Final Sleep

(On learning I may soon be losing my health care insurance)

I fear the last sleep,
The one that is so dark and deep,
In which no beam of light may peep,
Nor even the memory of a light-beam.
Nor any dream.
I face it now; in fear I weep,
In sadness I shiver.
I'm on that long and lonely river,
That is carrying me swiftly to the sea;
When once I'm gone, you'll see no more of me.
No more of me to see or hear.
So I am sad and full of fear.
It's getting closer now, so near,
That death seems to drink up every tear.
I'm grieving for the years I could have had.
Thirty more years at least, if my family history
Could have proven to be true for me.
Losing years of llife is what makes me sad.
Losing life at all is what makes me fear.
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If only I can keep my health insurance,
One doctor said, I might just live another ten years.
Ten!  Maximum.  Well, that's better than dying in a few months,
Or a few weeks...or a few days.  Look at Michael Landon:
First, diagnosis; then, one week later--dead.
Comparisons make us look at curses like blessings.
Probably that is well; perhaps even in hell,
There may be a flower or two on which to focus.
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Another doctor told me I might have a fleet three years.
What!  What happened to my ten?  What is this, a guessing game?
Can medical science really be so lame?
Or is it just oncology that puts prediction to shame?
But wait, it gets worse.  So as not to cheat the hearse,
Still another doctor told me I might just have only one.
Only one, to live and love under the golden sun.
Well--that still beats what happened to Michael Landon.
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But I was not told
How many of those months or years would likely be spent living,
And how many of those months or years would likely be spent dying:
Battling cancer, as it is called;
When your real life has stalled,
And the vehicle of vitality is stuck in the mud,
And blood-draws for testing is the chief use of your blood;
And your world, within the closing in of mortality, is walled.
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The best case scenario still seems to be ten.
But if I am somehow lucky enough to get those ten years, then,
Somewhere in those ten years, soon or late,
I will feel the true teeth of my fate--
When the cancer goes to get my bones.
For me, my cancer death will mean the bad kind of moans and groans.
But, for the cancer, it will be a slow sweet feast.
Because this cancer is not a mere disease; it is a monstrous beast.
And this cancer likes to eat living bones, starting painfully with the spine.
It will put me in a wheelchair, then take its time--
Munching and lunching on me--till it takes me to the end of the line.
At least till then, and maybe also after, if I can, I will still love life and shine.
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So even the best-case scenario will, at last, bring me to the limits of human endurance.
But the worst-case scenario has now lifted up its fang'd fearsome face:
For our present heatlh care system lacks just rationality, let alone a loving grace.
Employer-based health insurance is a death-trap;
Not the sterling silver system claimed in all the clap-trap.
For you can have seemingly perfect coverage for years and years;
But what happens when you need your health care insurance coverage the very most?
That is when serious injury or life-threatening illness breaks you, and makes you unable to work;
And then, for your health insurance--and for your precious very life--an hour-glass is turned;
And when the sands run out, you better hope that you really can become a ghost--
Or live somehow somewhere, instead of being dead, instead of being nothing and nowhere.
So what we have is health care coverage, for as long as you don't desperately need it.
It is this death-trap of employer-based health insurance that causes me this time to speak.
For I am now threatened that I may be about to lose my health care insurance.
It is the economy, and not yet my cancer, that took away employment, in my case--
Though this cancer certainly eventually will disable me, and I would have lost work then anyway--
For now, it is just a terrible coincidence that, so soon after getting cancer, I lost my work-place.
But the day that I won't be able to work anymore is a sure and fast-coming day.
My best friend has been helping me keep insurance; but now his job too is in danger of being lost;
If he loses his job, then he cannot any longer help me to keep my health insurance;
If that happens, my expensive medical care will come to an end;
And, soon afterwards, so shall I.
I shall simply be sent home to die.
Health care reform and health insurance reform are, for me, not just abstract issues;
I'm sure you can see why.
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When I wax poetical, I don't like to wax political;
But now, for me, my own life and death are at stake; so, for me, these questions are critical.
What should be done?  How should health care and health insurance be reformed?
I am not sure.
But I do know this: The current system is deadly deformed.
The goal now is to get big money for insurance companies; don't let yourself be deceived.                   
If the main goal becomes to provide health care and save lives, then that goal will be achieved.
And I know this: I have been told my cancer likely has no possbility of cure.
But medical care can prolong my life, and also make this fate easier for me to endure.
Now it looks likely I will be losing my medical insurance; if that happens--well, then,
I will have no chance left of living and loving my bitter-sweet life for a final ten.
I probably then won't even have that one more year.
That is why I am sadder now than I was before; and I feel so much more fear.
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I just don't want to die.  I just don't want to be dead.
And I don't want to hurt like hell while I am dying.
As I said, I don't know for sure what ought to be done.
But something should be done, should it not?
Or will we still hear people praising ours as the world's greatest health care system,
While I am suffering and dying alone at home, untended, unhelped, uncared for?
Kicked out by the cancer clinic, unexamined and untreated anymore by the doctor;
Just as unwanted, without health insurance, as I am unloved by the patient counselor;
Suffering much more, feeling so unloved and lonely, and fearing so much more:
Because without health insurance, I'll very much sooner have to open that deadly door.
It looks like I might even end up homeless, dying of cancer in the streets.
If so, I won't even be able to rest my weariness and daily dying body in a bed.
No Hospice: No one to change a bed pan for me, or to change the sheets.
But Hospice, if I can get it, is only there to help people die, not to help us live;
For to help me keep living, as long as I can live, is something only medical treatments can give.
But without health insurance, my golden life will be discarded, to go down even earlier to the dead.
