A Good Run

Stuck in this room, body half dead.
My mouth doesn’t work much since the stroke.
Or my hands. So between visits I mostly sit here.
Watching memories like a tv in my head.

That boy was a rough one
Ten wild sons and their sister,
Don’t know how their mum stood it.
Then he grew up and got handsome.

He wore his fedora like a gangster
And me on his arm with my cigarette holder
I was pretty then, could dance all night.
We were something, I’ll tell you.

Nurses come and change my pee pads.
Humiliating is what I call it
Or would if I could,
I was a nurse once too.

Couldn’t work when the girls were small
That was a hard time but we got through
He’d go out shooting, so many rabbits!
Chickens a time or two, I recall.

Well, if they didn’t want us to take their food they should’ve eaten it.

Times settled down and we did too.
Still I loved to dance at the hall
And he played a mean game of pool.
Always drank too much, but that’s men for you.

Then he got the cancer in his liver.
Thought I’d die too, but here I am
Waiting for my daughter to take me to dinner
And talk down to me like a fool.

Hardest thing yet, the way time stretches,
As I sit here like a lump, my dancing all done.
But looking back, I do have to declare
We had ourselves a good run.

Picture is my grandparents. The story is theirs too, though the voice is mine - they were inimitable.