Dementia

Dementia

When mom bolts straight up from the couch, from quarelous sleep or menacing dream, and shrieks out "Help me! I'm dying, I'm dying!"- there is a moment when you think Death itself would be scared off, frightened, in shock. The ritual of daily heartbreak is continuous, witnessing her struggles and confusion now, so active before. 

Everything about dementia is a startled, dreadfuly unwelcome reset. Random, sometimes ominous blanks from memory banks clogged in evil fog, mired down with star maps gone, destinations lost. 

How do you even hate a disease? Chemical imbalance. Plaque. Brain processes run wild. The most insidiously impersonal of crimes, it has no face to despise like Hitler, like Satan. Maybe each face of dementia's victims is held mercifully in God's great Hands, but names and personalities are still uprooted. Minds of loved ones are still ransacked, disheveled like tossed hotel rooms, numbers gone from the doors. 

Anyway, hating it never helps. After the anger and anguish, you're still left with hacked up jigsaw puzzles, shoeboxes of love letters from the war, curled and yellowed photos from when cameras were heavy, when no one smiled, long frowns, dark coats- hating never heals. 

Then, does it all return to dust, or, who knows where it all goes? Paradise or nothingness, synapses and galaxies, perhaps synonymous with the space left from all we've never known. If we did know, we've forgotten.