Oxygen

My Dad has lung cancer. On October 4th he had his second round of chemotherapy. When we found out about his cancer, Peter Jennings had just died from it. Jennings and lung cancer were in the news so much it made me feel like what would happen to Dad, to me, to our family, was being broadcast.

Last year, when my Mom was dying of ovarian cancer, we spent her last days listening to her breath. And now, with Dad, it's his very lungs that are failing him.

When things happen in your life, it's never long before you read or hear about how it's happening to other people too. Yesterday I opened up a new issue of the New Yorker and found this incredible poem by Mary Oliver.

OXYGEN

Everything needs it; muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

- (c) Mary Oliver, The New Yorker, October 10, 2005