Dementia #

How hard it is to see the person you love

fragmenting,

progressing through moments

without recollection,

changing,

shape-shifting into someone different,

Lost

in time,

adrift in place.

 

An echo of their self

hanging

clinging,

to moments.

 

As they pass,

disintegrate,

a flaking headland,

eviscerated,

hobbled.

 

Pain that sends an echo,

through Monday to Sunday

round

and round

and backwards

and ceaseless,

forever.

 

Godel, Escher and Bach

Conjoined –

linked by the eventuality of time

the march of moment,

the disappearance.

 

You imagine it is a dream;

a ghost image;

Passing before you,

Scintillas,

bouncing off your retina.

 

Pain,

hollow anger

and sorrow.

 

Not embarrassed,

no longer ashamed,

Just carry-on as normal

as if this new You was something we had planned

way back when,

when we were coordinating the future.

 

Nice retirement plan;

slow down, feet up and restless,

falling

and getting up

and diminishing,

wearing away,

threadbare self

Translucent.

 

Winnowing of the self until all that is left is

the

Self?

And what goes forwards,

What makes the difference from now into the future

are

The footprints we leave.

 

With a final last, lost

look

in the eye;

the curtain comes-down.

 

Your terminal act,

a scream

a shout

an angry,

Shake of the fist

at fate

at time.

Your husband and sister and friends

for their defiance of the disease

their resistance to the disintegration

When you would sooner…

 

And we do our best,

We offer love,

succour,

sustenance,

even if the only nutrition you permit

Is sweetened tea,

toast

and

Opal Fruits.

 

Your anger,

we ignore,

Your nakedness

we look away,

 

and

just as your plans are in tatters,

so are ours,

and our lives

and you

and your life

will never

be the same,

Forever;

A blot,

A Rorschach on you, on me, on us.

 

Until one day

The sun will shine

again.