In The Place Of Forgetting Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

“This is the bad place,
the glue factory.
I don’t wanna go, ”
Mom said.
She got there
by forgetting.
Forgetting to look
before backing the Caddy.
Forgetting which pills to take
and when.
Forgetting where to hit the golfball,
which made her no longer welcome
in her foursome.
She forgot how to read,
which for her
was like forgetting how to breathe,
and meant she sat silently
yet hopefully
at her book club.
And so, despite the hundred postits
in her condo kitchen,
she forgot how to live
on her own.
Next she forgot
her pants
at King’s Crown,
the assisted care living facility,
cheerfully wandering about
in a t-shirt and no bottom.
This got her demoted
to the memory care unit
whose consolations were:
soon after she got there
she forgot she didn’t want to be there
and
there wasn’t much farther to fall.
Not, at least, till she fell on her head,
broke her nose,
was rushed to the E.R.,
and lay there, one long long afternoon,
moaning and whimpering,
on a gurney in a hall
while nurses poked her
for blood.
She didn’t know where she was,
she didn’t know who she was,
she didn’t know what was happening to her.
Returned to her familiar routine
after days in the hospital,
she forgot how to live,
sank into a death spiral,
then pulled out
inches from death’s door,
and smiled for a time
at the sight of her sons,
whose names she had forgotten,
but whom she knew she knew.
They went home,
she forgot how to eat,
and three months later
forgot how to breathe
though she never forgot
how to smile,
which she did, faintly,
when told
a son was flying to see her.
He didn’t get there in time,
but she still remembered
how to die
just as her husband
had
in the same place
8 years before.