Waiting

I’m currently waiting to hear from one of the nurses caring for my dad. They called me last night to tell me he was suddenly ill, and I might need to scramble to get down to be with him. They also suggested I begin considering hospice care for him. Things are feeling pretty disconnected right now… I guess that’s natural (?), as I’m about three hundred miles away, and uncertain as to his condition.

So much has been going through my head, and my heart, these past months, deepening over the past weeks as I’ve witnessed his further decline in health (physical and cognitive). It is a path through sadness, anger, frustration, confusion, yearning, and doubt.

Dementia, seeing what it does to him, feels like a theft of his mind, and an assault on his spirit. It is heartbreaking. Beyond the personal, is the political, or the social… that we (seem to) pay very little real attention to the process of dying, focused so much on the superficial. And it strikes me that there is very little our society does these days to truly honor the dying, or to offer answers to the living.

I don’t know what is going to happen over the next few days. I am still hopeful.

Thanks for reading,

~ Nellie

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