Dementia is such a debilitating thing to watch. The slow decay of the mind. The significant changes in personality traits. The stages of grief a person goes through when they realize they are losing themselves. Sometimes, the shutting down of the body until slowly a person becomes entombed by their own skin and bones. Living fragile for years because their heart and their lungs want to outlast the...
It’s a dangerous thing
To play loyal
Always tried and true
It’s a dangerous game
To choose others
Before ever choosing you
It’s a dangerous choice
To not value
Yourself above the rest
It’s a dangerous world
Constantly putting
Your loyalty to the test
Would it be so traitorous
To start making
Choices meant only for you?
Would it be so traitorous
To start living
The life you were meant to?...
I remember Grandma.
It was cold when they called me out of class. Wrapped me in a coat. Sent me to the car. The one I was riding in, with its engine perpetually moving me forward, when I learned that you would never move again. My heart stilled, frozen as the world passed in a blur around me.
Blame stood in every corner of the room that day. It roared and vibrated its chords in the throat. It r...
I’m sinking. Like quicksand. Words arranged to pull at the edges of my mind. Take me under their spell. Bind me in their pages. I am a prisoner to their story. When it ends, I am a jailbird released on bail. To await another trial, another sentencing, another tale to detain me once more....
“It’s not abandonment.” I tell myself as we pull up the long drive of Embark Residential where I am admitting my daughter. I’ve cried almost the entire drive. She has cried a little too but I can feel her putting on a brave face.
It’s been a year now of trying to find her help. Different therapies, hospitalizations, intensive outpatient programs. A year spent making appropriate boundaries with to...
“Get down from there right this second, you headache of a person!”
My mother’s nagging voice droned in my head as she shouted from below. She was standing outside in her robe, the crusty remains of yesterday’s makeup still clinging to her face as she held one hand above her brows shielding her eyes from the morning sun.
I sat dangling my legs over the rusted gutter of our single level home, con...
