Home: Writings: Poems: A Life for Deciding

A Life for Deciding

In people with chronic
or terminal diseases,
one talks about the
quality of life.

Everything is done
by doctors, family,
friends, the people themselves,
for as high as possible a
quality of life.

Battle lines are drawn
with pain and suffering,
with weakness and exhaustion,
and hundred of other ills
that plauge one's
quality of life.

But what can be done
with a chronic, possibly terminal
illness, when the enemy constantly
changes, and what beats back pain
one day, another day may destroy one's
quality of life?

Where does one call truce
in the battle with the mind,
forever tweaking medicines
to improve the
quality of life?

When does one settle
for a shell of a former "you,"
and stop striving to improve the
quality of life?

I raise the white flag
of surrender.
I am so tired...

© Catherine Courry

Modified December 11, 2002