Dear Juhi, This is Why I’m Here
They say writing can save you, and I promise you it did.
I want to say it started when I saw him curled into the fetal
position on that hospital bed, blind and emaciated,
but that would be a lie. It was later.
Some events form dividing lines in your life. That was then,
this is now and his illness became that line between
who I was then, and who I became.
Before, a prolific writer bleeding words that sell, signed with
a name not my own. A ghost writer, copy writer,
intensely private, I lived invisible.
No one tells you, warns you how hard it is to care for a dying
parent, blind and shrieking with dementia and
you the lone player on the field.
They say writing can save you and I promise you it did,
skulking through black of night, coffee in hand
to seek solace in the blank page.
I wrote about him and not about him and, lo and behold,
did not lose my mind as I’d begun to believe I
might. Writing is therapy.
