The Cough that Carries You Off

Over the weekend, I got sick.

It began with a scratchy throat that quickly turned into laryngitis. I spent most of the day speaking in a rasp that made Adrienne laugh. Then I got exhausted, too exhausted to drive us to Sunday Mass. I declared “I’m going to Saint Mattress” and went to lie down while Michael walked uphill to church by himself.

By nightfall, I had a low grade fever. My body temperature tends to be low, so when I get a miniscule fever I immediately turn into a Victorian waif, limp and helpless and on the verge of tears over nothing. I was worried, and didn’t even know why.

Then the coughing began, which is how I got a ridiculous couplet stuck in my head. This was thanks to my mother’s stories of her elementary school, on the other side of Northern Appalachia. Her eighth grade teacher was a nightmare of a nun named Sister Charles. Sister Charles walked with a cane because a little boy had pushed her over on the playground and broken her hip once upon a time. I don’t know if Sister Charles started her campaign to terrorize children in vengeance for the hip injury, or if she’d always hated children. She liked to keep the class on their toes with the threat of violence; she swiped with that cane if she thought you weren’t paying attention. She would berate and ridicule until you cried, if the cane didn’t do the trick. She once yanked my mother to the front of the classroom by the hair, berating all the way, for the sin of staring out a window and daydreaming.

Sister Charles also liked to keep the children on their toes by making them recite things at the drop of a hat. Whenever a child coughed or cleared their throat, Sister Charles would bellow “IT’S NOT THE COUGH THAT CARRIES YOU OFF! IT’S THE COFFIN THEY CARRY YOU OFF IN! CLASS!” and everyone would rise from their seats  and recite “It’s not the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carry you off in.” Every child in that classroom was afraid to cough so they wouldn’t have to recite the poem. And my mother used to recite the poem when we were growing up, so of course I recite it when I cough.

That was how I spent the next hour: *cough* It’s not the cough that carries you off! It’s the coffin they carry you off in. *cough, cough* It’s not the cough that carries you off! It’s the coffin they carry you off in! Over and over in the dead of night.

I have been sick with something or other my entire life. I had a misdiagnosed chronic illness that kept me very disabled and frequently stuck in bed from just before Adrienne was born until just after she turned nine. I still struggle with fatigue now and then, but if I keep my PCOS in check, I’m often energetic now. Every time I get sick, the fear comes back. How long will it last this time? A few days? A month? Forever? Am I going to go years without even the dignity of a proper diagnosis, again? What if no one believes me, again? What if they claim I’m exaggerating for attention, again? This is what I fear every single time I get sick.

Cough, cough. It’s not the cough that carries you off. It’s the coffin they carry you off in. 

I found myself turning to the icon of the Virgin Mary, the one I sometimes have to hide so I can’t see it because the Virgin Mary scares me. I am afraid she hates me and blames me for everything, like my mother does. I am afraid she will be a capricious tyrant like Sister Charles. At first I begged her not to hurt me. But then I calmed down a bit, and we talked.

Maybe she and I could get along.

The fever broke at about three that morning.

The cough was gone by the next night.

That was what I did when I should have been writing last week. I got sick, and got a poem stuck in my head.

But I’m good as new now.