the cold cement outside the doctor’s office building. I don’t think that Eileen and I together could have managed it. Eileen was home still recovering from jet lag so I was alone with Mom on this visit. Mom was so weak she couldn’t stand as she exited the car and took me a bit by surprise. I was there holding her, of course. But she went entirely limp and was all dead weight. She just recently had a hospital stay for bronchitis. This was her follow up visit with her GP. I thought later that this is what she does when she falls, she goes with it, goes limp. That’s why she keeps not hurting herself too bad when she gets dizzy and goes down.

The woman was not wearing a coat since we were experiencing a beautiful sunny winter day that was not too cold. She said something like, “Need some help?” I have said no to that question too often and regretted it not to say yes. Luckily she was stronger than me.

For the rest of the time out, I anticipated better that Mom would need extra help to get in and out of the car and her wheelchair and there were no further mishaps.

Jack Gilbert ~ Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played | Fierce:Fragile

Today I’m linking in three poems from Kevin Young’s anthology, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing.  Jack Gilbert uses musical images as well as others to point to something. I especially like these lines.

Like the song that exists
only in the singing, and is not the singer.

 And Yet The Books – Czeslaw Milosz

Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Weekly Poem: ‘Redemption Song’ | PBS NewsHour

By Kevin Young himself.

Grief might be easy
if there wasn’t still
such beauty