Monday, October 08, 2012

this be the verse

Our parents' aging, their mortality, is something we all know will happen but which still, I guess, finds us unprepared. Certainly has me. I really, really don't know how to deal with the painfulness of it, so great I find myself turning away in avoidance, which is about as unfair as can get.

We used to talk of many things; now we seem to talk only about her symptoms. She used to drive me quite mad with her ways; now I watch, helpless, while she becomes increasingly helplessness. She chokes on her food, coughs violently, unable to control the functions we learn to control as we leave infancy behind.

It is graphic, it is grotesque. It is gross.

I find out things about myself, or am reminded of them: I remember how, years if not decades ago when life last presented a very difficult front, I became tight-jawed, angry, irritable, hard. I think this is my way of coping. I don't know how to be properly hurty and vulnerable with it.

I don't like myself tight-jawed, angry, irritable and hard.

I don't like myself much at all.

I wish for a few things, not enormous, not impossible as such, I'm not asking for divine powers to take away her illness, I am not a believer in anything, and I know nothing can be done for her. But I do wish some things, for myself, for my needs are there too. I wish someone would ask me how I am doing, so I could say, "fucking terribly". I wish they would gather me in their arms.

I wish there was a space for me to howl.

2 comments:

Reading the Signs said...

I am troubled that my first response to this is, oh what good writing. But it is. And the howl is encrypted.

Anna MR said...

Thank you honey – brought tears to me eyes you did

x