Concinnity

When we struggle to name our anguish, we unload and hang it on a mental rivet to hold the way we anoint it. 

With older parents in the family, we are a breath away from anything that could happen to them and constantly preparing in the shadow for everything that would. When we encounter a diagnosis, it is never how we want it to be but simply how it docks. Life becomes unmoored by sorrow in an instant. Each day becomes a crawling struggle, as if we are looking up from the bottom of a deep, dark well to understand what is happening. Each day becomes an eternity, one forcibly piled up on the other, muddied in a dazed clarity inside a disorder. To hope that diseases move along a reasonable, navigable, negotiable path is absolutely pathetic! We forcibly retreat into a dreadful solitude of brokenness. Sometimes, we bring others briefly over a phone call into our fierce battleground of coping. But before the sun dips into the horizon, it is always just us alone again and again. A merciless pull into the wreckage of our damaged psyche. From the intense force of unfathomable loneliness.

Sometimes, before we can fully understand the monstrosity of a diagnosis and grasp the casualties of its destruction, the entire living establishment becomes a desolate desert, with other family members struggling with the permanent loss as well. Life appears impracticable; an orphan forevermore!

We pray, sometimes involuntarily, to the Almighty during our struggles. A God who may not answer our pleas, perhaps because our prayers are incoherent. But our urges are not for a miracle but to protect the little sanity we cling to in times of trauma. We know not enough to pray for recovery from or alter the ailment’s course. Our only cry is to be able to bear the loads of pain.

Time ticks as it does best. Our running slows, and walking turns like dragging feet on the ground. We fall into crawling to endure our last yards to return to the soil we stand upon and hold in our palms like our loved ones did, without any exception. Some believe we would meet the departed on the other side and discover that our prayers hastened their suffering. An image that hinges on a bait hook in our reverie as we slog through our last quads. Even if temporary, improvisation is our most helpful arsenal to continue what is left of us.