Death

When I met Huw, he was busy killing himself with Scotch whiskey and ice cubes. It was intended to be a slow death, one that would take years, but inexorably, would destroy him. Of course, many of us wondered, since he still regulated his drinking to an extent, if the daily packs of unfilters would get him there first.

We pictured a semi-corpse, liver distended and cirrhotic, lying there in some low rent hospital bed while young interns kept hopeless, dismal track of the rogue cells in his lungs.

Still he writes. He writes - us? - to get him heroin, or something like it, for the constant pain. So what if it might kill him... he's dying anyway.

We also imagined him just slowly pickling, the dense smoke tickling his charcoaled lungs, croaking out his ideas and rules about life over his kitchen table, a beer and some Scotch in front of him, yet another cigarette burning in his yellowed fingers, until his slurring and drift away from his logic make him at first amusing instead of smart, and then sad instead of funny.

And as dawn approaches each night, he shambles off to bed to wind his brain up again with dreams.

And, what did I do about it?

11/30/03

© Huw Powell
printed 29 March 2024

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