Being Declared Dead Can Ruin Your Health Poem by Joe Rosochacki

If it ain’t the truth, Tuttles and Buttles in the movie Brazil,
One miss type can leave you dead, one wrong keying could spell your demise,
One incorrect number on your Social Security Number,
Could possibly render you non-existent.
That is the nightmare Laura Todd had to seal with for eight years.

“I don’t think people realize how difficult it is to be dead
When you’re not, ” she said.

The IRS has to be convinced that she is alive,
She has regain her identity,
Because otherwise,
She will lose her sanity.
On the other hand,
My mom died, literally.
She was supposed to a have an outpatient surgery on her gall bladder,
I drove to St. John’s Hospital in Detroit,
Located on Moross and Mack, the Upper East Side,
She died because of surgical miscues,
Besides her dying in the hospice room at St. John’s that didn’t matter.
My siblings and I buried her at Mt. Olivet cemetery.
But yet she received a questionnaire;
Asking her to rate the hospital stay which she encountered.
Food, (though she was intubated for three days)
The room temperature, (she had a 104-5 fever everyday) ,
Among other moot questions.
Someone sent her this questionnaire as if she was discharged,
Discharged for life?
It is kind of odd,
That my mom was the reciprocal for Laura Todd,
Laura has to prove that she is alive and well,
On the other hand, furthermore
My mom had to prove that she was dead by proxy.
1984 is not a fictional book anymore.
It is not case for Orwellian it’s the case for Ordeadian.

(2-21-2008)