LADY IN BLACK

Lady in Black with pearls on her neck and tears in her eyes, 

she comes to my clinic with heart rate out of control. 

So I ask her directly: “Tell me what's wrong to cause you such pain.” 

“I'm lonely," she tells me, "my children have left—

one went to Paris, the other to Rome.

and the husband I loved for so many years has 

left me a widow,  all alone on my own.”

“What do you do all day?” I ask her.  

“I started to work as a cashier at first, 

then I lost my job to the COVID spread and scare,

“So I got me a job caregiving since 

that’s what I know how to do,

babysitting a man 30 years older than me.   

I cared for him, fed him, bathed him, 

turned him, massaged him, 

helped him to walk and read stories to him. 

We read Dickens and Hawthorne and Shakespeare and Thoreau. 

And the Bible,  Koran, and Bhagavad Gita. 

I gave him new life and he looked so much younger,  

even though he was still more than 95 years old."

“Then what happened?” I asked.

"Then COVID came and his family said I must go. 

Afraid he’d get  COVID, he needed to be safe. 

So they fired me quickly and left him alone 

with no one to care for him, no one to bathe him, 

no one to read to him,

no one to care. 

He stayed all alone, so lonely and sad, 

until one day someone found him 

dead in his bed."

So now it's my turn to tell her what to do:

“Lady in Black go back to your home, 

your heart is just fine 

what you need now is to get  rid of the black,

and put on some red, it’s time 

to let go of the old, put on the new, 

and find someone to love.”