Toby Campbell, MD, MSCI
School of Medicine and Public Health
2020
Poem
Living, like I am,
Where nothing is simple and nothing is normal.
Dying, like I am,
In slow motion.
Here, in death’s shadow, every minute matters.
The mundane and the vital feel too much the same:
A bath and a podcast and a bloody mary and holding my grandchild and sobbing goodbye.
All of life is turned up too loud.
I need to find a minute that isn’t important.
A minute that doesn’t matter.
A minute just to be
normal, wouldn’t that be nice?
But I know normal isn’t coming back.
It left a long time ago.
Back when a minute didn’t matter.