Karma

It happened the minute she left me, 

I was once in a couple, and then, 

as soon as the door closed behind her,  I was single. 

One, not one of two, not half of something else, just one.  

And ever since then, I see singlular women everywhere, 

older women needing assistance. 

Margaret called in a friend from Arizona 

to care for her during her hip replacement surgery, 

Carol had to hire someone to drive her to the hospital, 

and Rita Marie's mother will now live alone in an nursing home.

Emergency call buttons, nurses' stations, naps after every meal. 

Ever since she left me, the one who said she would never leave,  

I have been building up my karma bank account, 

not kosher, I know, but it's the best this presbyterian can do. 

I visited Margaret in the hospital, 

Anne and I brought her a chocolate shake. 

I volunteered to drive Carol to her next appointment.

And, for the last couple days, 

I helped Rita Marie pack up her mother's things. 

I touched old panty hose, painted green cats, 

word search books, and fuzzy blankets. 

I measured lift chairs and end tables, 

I made boxes and labeled socks. 

My arms are bruised and my back is sore. 

And, even though it is being done 

to help people I genuinely care about, 

it is also being done to protect me 

forty years from now, maybe only twenty, 

when I am infirmed and needy,

and waiting for someone to push my wheelchair 

to the dining hall for whatever soft and tasteless foods 

might be on the menu. 

In a few weeks, maybe a few months, 

I will have to have a grapefruit sized fibroid removed. 

I had not cried, not once, 

until today when I read about hysterectomies. 

The book recommended that 

"the patient bring slip on slippers and loose underwear, 

something that will pull up easily and not disturb the wound."

Immediately I pictured that scene, me with...who?  

My dad? My brother? One of my friends?  

Someone from church? A nurse?  

All I know is that it will be someone who is not her, 

the only person on the planet I fully trusted, 

the person who bathed me after my broken arm, 

the person who held my hand after the visits to the neurologist, 

the person who wiped away every tear when my mother died.

She will no longer be there, with me, 

when it comes time to pull on that loose underwear. 

I will be alone, or with someone as mortified as I am, 

staring down at the scar running across my abdomen, 

and the scars still visible on my face.