Bingo
She says she wants a house of her own.
A place with a yard and trees,
like she used to have in Houston.
When she says this,
I don’t know what to say.
She used to have a five thousand square foot home
made out of Miami Brick.
Now she has two rooms.
She is in
“assisted living”.
Meals are prepared and caretakers enter their room at will.
Showers are given and medicine is doled out like bitter candy.
I do not have the money to give her a home,
nor do I know how
to find a caretaker that wouldn’t steal from them,
or leave them to starve.
So I sit here and I feel guilty,
and then just when I’m starting to feel really bad,
I hear a little voice in my head say,
“wait a minute, she’s the one who did this to herself”.
She could have changed her habits years ago.
She could have started exercising instead of sitting on the couch.
She could have eaten a few carrots and some salads instead of boxes of chocolates
and pints of ice cream.
She could have changed
and none of this would have happened.
The strokes.
The diabetes.
The heart failure.
She could have just been a woman in her seventies now.
Still driving and enjoying life,
taking trips to Mexico
and Hawaii,
letting the sun melt her back while dipping her feet in the waves.
She could have been watching the sunset
from some veranda
dining on lobster and crab.
Instead,
she wears oxygen now,
pees in her pants,
and struggles to remember what time is Bingo.
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