Predicting My Death 3

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Predicting My Death before Yours

3

Know this: I have no regrets. Not in anything that touches you.
No regrets, that is, save for the thing I have done to hurt you.
Many things. Some underhand. Some unsuspecting. Some deliberate.
You know, after all these years, the way I am. Unthinking.

Selfish. Never unfeeling. Often unknowing. So many negatives.
Is it negative to embrace my death before it comes? I don’t
think so. Perhaps it’s the most positive thing I’ve ever done,
this coming to grips with the maggots that gnaw me away,

night and day, gnawing me away. They aren’t invisible. You see
them  sometimes yourself: in the bottle I drain to send me to sleep;
in my tone on the phone when I answer an unwelcome call; in kicks
delivered to sleeping dogs that I can never let lie. Why? I cannot

answer that question. It bounces like a pinball round my head:
why? why? why? But try as I may, there is never any answer.
Why am I made as I am? Why do things happen the way they do?
Why do you still love me, in spite of all my faults, my kinks?

There: I’m being negative again. Be positive: this is my last will
and testament. My love, I leave to you the pleasant memories.
Days in the sun in Spain; our daughter born healthy; grooming
the show dogs; digging the snow together. Our very presence here

in Canada is a sign of the highest bond that could ever unite
two people: leaving their homes, their families, their friends,
their birthplace, their nationality to set up a new home together,
crossing the sea to reach this new found land of ice and snow.

 

9 thoughts on “Predicting My Death 3”

  1. Roger: Of the 3, this one is lovely. (The other 2 were fine; this one stands out, and is therefore outstanding.) Chuck

    On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 11:56 AM, rogermoorepoetdotcom wrote:

    > rogermoorepoet posted: ” Predicting My Death before Yours 3 Know this: I > have no regrets. Not in anything that touches you. No regrets, that is, > save for the thing I have done to hurt you. Many things. Some underhand. > Some unsuspecting. Some deliberate. You know, after ” >

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    • It’s funny to think that I wrote them 25 years ago for our 25th and here I am re-discovering them 25 years later for our fiftieth. I had just lost my parents and I guess I was feeling very tentative about life. I still am, but for different reasons! Thanks for keeping in touch.

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  2. My despair is that, despite my every day being exactly that much nearer death , my mind retreats even deeper into my youth. It is not mere memory but something much more alive, something which in fact rejuvenates me. I was both intrigued and moved by your 3 forebodings. Everything we do, everything we create is not only a memory of us, but must impinge in some way on all others who come into contact with our deeds and thoughts. That is the carry-over of life. Loved reading all of your work I have read thus far. Roland.

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    • Phillip Larkin, The Old Fools, writes about this. Here’s the link. http://plagiarist.com/poetry/4879/
      It’s a bit brutal in places but has some lovely lines: “Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms / inside your head, and people in them, acting.
      People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms / like a deep loss restored, from known doors …” I like your description of the “carry-over of life” … to make a mark, to leave some footprints, to leave a legacy, however humble.

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  3. Roger, I began to feel like an adult when I reached about 40. I didn’t feel middle aged until I was 60, and I didn’t feel old until I reached 70, when my knees began to let me down and I could no longer drink as much as I would have liked to. I was also getting pudgy around the middle, which I certainly did not like. No matter, the death rate in society will never be less than one per person. There are no Methuselahs, and we should be thankful that we have made it as far as we have.
    If we could choose how we would die, I would be thankful to be murdered by a jealous husband who caught me in bed, making love to his young wife, when I was about 120. That can be my next erotic novel to go with the other eighty or so I will have written by then, to go with the eight I already have written, and the hundred or so polite novels. Just dreamin’.
    John.

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  4. I think I relate to where you were 25 years ago, Roger. You would have been younger than I am now, but I feel like I’m in this big transition from youth to old age and it has me pondering so many things, ‘life the universe and everything’ things. Why, why why…?

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    • I remember well so much of those transition times. I keep a journal and it goes back to 1985, the year my father suffered his first stroke. I often go back and re-read it. We wouldn’t be writing the way we do unless we confronted our true selves regularly and honestly. My best writing comes from those hollow depths where I feel I am drowning. What I then pull out and bring back to the surface often suffers a loss in its polishing and reshaping. To face our real selves without the aid of a distorting mirror is difficult. Sometimes the distortions help. Occasionally, and these are the best and worst of times, we can be brutally honest.

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