As we stand by my father's bedside and wait, I have realized a few things.
1. We have little control over how life will unfold.
We can plan or create, directing our desires and dreams into a hopeful reality. But in the end, it is life's currents that take us down the stream. It brings new meaning to the children's song "…row row rows your boat gently down the stream…)
2. Love is graceful, enduring, and tough.
This evening when I came to the hospital to spend time at my father's bedside my father seemed out of sorts, a bit sad, downright blue understandably so…
(You see my father has been unable to move without help, not able to get out of bed at all. His body has gone through many changes…he hasn't been able to talk, yet remains alert (a hellish crime of life to be trapped alive!) We communicate with him through a menagerie of codes, sign language, lip-reading and watching the slight subtleties of his weak body.
3. My cousin's husband Chris said to me the other day…"Death is not the worse thing that can happen in life." Though my father doesn't believe this (with all his faith and belief in after-life) he strives towards living and getting well against the odds.) But suffering, like violence, seems worse than death to me.
When I came into my father's room to take the night shift, he asked for my Mother, which he does a million times throughout the night. Typically he mouths the word "Mom?" I explain each time to him that Mom is at Marty's (my brother's.) sleeping. That she needs to rest. But tonight he asked for her with a silent voice that was not like all the other nights. He seemed to need her, want her, not just asking about her. I called my Mother and she came back! 24 hours non stop she stayed…
4. Love comes at a price and can make you bleed.
My Mother asleep in a chair by my father's bedside. My father sleeps easier.
As I stand here in a daze I witness their love profoundly and cry.
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