I’m visiting my parents for the first time in 14 months and it never gets easier. They get older and it doesn’t get easier to see. My dad sleeps most of the time, he still converses in bits and places but the majority of his day is in sleep. He’s so frail and walks so slow that it scares my brain to remember a man from my childhood and even young adulthood is now this aged person sipping his soup from a spoon in his bony hand. My mom, 13 years his junior, is still active and moving and spends her day helping my dad and her mother, still alive at 96!
At some point in time it got like this and it’s heavy. There’s nothing heavier than watching time move relentlessly across your world. Maybe that’s where the fatigue comes from, time moving and moving and wearing on you slow and steady. It hasn’t ever stopped, from the day you were born until now and once you’re gone. It weighs down more and more day after month after year after decade. I don’t pretend to know how to outrun it or avoid it. I’ve told my wife to never let me get to a place where she has to care for me to her annoyance, but she shakes her head at me and says “ok sure” knowing damn well that she will do the same for me that she sees my mom do for my dad. Wipe his nose when he’s not aware it’s dripping, clean some food off his hand that he doesn’t see. Help him walk back to the bedroom when it’s dark. He’s technically blind, I don’t know if I mentioned that.
Aging is there and when you’re young it feels like a sad chapter of life to ignore and then one day you become the main character of that book.