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LJ Idol Week 2, Topic: The Missing Stair
Mar. 22nd, 2014 12:16 am"Your mother is dead"
My father was so quiet, so flat, so matter of fact that I didn't think I'd heard him correctly. I made him repeat himself.
"Your mother is dead"
He went on to explain that he'd gone to get her up for breakfast that morning, and found her, in bed......gone.
But I only half heard the rest of it. My mind was looping his words, stumbling over the horrible truth that they meant.
For 44 years they were married. For 20 some odd years after her MS diagnosis, he cared for her; cooking her meals, bathing her when needed, helping to change her clothes when she became incontinent.
Each day had a series of motions to go through, a set of steps to be counted. Each day was a never ending stairwell that he would climb to make sure she was cared for and happy.
No one had prepared us for the day that a stair went missing.
And, as with a missing stair, we all tumbled to the ground....suddenly unsure of what had happened, but each acutely aware that our confidence in what was normal was now shaken to the core.
They tell me that it was shock, but I went through some sort of disassociation that day. The major SCA event I was in charge of started *that* afternoon. Somehow I put the truth into a box and tucked it away, pulled myself together, and worked the event.
People told me to go home, that the event would be okay, that I needed to grieve.
But I stayed.
I'd tripped on that suddenly missing stair, and was clinging to anything that provided stability, a sense of familiarity, and perhaps even a little bit of fantasy.....so I wouldn't have to examine that stairwell.
It's been 7 months now, since the stair went missing and we all fell down. I've watched my father try and find his way, now that his normal is gone. It's been a hard 7 months for all of us.
We don't talk about that day with Dad. He's firmly going on with life like nothing's changed.
But part of me remembers the feeling of falling, dark and eternal.
I would give anything not to know that feeling.
My father was so quiet, so flat, so matter of fact that I didn't think I'd heard him correctly. I made him repeat himself.
"Your mother is dead"
He went on to explain that he'd gone to get her up for breakfast that morning, and found her, in bed......gone.
But I only half heard the rest of it. My mind was looping his words, stumbling over the horrible truth that they meant.
For 44 years they were married. For 20 some odd years after her MS diagnosis, he cared for her; cooking her meals, bathing her when needed, helping to change her clothes when she became incontinent.
Each day had a series of motions to go through, a set of steps to be counted. Each day was a never ending stairwell that he would climb to make sure she was cared for and happy.
No one had prepared us for the day that a stair went missing.
And, as with a missing stair, we all tumbled to the ground....suddenly unsure of what had happened, but each acutely aware that our confidence in what was normal was now shaken to the core.
They tell me that it was shock, but I went through some sort of disassociation that day. The major SCA event I was in charge of started *that* afternoon. Somehow I put the truth into a box and tucked it away, pulled myself together, and worked the event.
People told me to go home, that the event would be okay, that I needed to grieve.
But I stayed.
I'd tripped on that suddenly missing stair, and was clinging to anything that provided stability, a sense of familiarity, and perhaps even a little bit of fantasy.....so I wouldn't have to examine that stairwell.
It's been 7 months now, since the stair went missing and we all fell down. I've watched my father try and find his way, now that his normal is gone. It's been a hard 7 months for all of us.
We don't talk about that day with Dad. He's firmly going on with life like nothing's changed.
But part of me remembers the feeling of falling, dark and eternal.
I would give anything not to know that feeling.
