Picture This

Another interminably long time since I wrote. The holidays have come and gone, and I, like many others, continue each day to profess to start my New Year's Eve resolutions. A new year, but old problems persist. Who am I and what is my real purpose here? What do I really want to be when I grow up? At times I feel my identity is so unremarkable, so neutral, that I would not know my own self if it were to bite me on the leg.

Even so, I move forward, a slow protracted crawl towards each day, and yet there is not enough time to do all that has to be done. My daughter, no longer a child, grows and changes before my very eyes. Her beauty and intelligence chill me. She speaks her mind as one who knows the ropes. Do you know what brilliance you possess?? Of course not. It is one of those things that one realizes many years later as they gaze at a picture of themselves caught in a splinter of time. Oh, if we had only known the truth; taken real advantage of a reverent moment. God, what magic we could have worked!

I keep looking, thinking, wondering when my truth will reach me. I want it now, immediately, while I am still able to recognize that dance when it comes waltzing into the room. I will seize upon it, like a tiger upon it's prey. I will be the thing,(whatever it is), that I was meant to be, and not all those vile things she said I was.

Odd, how now she sometimes will ask, "Who's this?" when she hears my voice on the phone. "Don't you know who this is?", I'll ask. Hesitantly, through the fog that now surrounds her, she'll answer , "Yes, you are my daughter", although she cannot recall my name. Even though I know I shouldn't, I remark, "Too bad you never treated me like it".

It has become evident to us all that she is now in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. Now as she slowly fades away, I become even less than what I was before. Now there is a mighty task at hand. With frailty of body and mind upon her, who will take her in?? I fear that after all is said and done, it will be me. I ultimately become caregiver to the thief who stole my dreams; to the brute who broke my bones.

If it comes to that, I guess I will do it. Do not think for a moment that it is a duty I wish to take on. I don't, but yet, I have to be bigger, much bigger than the sum of all my fragmented parts.

Still.

Here.


Andi