bluetrust

So I've been drinking a little tonight, just gin and club soda, a sort of refreshing light-calorie + heavy-proof little concoction I discovered a while back, and it occurred to me that my father is steadily losing strength and drifting ever closer to the unthinkable abyss. He's been in the hospital for ages now and pretty soon I'm going to have to either go see him, or choose to remember him as I last saw him and not see him.

When I left Los Angeles, he was looking good and recovering faster than doctors expected. Emotionally, he was desperately looking forward to a second chance at life. We had a few good days together and I felt safe leaving him, just a couple days before he was going to be discharged. I love him so much -- it's not easy to see that second chance taken away from him.

And part of what scares me the most isn't losing him, but losing myself. It's that abyss that I wasn't aware of, which is spinning slowly beneath me, us.

How could anyone go through life being aware of their own impending death and still be cheerful and patient? All I've got in my bag of tricks is a slowly dawning sense of horror and a little hysteric energy.

I worry that my dad can think through his sedation and worry about dying. I worry that it's a cheat to take awareness of the present from him. I worry that by not having the chance to prepare spiritually for his own death, when it comes he won't be ready for it. I don't know why I worry about these things when I lack a firm idea of what happens once someone dies, but it's the things I dwell upon when it gets quiet. I fear dying will hurt.

And the strange thing isn't that I'm paralyzed by fear or unable to concentrate on work, which one would expect, it's that I've grasped some sort of dignity of poverty. I don't understand it. I've been doing great work lately in spite of being aware that this may be my last day, or perhaps someone I care for's last day too.

I don't remember death being this complicated when I was in college and my step-father died. I cried a lot and went skating, it was all very simple and direct and heavy.

So I'm posting this, not because I'm asking for sympathy or anything, I can bare this, it's just that I'm sure I'm not the only person I know who's been made aware of the abyss. And it must effect their lives.

My thought is: maybe it would be easier for other people if they knew that people like me are scared too.