I've seen the rapture in a starving baby's eyes...
Wrote this a few weeks ago while I was stuck away from my FOB and feeling pretty down.
Some things never change.
I spend most of my life plugged in or asleep and wake to marvel at the beauty of this world we’ve been given. This singular world. All I have and will ever know, and I’m missing so much of it.
So much time spent grieving for loves lost that will never be, never were, that can never be again, for the lost futures of those dead and of those that loved them.
Terrified for my brother who has lost so much, and who has so much more to lose and ashamed at myself for making those who love me go through so much fear.
Probing the absence of a mother lost to me for more years than I had her in my life, and the sucker punches of emotion that well from the depths of a song or half forgotten scent. A shining star that burned desperately and flung all into the void when she went cold.
Mourning the loss of a father that loved me more than I ever knew and better than I deserved, the words that kept us apart until it was almost too late, but too late still. The loss of all those moments.
Tears in rain, whispers in time.
The crush of realizing that we are each of us who we have become, and none of us who we wanted to be.
The acknowledgment that it likely won’t be bullets, bombs, or cancer that will end me, but dementia stealing my mind and time and history long before the meat goes bad. Alone, a crying child in an old man’s body.
Grieve for lost potential, the end of possibilities, the eternally silent demise of promise.
Some things never change.
I spend most of my life plugged in or asleep and wake to marvel at the beauty of this world we’ve been given. This singular world. All I have and will ever know, and I’m missing so much of it.
So much time spent grieving for loves lost that will never be, never were, that can never be again, for the lost futures of those dead and of those that loved them.
Terrified for my brother who has lost so much, and who has so much more to lose and ashamed at myself for making those who love me go through so much fear.
Probing the absence of a mother lost to me for more years than I had her in my life, and the sucker punches of emotion that well from the depths of a song or half forgotten scent. A shining star that burned desperately and flung all into the void when she went cold.
Mourning the loss of a father that loved me more than I ever knew and better than I deserved, the words that kept us apart until it was almost too late, but too late still. The loss of all those moments.
Tears in rain, whispers in time.
The crush of realizing that we are each of us who we have become, and none of us who we wanted to be.
The acknowledgment that it likely won’t be bullets, bombs, or cancer that will end me, but dementia stealing my mind and time and history long before the meat goes bad. Alone, a crying child in an old man’s body.
Grieve for lost potential, the end of possibilities, the eternally silent demise of promise.