Volume No. XVIII
Volume No. XVII
Volume No. XVI
Volume No. XV
Volume No. XIV
Volume No. XIII
Volume No. XII
Volume No. XI
Volume No. X
Volume No. IX
Volume No. VIII
Volume No. VII
Volume No. VI
Volume No. V
Volume No. IV
Volume No. III
Volume No. II
Volume No. I
Archives
Volume No. I
Volume No. II
Volume No. III
Volume No. IV
Volume No. V
Volume No. VI
Volume No. VII
Volume No. VIII
Volume No. IX
Volume No. X
Volume No. XI
Volume No. XII
Volume No. XIII
Volume No. XIV
Volume No. XV
Volume No. XVI
Volume No. XVII
Volume No. XVIII
When she was seventy-eight years old and the angel of death called to her and told her the vaginal bleeding that had been starting and stopping like a crazy menopausal period was ovarian cancer, she said to him, "Listen Doctor, I don't have to tell you your job. If it's cancer it's cancer. If you got to cut it out, you got to."
After surgery, in the convalescent home among the old men crying for their mothers, and the silent roommates waiting for death she called me over to see her wound, stapled and stitched, fourteen raw inches from below her breasts to below her navel. And when I said, "Mom, I don't want to see it," she said, "Johnny, don't be such a baby."
Six months later, at the end of her chemo, my mother knows why the old men cry. A few wiry strands of hair on head, her hands so weak she couldn't hold a cup, her legs swollen and blotched with blue lesions, she says, "I'll get better. After his chemo, Pauline's second husband had ten more years. He was playing golf and breaking down doors when he died of a heart attack at ninety."
Then my mom's eyes lock on mine, and she says, "You know, optimism is a crazy man's mother."
And she laughs.
John Guzlowski's poems about his parents' experiences in the Nazi concentration camps appear in numerous journals as well as his books: Lightning and Ashes and Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Poetry). He blogs about his parents at http://lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com
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