On his birthday, my father tries
to eat osso buco with its tiny marrow-spoon.
He scrapes at the shank, a felled tree trunk
on his plate, raises the shreds to his lips
until we cry out, watching them spread
over the table like shame.
It is a mitzvah to take care of your parents: “Honor thy father and thy mother.” And caring for people comes naturally to me. I’m a physician; this is what I do.
But when my father looked to me to cure my eighty-five-year-old mother’s dementia, saying, “You’re the doctor! Help her!” I knew he was asking too much.
And yet. How could I stand idly by while my mother’s mental acuity slowly drained away?
My name is Lisa Burr. I am a family nurse practitioner, and have been for nearly three decades. I grew up in California, the “Sunshine State.”
In the 1960s, my dad, a military test pilot, was the first astronaut with NASA’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program, which pioneered crewed space stations as reconnaissance satellites. My mother was a beautiful model.
Collecting dust on the rustic wooden shelves above a sturdy workbench in my basement are models of history-making ships, spaceships and military fighter planes. There’s an enormous replica of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, complete with iconic NASA logo and a massive orange fuel tank nestled next to its launch tower. Not far off is a black-and-brown plastic replica of the forty-four-gun frigate USS Constitution, its hull held together by two gigantic bolts.
I find him sitting
in the midst of his fellow residents
in the dining room
that doubles as an activity space.
His eyes are fixed
on the TV screen
that has a photo
I arrive in the memory unit at 1:30 in the afternoon. Jean, my mother’s sister, is fast asleep in her hospital bed in Room 1410. For the past ten years, it has fallen to me to be her frequent visitor and care monitor. I do this willingly because without her generosity and compassion, my life would have been far less meaningful and enjoyable. She never married, but my brothers and I honored her on Mother’s Day. My brothers sometimes drive here from their distant homes for a bedside family reunion.
During her decades of charitable work, Jean was named Recycler of the Decade by the New Jersey Department of the Environment, received the New Jersey Pride Award from
Roberta Beary
About the artist:
Roberta Beary is the 2017 Roving Ambassador for the Haiku Foundation, and haibun editor for Modern Haiku. The author of two award-winning poetry collections, The Unworn Necklace and Deflection, she writes to connect with the disenfranchised, to let them know they are not alone. A photographer since her Polaroid Swinger days, she now uses her iPad to link her poems with images. More of her visual work can be viewed on Twitter @shortpoemz.
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During the fall semester of my sophomore year in college, I suffered the loss of my grandma to lung cancer. I became wracked with guilt, anxiety and depression following the death of this essential member of my family. When I was informed of my grandma’s terminal illness, I had joined a support group; in this group, I cried and yelled until I came to accept that my grandma would not live to see me graduate from college or medical school or witness any of the milestones I’d
