Today was Mom’s birthday.
She didn’t know it, hasn’t for years.
She lies in bed mostly, fading into darkness,
shades of life lowered long ago by Alzheimer’s.

She doesn’t know me anymore.
I’d visit her at her nursing home.
She’d be angry, panicky she’d get
in trouble, fearful she had no money to pay me.

I’d bring her flowers for her birthday.
She’d ask who’d sent them, demand
I take them home. Over and over again.
I’d give them to her nurses.

I’d visit her anyway. Not for her,
but for me, in the hope that I’d
catch a glimpse of who she was,
see a smile,  or hear an “I love you,”
if only for the last time.

I’d visit other patients, who were
not in their darkness yet, who loved
being greeted with a smile, a simple
“hello.”  I took joy in seeing their loved
ones, who’d gladly introduce themselves.

But this was Mom’s pandemic birthday.
I don’t worry about her. I’m concerned 
about the darkness of others now.
Patients who miss their loved ones.
Patients who don’t understand why
their families don’t visit them anymore.

I worry about the staff now overburdened
by confused and anxious patients. My heart
breaks for caregivers who must wear masks
and cannot calm patients who can no longer
see their smiles and don’t know why.

And about volunteers unable to come in —
the ones who sing with patients, play
bingo with them, make life liveable for
those who still have life left in them to live.

The same pall hanging over them –
nurses, doctors, therapists – hangs over
all of us. How do they go home, broken, exhausted,
facing families who ask questions they cannot answer,
have needs they cannot fulfill.

It’s a pandemic birthday for my mother, but
it’s the same old day for her. It’s a pandemic
day for everyone, a day that’s stretching
into weeks, maybe months. Who knows after that?

My mother is frail now. 
Her darkness is the same.
I may never see her again.
She will never know.
But I will. I will.
                        

The magic of Mardi Gras is gone now,
it comes but once a year, turning the
streets of New Orleans into a sea of
people in garish costumes and masks,
waves of purple, blue, green, and gold.

The fusion of scents no longer lingers.
Crawfish boil, shrimp and grits, red beans
and rice, all a mouthwatering memory.
Not a grain left, not a bean. Not a drop
of spilled milk punch or mint julep. 

No raucous laughter drowned out
by blasting jazz bands. No human litter. 
No speck of human life. It’s the pandemic. 
The only street travelers now – rats.
They are the ones out of hiding, left in the

open to die, scurrying crisscross, curb to
curb, desperately searching a route once
paved with human garbage. Humans
hunker inside, praying they’ll be safe from
from a world dimmed by disease .

Rats are out fighting for their lives now where
humans used to be, racing against the same clock.