Yeahh.... Lola Dora isn't the sexy bombshell screen goddess that her name invokes, but well... mi abuela... grand matriarch of a closely-knit clan. All 88 years of her, still globe-trotting and making herself available to her students and conferences, and she loved life, her work and her family dearly. I thought , after suddenly finding herslf bed-ridden with a sudden attack needing hemodialysis at her age, and with the motley of doctors giving a motley of working diagnoses, but finally agreeing that although she was at the moment bed-ridden and convalescing, she was stable enough to undergo physical therapy, it would be a good time as any, to coax her to share her thoughts out on how she saw life.( 'Coz she saw a lot - several generations of it ) I thought it was something worth sharing to the world.
The icon that she was to both the academe where her world started and to the family, she started narrating to me how it began for her -
how much of an exceptional student she was - beating the odds from the barrio to a professorial chair in health education in one of the country's leading universities. Slowly, the image of my idol (Superman, a.k.a. Christopher Reeve) came to me on a wheelchair as he relayed to the world that one of the most important things that come to mind when death nears isn't the money on the pocket or the power or prestige. It's relationships. How you were as a husband, wife or lover,or father or mother or child and what that other person meant to you. It was then that she started sharing about how disappointed she was that neither parent was present to see her receive a Cum Laude award during graduation. It was then that she stopped and despite my coaxing with my later visits, we would talk about a lot of things, but the rest of her life's story was hers for the keeping.
So,I went to doing house chores for awhile to set my mind off and this...poem...just wrote itself out. What the heck...
MAKING THING RIGHT
What more can one do
To get that nail down to the wood
With one blow?
The crooked piece of metal
Twitted my brain
For not having the sense
To task a stronger son in tow
or favor equipment the job dispense
And there it was, daunting,
This mocking nail before me.
Walking thru our daily grind
Godlings thru the core
From birth to bloom to wrinkle
We straighten a tie, We right a few,
we wrong so much more.
I come to your sickbed probing
No more the smiles I knew
The vines you loved to bough
were now intravenous lines ,
With machines propping a scarecrow
Commanding your breath on cue
In your longing gaze I saw
A Life well-spent in cheers
And the wisdom of your thoughts
To “Let go…Let go..”
Flowing out with your tears.
Stumbling Toddler,Foolhardy Kiss
Even by the time we set,
We miss, we miss
‘Neath melted ice, comes no surprise
Reminding us the score
Our frailty bleeds without a fight
When ever was it right ?
What was all Perfection for?
So let this taunting nailhead
Mock away with glee
It’ll hold the wood for years to come
Though bent for all to see
