Prose On Beautiful Feet Of The Dead Poem by cahen thrips

He'd been fighting for over a year. Cancer took hold. In spite of best efforts of physicians, oncologists, nurses and his own granite obstinate determination, he eventually grew too weak to fend for himself, and soon even his family could no longer cope, so he was moved into hospital, from there to a nursing home, eventually to a hospice. A character of confident uniqueness, not conscious of doubts about his own life style or image choices - long grey beard, even longer hair so allusions varied from Jesus to Gandalf and back again, jokes about walking on water not least because he wore austerity clothing, his footwear of choice being open-toed sandals: all-year round; summer and winter, though perhaps in snow or if having to attend formality he'd bow to convention and put on a pair of shoes. Apart from those rare occasions, he'd be bare-footed (skin dries faster than shoes) , neither aware nor caring about cold or mud. That had an inevitable weathering effect; calloused, battered feet, hard skin and splits, and later as he became less mobile, his eyes beginning to dim, he struggled a little with pedicure, so countryside was a little difficult to remove from cuticles. When he moved into hospital, effectively bed-ridden except to be conveyed one way or another to a chair, he trod on feet less and less. He was washed; he was tended - nails meticulously clipped; rough patches healed. Carers cared until when he eventually made his final quiet sigh, he'd not stood on his soles or heels for at least a month, probably longer. After he died, his wife visited his unfastened coffin one last time. Funeral directors had worked their particular mystical alchemy, for through her tears she noticed his feet, for the first time or perhaps for the first time for a long while, seeing nobility, romantically elongated, unbrawn sturdiness, broad feet of an intellectual in same way that a cerebral person is likely to have expressive hands. Not delicate, for he was tall; in his youth he was robust, strong. She was entranced as she examined slender bones limned beneath translucent taut skin, graceful arches, firm alabaster insteps, meticulously trimmed toenails, shapely unblemished pads. Heels free of abrasion, scoured; soles cleaned, exfoliated. Her husband possessed unremarkable feet in life, but in death he revealed true beauty. Though his body and face were rarefied by fatigued months in defiance of ill-health, his feet were transcendental perfection - unutterably beautiful.