I'm unsure how to start this post. The past few days have steadily eroded hope or joy or understanding of how there might be any cosmic justice. Perhaps I start this too heavily with bitterness and impudence. Despite the stumbles and heartaches, I understand that I live a pleasant life that's stripped of the heartache, violence, and brutish reality of scarcity and hate that is a part of many people's lives.
This post and blog and disease is less about how I think the cosmos has wronged me, and more of how my mother, who is neither saint nor sinner, is suffering through a disease that strips and annihilates and abuses and defeats her so thoroughly that an aura of shattered faith emanates from her.
Adding to her burden is her husband - crippled by fear and ignorance - and her son - dumbfounded and powerless. We two moons orbit around her with the fear of her collapse and that we shall flail hopelessly into darkness. And we know this. We know that her death will send us deep into chaos and lonely without a tether.
I cannot explain the impact of the small defeats that prick our souls. The absence of insurance, the confusion with home health care, the sudden occlusions in her main line, the imminent end of her life, the betrayal of her body. Her heavy tears on Christmas. We lurch forward everyday fearful that tomorrow won't bring her death but another cut.
The only thing I wish for her is peace--away from this place, this disease, this body, this world of disappointments and regrets. I cannot do anything for her. And I stare as she crumbles.
