DAY 2: In Case of Emergency

When I was young, my mother would
come into my room, check to see that I was breathing
and go back to sleep.
Since I moved out, she has no other option than
to pace the floors and pass the hours until she can call and
hear the reassuring sound of my breath.

She says she’s
been having dreams again—
the ones that find me
handsomely dressed in caskets.
She’s been having them all my life.

These dreams are not premonitions.

These are exaggerated memories.
These are contractions three months early.
These are the tears of
water breaking before it should.
These are the nightmares of a woman who almost lost her first son.

Because by all accounts,
I should be dead by now.
The survival rates of premature infants
in 1978 were so low that
two pound babies didn’t live more than minutes.

The average birth weight of a child
is eight pounds.
I was born six pounds incomplete.
Sometimes I think that some of my missing pieces
remained, settled somewhere in my mother.
She’s carried the weight of it ever since.

So every time she paced the kitchen
floor was my mother rocking back to sleep
her worry that roused in her like
a restless child.

After her latest dream,
she asks me to carry my next of kin,
in case of emergency.
Says she can’t go on wondering.
Every time she calls and gets a machine
rather than my voice, she settles in for the worst.

I tell her that I do,
but the part that I don’t tell her is:
“If I die, you will be the last to know.”
I’ve made sure of it.
If something should happen
her phone will not ring.
Paramedics will place long distance phone calls
to friends to cities hours away.
Word of my demise will travel down highways and pay $6 in tolls
to be delivered.

My parents spent three months watching me grow
inside a plastic womb.
Time with their son revolved around
intensive care visiting hours.
Mechanical beeps and buzzes whispering,
“It is OK.”
“He’s fine.”
And so machines will not comfort them--
It will be flesh.

It is out of love that
I’ve listed friends rather
family to carry the casket
of bad news to my parents.

And this isn’t a premonition.
This is a memory of the strength lacing my bones.
Memories of hearing about my father, who, when confronted with
bad bedside manners from a doctor who said,
“You might as well leave; there is nothing you can do.”
He responded with “You are talking about my son.”
It took two grown men to restrain him.
Two men to pull back strong shoulders, force him into another room.
And I am his son.
So don’t worry about me.
While I may have been incomplete when I came into this world,
I am whole now.

My life has been an audition for others.
For people strong enough to carry me
through this life and to the grave if that’s what I need them to do.
Shoulders strong enough to support you, Mom
and carry your tears if I don’t come home.

So sleep,
sleep now and
know that this weight
is no longer yours to carry.