No Gods to Save Him

   Dad always remembered my birthdays. If it was on a school day, he'd drop off a big cake during lunch time. He also sent singing telegrams-- the kind sent over the phone-- to me. I knew that I was always being thought about.

     Every year around the time of Dad's birthday, I wonder. Will he die within the next three months? And every year he doesn't die, the Lewey bodies continue their relentless assault on his brain. His hips get weaker, his saliva gets thicker, he loses more of his thinking abilities. He doesn't even want to watch his television anymore. I thought it was because he thinks his cable bill is around seventy five dollars. [It isn't. It's about five dollars]. Housemate says Dad can't follow the news or the stories and so he has given that up. I figure the housemate has the right of it. Dad's recognition of my housemate has gotten dodgy. 

     Dad attends church services offered to the folks in the adult living house he is in. He likes to sing. He insists upon "Amazing Grace" and "God Bless America."

     But whatever gods are blessing America, they aren't blessing my father. There are no supernatural or preternatural miracles waiting in the wings to swoop up Dad and restore him to good health. There is the sameness of each day, the spiraling and irregular progression of his dementia, the narrowing of his world. The days when he knows what is happening to him and the days when he doesn't all run into each other in one ruinous blur.

     So believers, do your best. Storm the heavens. Intercede and argue with whatever gods you subscribe to. Whether you call your sense of divinity Jesus, Allah, Kali, or any of the little gods and goddesses of old. It does not matter. Dad has been condemned without a trial. He will deteriorate and then he will die. I will cry. Some of the family will argue afterwards. Some won't. Ultimately, the results are the same. 

     There are no miracles. There is only this: We are all of us truly alone in our own skins. Absolutely nothing can permanently alter that.

~ sapphoq on life