Flapping in the Wind

by Connie Woodring

Image credit: Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

My husband said he didn’t want to die and leave me flapping in the wind.

(He actually did want to die, suffering from vascular disease in his legs which caused him pain and the inability to walk without occasionally falling. He also suffered from COPD, kidney cancer and depression.)

Even though he said it on more than one occasion, I never knew what to do.

If I said “I’ll be fine,” he might take that to mean he was free to blow his brains out with his Colt revolver.

If I said, “I won’t be able to cope with all that flapping,” he might feel the need to stick around in spite of his agony.

I just never responded.

He has been dead for two years now, and I am beginning to understand what flapping in the wind means.

First, my singing voice left me in the lurch. I had been singing (at times, professionally) for 60 years. Counseling and teaching others for 45 years didn’t help. The doctor said I only had one vocal cord left.

I began sounding like Janis Joplin or Louis Armstrong, depending on how many martinis I had. I adapted and sang only the blues. This was not a bad thing. I loved singing the blues.

Next, another kind of plumbing went. My kitchen sink. The drain had no pitch, and I had to spend several thousand dollars to remedy that…The things we take for granted when the wind isn’t blowing too much to notice.

I began to lose weight, 20 pounds to be exact. I was always very thin, and so I looked emaciated and malnourished. I was eating regularly, had an appetite. I had to start eating junk food, which I abhorred all my adult life. It didn’t work. No fat anywhere. I had energy, rarely got tired and felt normal. I just looked like I was dying.

I was living on Social Security, so eating out was not in the budget. I knew if I ate out a few times a week, I would gain weight. Food banks and church suppers would have to do and maybe pasta three times a week.

I had no family nearby, and so I relied on my friends for support from the winds.                                                 

My friends began to fall, some down the escalator, some on the sidewalk, others down the stairs.   

Some could only walk with a cane or with the help of a friendly arm.

What I dreaded the most were the funerals. Some had standing room only.                                                       

Others preferred their ashes to be strewn on nearby lakes. One wanted no recognition of his passing at all.

I am dead now, lying in my coffin I picked out 50 years ago. There are no winds blowing in this box, no air at all.

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Connie Woodring

I am an 80-year-old retired psychotherapist who has been getting back to my true love of writing after 45 years in my real job. I have had many poems published in over 50 journals, including one nominated for the Pushcart Prize.