My father is dying. This time it's not my mother's bi-polar exaggerations but a doctor's rational words--clear, precise, definitive: six months, if he's lucky.
Now, I sit making plans to return home sooner than Christmas, sooner than Thanksgiving. Going home is like entering a war zone. Going home to the bedside of a dying man must be like visiting the area two miles beyond ground zero--a place where melted flesh hangs from bone--a place where the only concrete thought is fresh water.
Tomorrow is the fourteenth anniversary of my sister's death. Last year, I was almost dead, myself--rotted from the inside out, still in shock of what a psychiatric ward really smells like.
I feel that this time of year is my dying time--that the thread is twisted and frayed, and it's sheer stubbornness that keeps my fingers from slipping off it.
Of course, on the circumference of death, there is life, but life, over these past few weeks has been a bicycle ride over an unpaved road--jarring and tedious.
I ended my relationship with Emi, catching her, and myself in certain ways, off-guard. Yet it was time--before old patterns I broke nearly three years ago re-emerged. I have hurt too much to regress, and I am finished with remaining steadfast for fear of movement.
Each day I wake to fears, and each day I push a little harder against them. I write a sentence, two, a paragraph without deleting it. I call my mother. I smile at strangers when I walk. I look at the sky instead of the tree lines. And I've been writing old friends. For over a year, I couldn't face my most kindred spirits. Shame is a mightier weight than lead.
In these re-introductions, I found strength to seek out my most honest critique--my deepest ally. Except in my year of neglect, she has become dusty and somewhat broken within her own life.
And tomorrow, of all days, she will survive yet another test of human endurance: a biopsy of a lump in her breast.
Each day I wake to fears, and each day I push a little harder, because giving up has become impossible.