The Joy of Rambling

People ask me how I’m doing. Well, I’m tired.

My Fitbit tells me I got 8 hours and 10 minutes of sleep, and my sleep score was 83, which is really good for me. And yet, I feel like I drank myself to sleep and have a wicked hangover this morning. Since I quit drinking six years ago, I can only imagine I’m dealing with something else. Maybe I’m getting sick, or maybe the pollen in the air is wreaking havoc with my head. Or maybe I’m just reacting to bearing the burden of watching him die.

Every time I say something like that I feel so dramatic. “Oh, he’s dying…please feel sorry for me.” But that is not what I want. I just want to be honest. I need to accept it for what it is, and saying the words, he’s dying, helps. They are such sobering words. The person lying in bed next to me is on his way to another world, and I won’t be going with him.

I picture him on the other side. Free. He is standing with a wide grin, tears brimming his eyes as his mom, dad, sister and brother surround him, hug him, welcome him. He feels the lack of weight so profoundly that he’s amazed he can stand at all. Surely in a moment a gust of wind will send him soaring. But no. This feather-lite existence is the new normal, and he will adjust to it moment by moment, just as every other soul does who passes over that line. On the other side:

• There was no forceps accident at birth.
• He doesn’t know the feeling of being bullied.
• He approaches life with a humble confidence in who he is, rather than the fear that others will find him out and reject him.
• The baggage of childhood tragedies for which he blamed himself, is not there. The horror of them all, gone. As if they never happened.
• The memory of struggling to make friends is gone.
• The effects of his brother and best friend’s death at the age of twenty, gone. In fact, he sees John and they pick up right where they left off.
• And the Alzheimer’s that took his ability to think, move, eat, and live, has vanished. He is whole. He is free.

This man on the other side, I cannot wait to meet. I already know what he’ll be like and I so look forward to him getting there and finding the joy and peace he has always longed for.

I sit across from the shell of this person, deep in sleep, slouched on a recliner under a warm blanket. And as I see him, I pray, “Lord, let him go. Set him free. Tell him it’s okay.”

I wait, day in and day out for that moment. My life is on hold until it happens. I find myself too distracted to read, watch TV, paint or enjoy any of the activities that would normally relax me or bring me pleasure. It’s like I can’t live until he dies. Is that the way it’s supposed to feel? I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.