My brother-in-law is dying, reports
my husband’s older sister.
He has died before and before and
the time before that.

She says he is in a coma; hospice
calls it active dying. They predict he
won’t last the night. He has nine lives
like a cat.

Paramedics in Texas found him 
unconscious in a diabetic coma,
suffering a widow-maker heart 
attack fifteen years ago. Told us
he was a goner, never make it,
but he did.

The massive stroke two years ago 
was deemed fatal, the doctors said
he would never leave the hospital.
The stroke wasn’t terminal or,
particularly debilitating.

He depended on us after his wife
died decades ago. We were rocks 
of reliability, souls of compassion. 
He was so grateful; until he wasn’t,

until his true colors showed,
until he cut all ties with us.
My spouse told him goodbye
today on the phone. They say
hearing is the last function to go.

I was silent; instead, choosing to remember 
his glorious garden, all the ripe produce we
picked and enjoyed. Those times before 
malevolent weeds took over, and the age-old
serpent poisoned brotherly love.
                        

In the light drizzle, my arms are filled with flowers.
Continuing to prune, clip, and choose particular blooms
seems foolish. Me, a dripping, old woman without sense
enough to come in out of the rain. Long past caring about
convention, I continue my garden chores.

Raindrops streak my glasses. Objects appear fragmented,
transparent. Choosing blooms is a funhouse of colorful
distortion where ordinary flowers are transformed into faces,
especially those puckish pansies. One is the spitting image
of my uncle, Elijah.

My long, grey hair is now seaweed tangled in a chunk of
driftwood while my sandaled toes feel the damp earth. It’s 
getting muddy wandering among the garden rows. Raindrops 
fall faster and start to sting. It’s time to take the flowers indoors.

Hesitant, but recalling that old saying, “You’ll catch your death.”
Catching death, like an elusive sturgeon, is for fisher folk.
I am a flower child.