Letter to the Doctors and Nurses in the ICU

I know it’s your job, 

to monitor the heart rate as it rises, 

the blood pressure as it falls. 

I know the gray-haired woman in the bed is another set of numbers with a name you’ll forget. 

She’s my mother. 

She grows tomatoes on her porch and has a song to sing for every occasion. 

She loves side stroke and chocolate and Japanese art. 

She makes the best poached eggs, and she knows exactly how to scratch my head to lull me to sleep. 

I know it’s your job to find the clot. To bathe the wound. To ease the pain. Thank you.

Thank you for your hands as they slip the needle into her arms, the arms that gather me when frightened or cold. 

Thank you for your feet as they run down the halls to examine her heart, her heart that holds so many. 

Thank you for your art as you puzzle the why of her body, her body that knows itself as a vessel for love and prayer. 

She is praying for you, even now, as I do, and though you are just doing your job, thank you.

By: Rosemerry Trommer