July 2, 2006

My nude

My mother thinks my wife of 34 years is going to die,

The mother of my two sons.

I mean, the big picture is…my mother is right. She is still

Of the time when cancer was a precursor to death and death

Being the final insult, still, that it is makes cancer a secret…for shame,

For insult.

My wife is losing her hair…not at this moment dying…

What is left of it that I have not sheared.

Feelings about shearing one’s spouse and about the loss of hair,

And do I recommend you do it too, god forbid you have the opportunity:

The indignity of all the poking, prodding, injecting, lumpectomizing (x2),

Etc., etc., etc., do not equal the indignity of the loss

Of hair, I can

Tell you this…I am there…she is, emphatically.

But the shearing itself brings, oddly, a kind of posteriori

Masochistic satisfaction…or, there is no real satisfaction in it

Of any kind, but there is a fear of taking some delight

In participating in the spoiling of that for which you care.

The way it works is, you pretty much have to say, Now is the day

Because on the bathroom floor and in the sink…hair…and

It has been 14 days, and Monday is work and the work means

The wig, and we have to prepare it and for it.

And you do it, and thank god, really, in the morning she says,

My skin feels different. That’s the satisfaction: a relief

That you, that is I, didn’t just mutilate someone…something’s

Really going on in there. Then you say, god, I shouldn’t feel relief,

But you do not because something’s going on in there,

But because what you did was important, good, caring, and difficult.

It could have been done by Gary her hairdresser, or

It could have been done by David at the Women’s Store

At Northside Hospital where we purchased the wig.

It could have been done with great fanfare in the backyard

With sons, friends, wine and barbecued ribs.

But it was done in the kitchen alone except for a little

Beefeaters for each of us, and obscured mirrors for her

Until this morning. It was sad and tender and intimate

And ours…alone. There was neither pity, humor, nor small talk.

There were fantastic stuffed grilled hamburgers

Before hand to beef us up.

And now its done. And there was a walk along the river in scarf

And hat this morning…a coming out. And there was a returning

Home and shampooing the wig and getting it to fit right

And 2 or 3 hours of reassurance from a son and me; and there

Was going out to the market in the wig…a second coming

Out. And it is all okay, until Friday when the 2^nd treatment

In the 1^st cycle of chemotherapy is repeated: 3 hours of it,

Then back to work and feeling okay for a day or 2

Then, well some of it is our own, but on the day god said,

Let the waters be gathered together in one place,

And let there be dry land, that is on the 3^rd day, she will need rest,

For even god needed it after the 7th day and she is

Good, but she is not god.

I admit as well a certain titillation in seeing my hairless nude,

A little upturn of lips…a wink.