She Knew

          She Knew

          In memory of Sherri Beth Hellerstein Krynski

          January 12, 1956 – May 11, 2017

Don’t worry, I’m well enough. So is Hannah.

We’re dancing as fast as we can.

Little things help: friends, family, hugs.

Black humor helps:

“Why do skulls grin? Wait and see.”

Poetry helps, because it’s an angel,

And poetry helps, because it’s a vulture.

Best of all, small work helps;

The tiny day-to-day routines

That sustain the illusion of normality.

But Sherri was part of those routines

And routines are in calendar time

And calendar time is made of paper,

But catastrophe time is made of fire.

One small request. Don’t say you’re sorry.

Say you’re sad, say you grieve, say you mourn. Me too.

But don’t say you’re sorry. You didn’t kill her.

Heart failure killed her, triggered by septicemia,

Plus diabetes, plus spinal stenosis, plus sleep apnea,

Plus a weak pancreas, plus diabetic sores on her feet,

Plus infection through those sores, and on and on.

She was so full of life, and so full of death.

So no, you aren’t sorry. Me neither. We are innocent.

I’m sad, I grieve, I mourn

But I’m not sorry.

What was Sherri to me?

Wife of twenty years, mother of our daughter,

Lover, partner, guide, best friend

Inspiration and bad influence.

Nowadays, whenever a traffic signal turns yellow

I ask myself, what would Sherri do?

Shall I slow down, like me, or speed through, like her?

She sped through life, and she dragged me with her.

So often, after trouble and labor and my kvetching

She took me to see some human marvel or natural wonder;

A play, a landscape, a cityscape, a forest

And thunderstruck, I’d say, “I wouldn’t have been here.”

Meaning, without her.

And now I am without her.

The presence of her absence haunts me.

Sometimes the ground beneath my feet opens up,

And I fall, and in free-fall I ask, what happened?

How could this be?

Then I recite times and diagnoses to myself

And gravity returns. It’s like hitting an air-pocket.

Once the three of us were riding an airplane

And it hit an air-pocket

And for several eternal seconds we were in free-fall.

Hannah was laughing at something just then

And she kept on laughing. That’s Hannah.

I, showing great presence of mind,

Pulled the claim check out of my shirt pocket

And let it go in front of me

And watched it float in zero-gee.

That’s me.

Whereas Sherri, unlike goofy daughter and weirdo husband,

She had a normal human reaction to falling out of the sky:

She screamed.

Then the plane’s wings grabbed air

And cabin gravity returned

And the claim check fell into my lap

As inevitable and incredible

As the punchline of a joke.

Is life a joke?

Consider her Mother’s Day cake.

By Mother’s Day she was dead

But two weeks and a day before

She insisted that the next day was Mother’s Day

And she wanted a cake. I didn’t know,

Hannah didn’t want to say no

So we gave in, and I went out, and I got a cake

With “Happy Mother’s Day” written on it

And I brought it home and I put it in the fridge.

The next day we learned that, oops,

We were two weeks early

But we ate that cake anyhow.

Two weeks later Hannah and I realized

That not only did she con us

Out of a cake and a Mother’s Day;

She conned Death itself.

How do you argue with a woman like that?

She must have guessed that she was dying.

We all three knew, but not really.

We all three knew that she’d die before me

But we thought eventually, not just yet.

Our cat Charlie sensed it.

When Sherri came home that Friday,

Exhausted and spine hurting, she only wanted to sleep

Why that cat turned needy and vocal. Meow, meow.

Every time I opened the door to the bedroom

He’d zip past me, leap onto the bed,

Rub against her and purr real loud.

He was trying to comfort her.

He knew!

Sherri knew for sure by late Wednesday.

She told me, but I was in denial.

Her last words to me

Urgent, slurred, repeated three times

So I could understand:

“She’ll be all right,”

Meaning Hannah.

Later that evening we found her, eyes half open.

Breathing heavily. Unresponsive. We called 911.

I was still in denial, until the paramedics

Zapped her heart to restart it. Twice.

The cats stared, wide-eyed, and so did I.

They dragged her down the stairs and out the door

And she never returned.

I followed them to the hospital.

The intensive-care doctors struggled,

Then they took me aside to tell me the bad news.

She won’t revive. CPR pointless. Death in minutes.

So I went in and I held her hand.

Her pulse slowed to a stop.

I didn’t notice just when.

Then they shut down her breathing, and that was that.

The viewing was two days later.

Sister-in-law Michelle, ever capable

Herded Hannah and me, still in shock, to the hospital.

The chaplain led us to the room.

I went in first.

I saw her shrouded body.

My knees shook.

I said, “Too real. Too real.”

Then I stood up straight. I marched forward.

I looked at her face. Hers, all right.

Set in a scowl around the breathing tube, still in place.

I touched her forehead and her cheeks. So did Hannah.

We touched her feet, thighs, belly, shoulders and face.

Michelle sat with head bowed.

Sherri’s skin was as soft as ever, but icy cold.

Too real.

I examined Sherri’s corpse with cold intensity.

The only comfort I sought was clarity.

Some drinks you must quaff to the bitter dregs.

So here lies Sherri Krynski, woman of valor

Who won battle after battle with Death

For valor wins battles

And she pitched mighty battles.

For instance, her last Sunday.

Between the Friday evening that her heart started to fail

And the Thursday morning that it finally stopped

In between, on Sunday

Sherri declared that she was feeling better

And she wanted us to go out, to the theater

And see a play that she had paid tickets for.

I objected but she insisted.

She said, “Am I being stupid?”

I said, “Yes!”

“I don’t care, I’m going anyhow.”

I gave in as usual. You try arguing with Sherri.

So lo, on the third day of her death

The doomed woman rose from her deathbed

To go see a bedroom farce!

I saw it with her, it was a great show

With scandals and pratfalls

And slammed doors

And a scantily-clad actress

And a play-within-a-play

With an incompetent director and idiot actors.

It was tons of fun, laffs galore,

Boffs to die for,

And that’s what she did.

Sherri knew that she was dying, soon,

And she hated the hospital, and loved theater

So she went to see a comedy. She insisted.

Her body, her choice. Quality of life.

She died as she lived.

Talk about laughing at death!

Daughter, learn from your mother.

And daughter, here we are. Thunderstruck.

I, widower, single father; you, motherless.

Roles as new and uncomfortable as shoes that don’t fit.

But here we are, and I am grateful,

For if it hadn’t been for her

Then we wouldn’t have been here.

May 20, 2017