She knew cancer
better than almost
anyone else
in the hospital.
Although not an MD,
she had taught
in the Med School
while doing research
and writing books
and using her Ph. D.
to produce others.

Cancer Society money
had come to her lab
of busy bees for years.
She sat on panels
of judges that chose
who would study which
type of the deadly C.

Now the crooked cells
that had begun in her throat
had caused spots, as they say,
on her lungs and heart
and in her bones.

As a pastor married to the lab
headed by this agnostic,
I knew how to visit
folks given the death sentence:
listen, touch an arm, a shoulder,
remember good times together.

She wanted to tell me a joke.
I leaned close to hear the raspy voice
above the hissing oxygen.
“A microbiologist’s joke
is only one millionth as funny
as a regular joke.”

She raised a needle-filled hand
to touch my worried brow
bowed over her dry grinning lips.

-Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, November 5, 2013

Editor’s Note: Steve was “married to the lab” at the University of Illinois through one of its research scientists, his wife, Nadja.