Hypochondria

(Thursday June 28, 2007. On the way to Jacob’s Field)

I tell my son
who is sitting in the back seat of Karen’s 2001 Kia Sephia
how exciting it will be
when his little sister
can attend the Indians games with us,
in another three or four years.
"Daddy, you won’t be here by then" he says matter of factly, and points skyward:
"you’ll be up there." He is questioned
like a suspect,
my six year old son
by my wife and I.
"What do you mean, Joshua?"
"I mean you’ll be dead." I am
of course
ice cold.
The third degree
will get us nowhere,
and I am left with an uneasy feeling
in the pit of my stomach.
Boys aren’t known
for their medical diagnosis
but the what if’s are still there,
the curiosity.
I wonder
what the death process would be like,
not the actual event,
because I figure no matter what
there is horrendous pain associated
with life being taken out of a body
that desperately wants to live.
No, the process,
the hospice, the knowledge of it.
I feel my throat,
to the swollen glands which were supposed to
go down months ago after my pneumonia went away,
and yet are still giant
and tender
to the touch.
I try to turn my stiff neck
and wonder if this is some weird cancer
or just the aches and pains of finally getting old.
But it is immovable.
And if I try to pry it to the left,
there is immense pain.
Was my Uncle Roy like this?
Or Uncle Bruce,
dead from multiple brain tumors
when he was 32,
and I was nearly a baby.
I remember his mustache,
 his sweet demeanor,
and the cabinet of toys he and Aunt Tina kept
though they had no children.
I’d call my doctor,
but have felt like this for years.
No today,
is not my time.