#33 From the Catalogue of Missing

Kristen Lenea Ryberg

ARLENE

Why am I still here? you chuckle, after I ask How are you really?

The pain is constant, the medication no longer works.

Arlene at 93, smarter and funnier than anyone I knew, loved words, kept her Oxford dictionary on a pedestal learned a new word daily. English teacher, mourned her adult son John. He zig-zagged from breathing air to feeling his way down a final time. I look forward to seeing my sweet John again. Getting old is not for sissies, Circe’ She called me Circe’ I mention how I need her, her meeting friends need her. She still enjoys her Dogwoods in bloom and watching football and our phone calls. She still gets her hair done. Jokes, the last cut left her looking like Margaret Thatcher, says, next time you see me I might have outlined lips and penciled eyebrows. ~ She had another fall, this time with the walker spent an hour crawling to the phone embarrassed the paramedics found her in her robe. Arlene, your last car was that expensive red sportscar, it’s who I still am, you said. Remember, we couldn’t shut off the heater, fiddled with the computerized dashboard ended up rolling all the windows down laughing hilariously. Seats impractically low, you needed my help getting out. You asked to hear my poems. We were both suspicious of those without regrets. The last new word you shared with me was perseverate.

To repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased.