May Reflections

Michael Sedano

I hired the USC Trojan Marching Band to accompany Mariachi Reyna to wake my first wife on her 74th birthday Monday. I had to cancel them at the 3 in the morning when the ER medico tells me he is admitting her. Now I’m stuck with 40 gallons of menudo.

Pain does horrid things to a person, beside cancel a gala birthday breakfast. A few years ago, I died from pain and got sent back by the Ancestors. (link)

Poor Barbara, she got hit with pain for weeks until finally doctors talk of taking out her spleen. We would be a spleenless anniversary pair this August when we turn Fifty.

We’ve been in and out of hospital rooms for a couple weeks now looking for why we’re there. I got into David Bowles’ Feathered Serpent Dark Heart of Sky while I was there recently. There being Huntington Hospital, where I died and crossed over a few years back.

I’m writing the story of the second time I died, my meeting by the river with Mictlantecuhtli himself en propria persona so Bowles’ wondrous account of the underworld and Mictlantecuhtli’s familia fit right into what I was writing about crossing over.

This week I was bereft of books. I have some beautiful work out of Cal State Channel Islands I haven’t gotten camera ready. Ekphrastic work to Oscar Castillo photographs. I hadn’t covered any poetry readings recently and will be pressed for this Saturday’s La Bloga appearance at Pasadena LitFest.

My daughter tells me don’t write a column. In the instant I flash back to that moment when the 1LT offered me Acting Jack at Charlie, reasoning, “why would you want to do the Battalion newspaper?” (translation: a temporary sergeant job)

We got married on my birthday in 1968, August 31. Richard Nixon spoiled our first Thanksgiving by drafting me in time for dinner at Ft. Ord. I didn’t go. I managed to postpone induction until January 1969. It was Duty. Later, the Army whisked me away to Korea for our first anniversary and my 24th birthday.

We picked up life again in time for #2. That doesn’t say “hashtag two” it says “number two.” Anniversary. And here comes #50.

I look at Barbara at the lowest point in her life and I remember those vows, “all the days of my life.”