Last updated: March 17th, 2019
Down the long, gold-papered hall
I’d walk to the bathroom
in the condo my folks
had moved to after
they sold the house—
whenever I visited them
from whatever city
I lived in,
those two decades.
It seemed a charmed realm,
a corridor safe from time,
even as Dad wore out
the bypass he’d had in ’84
and had to have another,
Mom got colon cancer,
had surgery, then recovered,
and Dad showed us thirty pills
he said he had to take every night.
I’d walk that hallway with its gallery
of colourful, framed pictures,
and feel our lives were pictures:
so many scenes together,
and how we might just keep going,
might always keep on going,
but of course it
was not to be.
image: Large old luxury house via Shutterstock
