My father is stuck.
Although it’s unlike Winnie the Pooh in the Honey Tree
or even a tomcat that’s climbed too high into an archaic but majestic oak, those types of ‘stuck’ are manageable to a certain degree.
It’s like he’s an enigmatic and unsolvable crossword puzzle, a stalemate of stalemates, a real life version of Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day where every day is the same.
And though I repeatedly tell myself that it doesn’t bother me, deep inside it does.
Every visit it’s the same old thing.
I sit and stare.
I tell him stories.
I tell him about the weather and what I had for lunch.
I tell him what I’m making for supper.
Almost like it really matters.
It’s sad when I can’t even fool myself anymore.
I swipe madly at this insidious and maddening cobweb that has my father’s mind and memories
in its grip, deliberately refusing to let go of him.
I was sitting the other day watching him go in and out of sleep like a short-circuiting light bulb, his eyes methodically opening and closing; wax on, wax off.
I softly said, “Dad, what are you waiting for?”
He muttered something incomprehensible and shut his eyes, tired of trying to solve the puzzle, tired of my questions, tired of this confusing life.
And I can’t blame him.
He’s endlessly moored to this drab room in a city nursing home with no knife to cut the ropes.
I’m starting to feel lost as well.
Lost to him and so very lost for me.
I feel guilty after asking him the question and retreat to my dark corner of the quiet boxing ring knowing he shouldn’t have to answer a query such as that.
This is about him and not about a too selfish ‘Michael’ and his all too busy life.
But how does it finally end for this sad and fragile man?
Please, dear God tell me. Will you?
If I’m supposedly being taught some kind of lesson here, I’m really losing my patience and these days nothing seems to make sense. Nothing.
So maybe God listens.
Maybe.
Once again, I close my eyes on another day and I think, maybe tomorrow.
Yeah, right, maybe tomorrow . . .