Pushing
Up
Daisies,
clay potted, white whorled,
yellow
centered, crowd the western
windowsills
in Uncle Jack’s room
in
the rehabilitation clinic. No sooner
do
we hug in greeting than he flops,
belly
down, onto a plush red rug
and
starts in on his daily regimen of push-
ups
as if he were at home and healthy.
Jack
was ever fond of boasting that
he’d
always be able to do as many
repetitions
daily as his age, and was
determined
to show me even here
with
the nurse, impatient, arms akimbo,
waiting
outside the glass door to take
his
blood pressure. I told him to give it
a
rest. He didn’t need to prove anything.
I
was a believer. But stubborn
as
ever, he plunged ahead, up
and
down. After 70, Jack stood up
declaring,
“Nature calls.” He was back
in
5 minutes, as he vowed, to wrap up
the
last 15 push-ups while the nurse,
tapping
her toe, had a look that said,
“Give
me a break already.” The setting
sun
cast daisy shadows on his back.
He
didn’t break a sweat but grimaced
once
or twice. The nurse and I offered
up
a round of applause. He smiled.
A
year later, my cousin Clara called
to
tell me her dad was at home
in
a coma secondary to a stroke and
I
might want to think about a visit.
He
was flat on his back, eyes vacant,
hands
outside the blanket, palms
pressing
down against the mattress,
tensing
and releasing and tensing.
I
said, “Jack, enough already. I don’t
need
convincing. I know you can do 86.
Just
snap out of this thing.” I stayed
overnight. In the morning, I patted
his
limp hands and kissed his forehead
before
heading back home. Clara
said
she and her mom would keep me
posted. A week later he was gone.
I
sent daisies. The day after the funeral,
pushing
60, I pledged to begin, in honor
of
Jack, yet another exercise regimen,
maybe
even a few push-ups,
not
that I could hope to compete.
It
would simply be a token gesture
of
keeping his memory alive before I go
pushing
up my own daisies.
Philip
Wexler
Philip Wexler has over 200 magazine poem credits. His full-length poetry collections include The Sad Parade (prose poems), and The Burning Moustache, both published by Adelaide Books, The Lesser Light (Finishing Line Press), With Something Like Hope (Silver Bow Publishing) and I Would be the Purple (Kelsay Books). He also hosts Words out Loud, a hybrid in-person and remote monthly spoken word series in the Washington, DC area.