What The End Looks Like

I never thought the end would look like this.

He just fades in and out. Clear. Then not. A cycle that turns so many times it’s hard to keep balance.

The dad I knew talks to me as if nothing has happened. Then a dad I’ve never known replaces him like some kind of demonic possession. But more confused than evil.

There is an elaborate darkness in there. Maybe because the end can be an agonizing up and down when you’re the one trapped inside.

And that’s what he is. Trapped.

The joy has gone, except for moments when the anxiety medication mellows out the edges.

He did wink at me tonight after an extended session of anger and hateful things. And he gave me a hug. I needed that after the battles.

Fighting to tear out the catheter. Fighting to stop me from fixing it.

So much fighting.

Inside must be an endless battle between the waves of consciousness.

I think the hardest part is not knowing what to do. There are no good answers. Just the agonies that we rarely speak of.

I get it. Who wants to talk about anything that’s not working in their lives?

Or death?

Who wants that kind of discussion when the movies and tv and internet show so many people whose lives look so perfectly put together. How could such terrible things ever happen to us?

So we all go through our lives until we hit some bump or spot so low that it feels like it goes on forever.

He’s in a forever right now. And sleep is the only reprieve.

I hold his weakened hand, bruised from the IV that’s been giving him something — anything — to take off the edge without sending him over a permanent one.

I admit I’m an agnostic who prays to Christ with apology and gratitude. I accept my inability to understand most of existence. But I still can’t help but wonder. Why so hard? What is His better plan?

So I sit and I wait, as do my brothers. Death is not imminent. But the death of who he was has already passed.

For what it’s worth, he spent his life struggling with the demons of childhood, a tyrant father, and a loving mother he could not save. And he raised five kids while trying to silence the demons.

So things were broken. And beautiful.

He wore underwear with holes, so as not to waste money. And toiled repairing TV’s in a hot, sweaty workshop for years, to make sure we had food and the things we truly needed.

And God did he love mom. Sixty-nine years together, until she was ripped away, leaving him a fraction of a man.

For the past year-and-a-half he’s tried to make sense of aging, grief, and profound loneliness. Which is how we got to here. The last fall did him in.

Kind of.

Before the fall, he was mostly coherent, unless he lost sleep. But now it’s a jumble of good and awful, and awful is winning.

I pray for direction. I ask God what is His bigger plan. And what can I do.

Crickets. At least for now.

He is snoring faintly. Finally he has some temporary peace. It’s 2 a.m. and a misfit “Home For The Holidays” strangely plays in the hall outside.

I am briefly comforted by a thought. That we have all survived every bad thing that has ever happened to us.

We have. And maybe this will be ok too.

We are seven billion people sharing a mysterious planet, on a journey together and apart. We live, we love, we leave.

I am tortured and gifted and humbled by all of it…