After All
It was a quarter-moon when Amos
showed up on Martha’s doorstep.
He lost his last place
and had nowhere else to go.
He was her mother’s brother
and he had come home to die,
though, as he put it,
until he found something better.
And Amos wept, at first, just being there,
even if he was confined to the first floor,
for he was an uncle, eighty years of kinship,
a somebody here, nobody everywhere else.
In some, there’s a need to look after the elders,
a pride you might say, in helping out shared blood.
Martha didn’t spread it around
but people knew she was doing a good deed.
Looking after a man who is no longer himself
can help waylay the gossip for a time.
“He won’t live so long anyhow” she said.
She tried not to make it sound like a good thing.
She made his bed in the downstairs room.
She cooked his meals and he ate without complaint.
He was beyond the age of gratitude
But he always grunted a kind of thank you.
Yes, he made a row from time to time
but more with his own body
than the ones he lived with.
He was irritating. He got in the way.
And he farted, belched, and drooled.
And sometimes couldn’t find the end
of a sentence that he’d begun so enthusiastically
Mostly, he was just old and Martha’s life was middle-aged.
She loved him but more when he was out of sight
and she was beyond hearing.
She prayed to God that he either finally passed away
or miraculously reverted to the man he was in his youth.
God responded to none of her entreaties.
Amos just grew older and more difficult.
She couldn’t kick him out,
for, after all, he was family.
But she could curse her bad luck,
all the trouble he put her through,
the whole idea of looking after one’s own,
for, after all, he was family.
Author: John Grey
Photo: Julien L on Unsplash
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