August 24: "Obituaries," Coma, Clyde

I have a confession:  I never thought I would live as long as I have.

When I was 13 years old, I ended up in a coma in the hospital.  My blood sugar was close to 1000.  The nurses and doctors had trouble even starting an IV on me.  While my mother and father were in the waiting room, they heard one nurse say to another nurse, "We have a kid in ICU, and I don't think he's going to make it."  

I wish I could relate some amazing near-death story about a bright light and angels and having French fries with Jesus at McDonald's.  Can't do that.  Here is what I remember:  being really, really sick at home, falling asleep on the couch in the living room, then waking up about a day-and-a-half later in the hospital.  I was lucky.  Really lucky.

Since that time, I've had several more brushes with death over the years.  ER visits.  Ambulances at my house.  Paramedics working on me in my bedroom.  Seizures.  No tunnels of light or dead relatives telling me, "It's not your time."  But I am on a first name basis with Death.  If you're wondering, his name is Clyde.

Billy Collins checks to see if he is still alive . . .

Obituaries

by: Billy Collins

These are no pages for the young,
who are better off in one another's arms,

nor for those who just need to know
about the price of gold,
or a hurricane that is ripping up the Keys.

But eventually you may join
the crowd who turn here first to see
who has fallen in the night,
who has left a shape of air walking in their place.

Here is where the final cards are shown,
the age, the cause, the plaque of deeds,
and sometimes an odd scrap of news-
that she collected sugar bowls,
that he played solitaire without any clothes.

And all the survivors huddle at the end
under the roof of a paragraph
as if they had sidestepped the flame of death.

What better way to place a thin black frame
around the things of the morning-
the hand-painted cup,
the hemispheres of a cut orange,
the slant of sunlight on the table?

And sometimes a most peculiar pair turns up,
strange roommates lying there
side by side upon the page-
Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray,
Ken Kesey by the side of Dale Evans.

It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death,
not the couples of the animal kingdom,
but rather pairs of men and women
ascending the gangplank two by two,

surgeon and model,
balloonist and metalworker,
an archaeologist and an authority on pain.

Arm in arm, they get on board
then join the others leaning on the rails,
all saved at last from the awful flood of life-

so many of them every day
there would have to be many arks,
an armada to ferry the dead
over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,

and many Noahs too,
bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow.

I don't haunt the obituary section of my local newspaper.  I have noticed, however, that a lot of people closer to my age are shuffling off this mortal coil, as my friend Bill Shakespeare once said.  Do I still think I will be having a close encounter with Clyde soon?  I don't know.  But I have made it a lot longer than I expected when I was a teenager.

Saint Marty does hope to live long enough to see the first woman President of the United States.  That at least gives him a few months.