Sunday ~ May 10, 2020

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have o rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds...
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn't know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look into their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understand loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember id that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

(Julia Kasdorf, b. 1962)