Covid's Calling Card

Lost my taste and smell today. Bound to happen as it's Covid's calling card. Hopefully not for long. Out of the growing number of people who told me (admitted? confessed?) to getting it, this might last for two days to two weeks or anywhere in between.  

Regardless, I made up my mind that it wasn't going tostop me from making duck legs which is. my daughter's all time favorite meal i make. And I  served it with roasted brussel sprouts on the side because brussels can be hit or miss unless you drench them in caper, butter and anchovies. But now's the time to load up on everything healthy.

Everything tasted like nothing today. But I forced myself to savor each bite anyway.

I thought of my mom, dying from cancer, hiding her nausea and the half-chewed food in her napkin, all the while pretending she was eating, wearing extra layers of clothing for her chemo weigh-in, like a magician fighter who fooled no one with her flimsy trick.

Even then there were one or two things she'd discover she could eat, all the way up till the night she left us, lying alone in a hospital room in the middle of the night, with just enough painkiller to take away death's sting before Jesus did the rest.

I wished I would have asked the nurse if she laid down flat that night, or propped herself up. I never saw her in the hospital. She was there exactly one night and died before my plane took off. But she'd had a few surgeries when I was in Montreal, and I always meant to ask her but never did if she treated the bed like a Craftmatic adjustable bed, which is what I would have done because I've never been a supine kind of guy.

She could still  drink coffee and tea. And wine. And oddly, consume enough Blue cheese  to make a Frenchman blush. Everything else was Russian roulette. Sometimes yes, sometimes nyet. A taste test might le to tears of joy or gagging, spitting up and crying at the futility of it all and the cruelness of death.

She fought the inevitable right till the last. Living on obstinance instead of food. By then the cancer spread to almost every organ. Yet she never lost her hair or her smile or her looks. If anything, she became more radiant.

Who died at 73 and left a beautiful corpse? Mom did.

At the funeral, her nurse told me what their last conversation was. Before she went to bed for the night and never woke up, she wanted to know one thing before she "let the nurse go."

"You must know, as you've seen people die. Haven't you? Does death hurt?"

"I have. And truthfully, I don't believe it does. It's the opposite of hurt."

The reassurance was all she needed to go out on her own. Just like she wanted.  She always said "You come in to this world on your own and you go out the same way." And I think she found a comfort in that bravery.

Being a creative type, it wouldn't surprise me if she made upa theory about a binary nature of a God who smiles at us before we're born and then takes our hand when we go back out. That would explain in a way why she called the birthmarks that graced the  forheads of my brother and I "the places where angels kissed us."

After last night's misery, I have passed the point of worrying about death. Perhaps I get to enter the uptick of the happiness curve. It might also be that tomorrow is Thursday and soon I'l hopefully have a weekend off where I can really relax which would be nice. I need a day or two of taking it easy, taking it slow. Self-care, like the millennials call it. Or at the very least not worrying about symptoms or the days that come or go.

I just thought of something stupid that might also be profound.

Sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses, even when you can't smell.

For some reason I spend more time writing when I'm under the weather. Maybe it's the only time when I feel i have time to spare. No one bugs you when you're sick in bed. And while I hope to make this more regular,  I do have some books for sale on various ecommerce sites. Like the short story collection A-Sides & B-Sides. Also available on Nook and iBook. You might like it and I could use the 73 cents if you choose to buy it.  There's also New Roman Times, which you might enjoy if you like prescient dystopian satirical works of fiction.