You Can't Even Imagine

Hi Everyone, 

I was going through some of my old poems that I have written throughout the years today. I found a poem that I wrote this year for my creative writing class. The assignment was to write a poem about something that other people in the class would have no knowledge of. The teacher told us to write about something that other people may not be able to imagine themselves doing or going through. The topic I chose, was being terminally ill. Here is the poem: 

You Can't Even Imagine 

You can’t even begin to imagine

What it feels like

To know you are dying

You can’t even begin to imagine

What it feels like

To look at your parents

Knowing you may never see them again

Or how it feels to look around a room bursting with loneliness

And know that this place

This frightening place

Maybe the last thing you see before you die

You can’t even imagine

The horrifying embarrassment of having to ask your mom to help you to the bathroom

At age thirteen your strength is too fragile for you to even undo your own hospital gown

It feels as if you are back at age two

With your mom guiding you onto the freezing porcelain toilet then back down

Your dignity is stolen away from you because of your own body 

You can’t even imagine

Looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror

And seeing yourself for what might be the last time

The last time you see yourself and all you can see is your sunken eyes of sickness

The paper white complexion of a malicious infection eating its way through your body

Slowly swimming through your fragile veins and into your blood stream

You can’t even imagine

The sadness that consumes not only your mind

But every inch of your trembling body

When you see for the first time in weeks

Just how sick you truly are

You can’t even begin to imagine

The terror

Of having your life placed into the hands of someone else

You can’t even begin to imagine

The fear that overwhelms you when the mask is placed over your face

The plastic smell of medicine consumes your lungs

And you plead “please don’t let me die.”

You know that you are no longer in control of your life

You can’t even imagine

What it feels like

To know you may never wake up

From not only surgery

But also from this all too real nightmare 

In the class that I took we did peer editing. A boy who read my poem wrote me this: "I think you over used 'You Can't Even Imagine.' When I told my mom this she told me that his comments only proved my point even further of not being able to imagine what it was like to be chronically and terminally ill. Before you make a judgment on someone else, please try to picture what it would be like to be them. Maybe if we all walked a mile in each other's shoes, this world would be a much more understanding place. 

Love,

Becca