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I was an unborn being once.  They should remember that.
And I was a baby for a while; and once, I was a little boy.
Then I was a teen, whose main thought in life was how to overcome being shy,
And ask that pretty girl to hold hands with me, or to give me a kiss.
Then I became a man, and I worked and labored for years in this land.
Now they treat me like someone no one will miss.
Now my life is threatened by cancer that rose like the grim reaper from a small gland.
Now my main thought in life is how to avoid dying as long as I can;
And how to mimimize my misery, suffering, and pain, before I have to die.
In the meantime tormented by questions, like: Why?  Why?  Why!
Not even knowing to whom or to what my fears and sorrows cry.
Still, I look up, and love the sight of the sky.
Although I cannot understand why such things are allowed to happen, or how they fit any plan;
Though I don't think any ultimate things are known for sure, or have been or can be proved;
Still, I thank God for the love in my life: and for the good times of life that I have lived and loved.
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Very likely, soon, my health care coverage is going to expire;
Then soon afterwards, I too will expire--in pain and fear--then go into the ground or fire.
The air I'll no longer breathe, the earth I'll no longer smell, water I will no longer feel or drink;
The sky I will no longer see.  My heart will break, and all my life and love will drain from me.
There will be no me in the world here, to love, to dream, to hope, to write, or to think.
I have to see it coming, I must strggle against it or more quickly lose, as my days and options shrink.
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The health care debate will go on; and those who want to save people like me,
Will still be called socialists.  But many things can be socialized, without having real socialism.
Right now, we have socialized police protection; we have socialized zoos and aviaries;
We have socialized fire department protection; we have socialized schools and libraries;
We have socialized water supplies; we have socialized sanitation and sewer services;
We have socialized street construction, street cleaning, and road repair; socialized forests;
We have socialized mail delivery; socialized political office-holders; socialized public parks;
Socialized armed services; socialized FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security.
We even already have some socialized medicine, for some of us to employ and enjoy:
Socialized medicine for all members of the Senate and House, and for the President;
Socialized medicine for all Federal employees--and many State employees;
and for all in our Armed Services.
We have socialized census-taking.
We have socialized this, socialized that, and socialized the other thing; but socialism still isn't there.
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No, but they say we will have socialism ONLY if we have socialized health insurance for those like me,
Or any kind or amount of national health care (though we already have medicaid and medicare);
Or if we have any form of single-pay insurance.
They draw the line, at saving lives like mine.  That's their brand of purity.
People like me, we are abandoned to die terrible deaths, gut-wrenching and heart-breaking;
Dying deaths almost beyond all human endurance.
Except that we have no help, and no choice: this unkind kind of dying, we have got to endure.
Humans have brains with more synapatic connections than the total number of known subatomic particles.
Each of us is unique and unrepeatable, with precious irreplaceable lives.
Sometimes they film or photo suffering, abandoned people, for TV shows or for feature or news articles.
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But still so many of us go on suffering until we die.
Unnecessary deaths, that our society and our government allow us to die.
Do you think it is only someone else--others--so just let us suffer and vanish from the world's view?
But horror tales can come true; it could happen to you--or to your loved ones--too.
Yes, your circumstances, so seemingly secure,
Could change at almost any time, quite radically, for you.
But right now it is just I, and people like me, who must suffer through.
So, go ahead, feel safe: anything could happen; but this will probably never happen to you.
You'll probably never lose your insurance and health care mere months after getting deadly cancer.
You'll likely never be racing in your head desperately, thinking up ways to get help, and finding no answer.
But that's how I'm living now; and that's how I'm likely going to die.
Arguments and charges over health care and health insurance reform will still sting and fly;
But none of it will be anything that I will be able to speak about, nor be able to hear or to see.
The health care debate will then be over for me.
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So that will be the end of me.
I'm afraid of death, of dark unknown eternity.
I'm afraid of what it may or may not be.
But mostly, I am sad: first, that by my cancer I must be cut down--
Doomed to lose decades of life that I would have otherwise savored and loved.
And second, to have even the time that my canceer would have left me to live,
Taken away from me, because my insurance will end; and then I will end:
Because society and its government have no present desire to love and to give,
In order to save people like me. 
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So now, I have spoken my piece; I have said my say.
I look now to my last light, and leave to others the financial fight and political fray.
The black and white mice of night and day,
Coupled with my cancer, are gnawing away.
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Now I will be grateful for the life I lived, for the love I was blessed with, and for all my good friends.
I love all people, not just myself, not just my friends, and not only people like me.
I love and have compassion for all--for you, too, whoever you may be.
For every life that lives and loves, also ends.
Each one of us has one death only that we must die,
Our own.  But, oh!  If only I could have just died in my sleep!
Peacefully, painlessly, without anything like cancer, and being full of all my years!
Now, instead, with swift slow suffering, the hateful fateful shears
Shall cut the thread of life for me, painfully, cutting my natural lifespan, far too soon;
Soon I will be walking in the sun, and see my shadow a last time, and be undone.
So I shall take my last loving looks at the beautiful lights of stars and moon:
And then,
My life shall end.
But till then, I will still continue to get and to give;
Because, tilll then, I still will love life, no matter how it hurts; and I will lovingly live.

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--Written by Michael LP
aka MLP, aka Mr. Poet, aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC
(I'm just me)
aka Mr. Poet
Copyright © 2010 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved