The Hours, A Caregiver’s Poem & Song…

The Hours

I close my eyes in the only hour

Where my time is not devoured

I’d rather nap to peaceful ocean sounds

Than get lost in paperwork mounds

~

The insurance company might not care

I’ll fight and claw to get us there

It’s 1:15 on another Monday

My eyes just need a break today

~

I dream of him performing miracles

Defying the empirical

He wouldn’t be tongue-tied on the train tracks

He’d just ask me for his favorite snacks

~

He’d rise from his wheelchair and stand

And frolic in the Jones Beach sand

I’d watch him run around in sunlight

We’d all laugh and dance on his wedding night

~

I dry my tears in the lonely hour

And climb the paperwork tower

Of course it all gets filled and filed

And they give us bathroom tiles

~

We’ll get shower chairs, portable ramps

My hands keep writing through the cramps

We’ll call to fix the creaks in wheels

And carefully feed him his meals

~

He’d rise from his wheelchair and stand

And frolic in the Jones Beach sand

I’d watch him run around in sunlight

We’d all laugh and dance on his wedding night

~

He looks at me this evening hour

His laugh gives me new-found power

He unties me from those stubborn tracks

Laughs while chewing fruit snacks

~

We take summer trips, he claps his hands

Makes splashes in the Lake George sand

I hold him close in August moonlight

We will all sleep soundly tonight

~

He’d rise from his wheelchair and stand

And frolic in the Jones Beach sand

I’d watch him run around in sunlight

We’d all laugh and dance on his wedding night

~

The timeframe freezes in this late hour

His sweetness overtakes the sour

~

Behind the poem: The Hours is a poem that is near and dear to my heart. It’s the first poem I wrote that kickstarted my own process of really sorting through the wide range of emotions that come with caregiving. My friend Erin Gregory asked me to see what would happen if I turned The Hours into a song, and the result was more tears, but also that lingering sweetness only Bray Bray can create…

~

That’s all from me — Chris B.