To John Senders
©February 12th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
What thoughts, what memories, what dreams
Float across the turbid surface of your mind,
As you lie hooked up to an IV drip, with a central line,
And a tube that feeds you?
You, who would have been one hundred
Next year, and you who are almost ninety-nine
Now, trapped suddenly in the shadow of Death,
As she rides ever closer, loving, but stern,
Cannot reason her out of it,
Because you are not compos mentis,
And Death has an inexorable logic,
Measured and cold, but kind in her way.
This was your life:
Lived in pursuit of understanding:
Of how things fit together,
How things reveal themselves in the unmaking
How things fall apart when the makers of things
Think thinly, without trellises to support ideas;
Lived in pursuit of the ways of Error,
And of the trap-hazards of poor Design.
Lived in the pursuit of ideas, beautiful, logical.
Full of the love of four sisters,
All of whom vied with each other,
And with you, and you with them.
In feats of mind, giants all,
Growing up Russian Jewish
And silent about it,
In stuck-up Cambridge.
Full of the love of puzzles and puns,
Of food and wine, and books and travel,
Of one wife whose verbal competition with you
Clashed with her non-verbal love, but who
Gave you two sons, deep of mind and heart.
And another wife who gave you undying love
Tempered by exasperation and amusement
And adoration, all together, for her dearest Johnny.
Where are you now, you who lie there,
Amid the quiet, ticking, soughing sounds
Of an ICU, surrounded by sorrowful faces?
Do you sense their presence and their grief?
Would you fight your way to the surface?
Would you open your eyes, say the right thing,
Then close them again, sinking into
The cloud of dreams that will ease you into
Nothingness?
I shall grieve your absence.
And I thank you for all you were, and are,
And will be, Father-in-Law.
I grieve for you in your faraway Toronto hospital,
While I shiver in cold, cold Boston.
And I thank you for my life, here, now.
I shall honor you, and remember you,
And bless you as you prepare to leave,
As we loosen our hands, and the horse
Canters away with you on its back.
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