Fog

Brain dead yet conscious. Fully conscious yet brain dead. I find myself wandering on a path I do not recognize. I find myself wandering on a path I know inch by inch. I find myself wandering hither and yon. 

Traces of who I was ten years ago remain. I think.

Caregiver of a husband who is slowly, very slowly going away mentally and physically. This sentence is my resume. This sentence is my path of most resistance. This sentence leaves me without words to explain, without tears to cry, without....without....without.

Reading something I wrote several years ago and seeing the naive spirit of a neophyte caregiver shocked me. Have I aged that quickly? I pondered the distance from there to here. I wondered where that woman went and why it seems she ran away. I wondered how the changes will come in the future as I remain both she who ran and she who is present.
I am the caregiver of a husband who is slowly, very slowly going away mentally and physically. I stare through my own sorrow and find my husband on the other side of it. Nothing I can imagine fits his journey. The sorrow swirls around me in a perpetual fog. At times the fog is dense. I hear someone calling my name but I cannot see them nor find my way. When the fog lifts a bit I see my husband. I am the caregiver of a husband I love very much. I am the caregiver of a husband who exhausts me, frustrates me, claims every ounce of my endurance. I am the caregiver of a husband who can see me clearly on rare occasions. He is the husband of a wife who wanders and moves in and out of a shroud of sorrow.

We live our lives in the strength of an undefined love in an unfamiliar territory. We live our lives.