the fire that burns a little branch every day

Some weeks ago I wrote to say that my father had been diagnosed with
non-curable cancer. Since this daydream began, it's been a rushing
crush of terminology and tubes, doctors and diagnoses, rage and
reason. Each day unfolds like a new seriocomedy, with wacky new
characters introduced as nurses, specialists, dieticians,
home-health-care assistants. They're all carrying props and seem to be
continually redecorating the set of our lives. It's strange to be a
bit player.

In the middle of it all sits dad, unfamiliar in his stage dress. That
great big guy who gave me my loathsome body type sits drawn and
spindly, engulfed by ratty old easy chair from which he used to
preside like a giant-king on his throne. He is impotent and pathetic;
gaunt, and somehow small. I cannot even cry for this, because why
would I? After all, it isn't real.

The radiation on his throat has made swallowing anything, even fluids,
too painful, so now he has a tube piercing his stomach, and an IV pole
next to his chair. Also beside him is a bedpan, because he's too weak
to walk 15 feet to the bathroom. And, of course, the neverending
stacks of pill bottles, piling ever higher, surrounding him like a
fortress that grows more impenetrable every day. Pills for pain. For
blood pressure. To suppress his immune system. Pills, and pills, and
pills.

But when this pale, skinny, ghost opens his mouth, dad's voice still
comes out. He's always loved to laugh, and to hear that sound is both
heartening and heartbreaking. It's a whisper of what it was just a few
months ago, but there it is -- full of life and magic and courage.
Whatever else is hiding behind that fortress, he's still in there,
too.

And so there's mom, and she's the reason I'm writing this now. Mom
works two jobs and goes to school full time. It's too much. She's
strong, unbelievably strong, but the stress and sleeplessness of
constant care, along with the strain of work and study, all brushed
with a thick coat of slow, creeping terror -- it's breaking her down,
and she's losing it, both physically and emotionally. Calling and
asking what we can do to help has been inefficient, as she's either
too proud or too timid to ask for anything.  Thus, we, the kids, have
organized a plan to have someone at the house at all times, starting
tomorrow. We will learn how to crush the pills into powder, how to
work the tube-feeding contraption, and how to sit next to someone we
love whose pain we cannot cure.

What I'm asking for is prayer, specifically prayer that mom will *let
go.* She is terrified of taking her eyes off dad, of closing her eyes
for a few hours. I know my mother well enough to know that for her, a
minute's rest is some kind of betrayal. It's a noble ideal, but not
one that a real flesh-and-blood person can live up to. She needs to
dream right now, to let her thoughts escape her, and to let her body
revitalize itself. She needs to know that it's okay to do that, and
she needs to lean on other people.

I don't know if God is up there, or if He is, I don't know whether he
cares about this sort of thing. After all, I don't care about the
travails of ants. But when I was a kid, my mom and dad told me that He
*is* up there, and that he *does* care. So today I'm choosing to
believe that it's true, whether I know it or not. I need to believe it
right now, not for myself, but for them. They need someone to believe
it *with* them. So the belief they gave to me, I'm giving back to
them. And I'm humbly asking anyone who has a little of that faith to
believe it with us.

Thanks for reading. I really, really needed to write that.

-- 
-pcg
 [email protected]

-- 
-pcg
 [email protected]

-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot