Suffering

Losing family is hard enough, like a grandparent, sibling, or parent, but to watch them slowly die before your eyes with nothing you can do to help kills you inside. Worse still is for them to remain alive physically as a statue of themselves--as though dead, but somehow still moving and talking. Dementia or other catastrophic neurological trauma or physical disability that leave the person a shadow of themselves haunt their victims' families and loved ones.

I know now the pain of seeing family pass away, but still remain to haunt us as phantoms of themselves--you spend your every waking desire to catch that last glimmer of the phantasm, but it escapes your reach.

I clutch, verily, to what remains of my sanity tonight.

Today is my father's birthday. He turned 63.

I was to go and visit him again in Salem today, but I cannot bear to bring myself to go. I don't have the strength anymore to do it alone.

I'm tired of all the suffering. How people older than me can keep their sanity is a miracle. I cannot fathom their devices or means. I am overwhelmed by grief--grief I cannot express, but which hides behind false smiles and hints that all will be well so long as I bear onwards. I must endure! I must survive! Why? I know not...

Maybe, this is all we "survivers" have to keep our course steady?

While this may sound absurd for someone my age, twenty-six, but I feel in these moments as if I need the caretaker--not just my parents.

My mind trickles away from me--slowly fading into sunset as the daylight of my life escapes my fingers, merging into shadow.

"Where am I headed now?", a voice calls, "Where am I to go, and what am I to do? What purposes am I to set my course? What am I to navigate by? Where is my light? Where is my tinder box?"

[Nothing.] An emptiness.

I turn, "Oh, fate! Oh, cursed plight of heaven! You cast me aside so easily, and yet, you demand everything! You leave me here, alone, abandoned, forsaken on this cursed Earth to tend my days! For what?! For what am I to do? God, you have foresook me! Am I alone? Am I no longer worthy of your graces?! Am I a husk of flesh, meat, and bone--broken sinew to be cast aside when no longer a need you can find through me? Am I contemptible to thee? In your eyes am I broken an not worthy of repair?"

I stumble. Crashing down hillsides I cry, "My God, why hath you forsaken me?! Why have the promises been undone in me? Why am I to suffer so without reproach, without relief, without reward, without peace until my final breath does leave me?"

"If I die before I wake, I pray my Lord my Soul will take. But, if E takes to cast aside, better to fade away and cry for better days spilt here, for trials evermore will curse me till I'm gone."

"As my ship sets sail, today, I cast aside my mooring. I am to die, begone, away! Lest ye fade away with me!"