Doctor X Meets Her Match
by Sheila A. Murphy
You know you’re dying? she asks,
as if her laptop, opened like a shield,
weren’t full of data about this white-hair.
Yes. And you are too, Auntie retorts,
I’ve already told everyone:
No surgery. No chemo. No tubes.
I watched my mother and her sisters
waste away in nursing homes, senile,
bedridden. I don’t want that.
I’ve had a full life.
I believe in God.
I’m ready.
How much money do you have?
the white-coat blurts on, as if
Auntie would tell the likes of her
the will she made to leave her home
to one niece, its contents to the other,
and whatever is left to her sister
who, with a phalanx of beloved relatives
and more friends than Doctor X deserves,
will miss and treasure her as long as they live.
Ever smart, ever learning, now she is teaching
her sister and nieces, cousins and friends
how to die.
Copyright © 2019 by Sheila A. Murphy.