Mourning # 23
You had muscles, you had flesh
I touched your hair, I felt your breath
your clothes remain, that mattress stain
you’re in my heart, in my brain
you’re all I had left
now gone.
We couldn’t hug, we couldn’t kiss
what a shame, what horror is this
all contagious, it’s outrageous
getting victims from all ages
go on, make a wish
be gone.
---- Josephine Schirripa’s son Michael
was being treated for coronavirus at
Staten Island University Hospital where
he is a doctor treating coronavirus patients
and Michael’s mother, Josephine, aged 90,
was a coronavirus patient at the same
hospital at the same time, but Dr. Michael
Schirripa did not learn this until just before
he was to be released. Michael was feeling
poorly when the nurses wheeled him into
the hallway to go see his mother. “I touched
her knee, she opened her eyes, looked at me
and lipped, ‘You’re OK,’ and I said, ‘Yeah,
I’m OK,’” Michael recalled. “She seemed
at ease.
Josephine Schirripa, a homemaker from
New York, died on April 11, 2020.