94 = A

94 = A

The neurologist’s questions are the only ones Dad doesn’t answer

before Mom can speak,

            sacred questions of dementia’s catechism,

but riding home Mom is miffed at her wrong replies –

“What month is it? What year?” – although these days

she doesn’t seem upset to leave the Sunday crossword

half-completed.

                        Three times or more she asks us, “What questions

will he ask me next time?” so we joke about helping her at 94

to cram the night before her exam and she laughs:

thank God humor lingers like the scent of gardenia

                                    even after every petal withers.

At home when I ask Mom what she wants for lunch it’s Dad

who answers, “A glass of milk with two ice cubes,” and,

“Just half a sandwich.” Sometimes I wonder silently if this

                                                is what she’d truly choose

but after 70 years together I’ll have to trust Dad can ace

this test, my Father rarely sighted in the kitchen

all the years I was growing up who now provides

her every meal;  even so wouldn’t I like , just this once,

to hear the old answers from Mom herself?

Bill Griffin MD is a family physician (retired) in rural North Carolina.

His poems have appeared in JAMA, NC Literary Review, Southern Poetry Review and elsewhere.