I talked with my dad this evening, a complicated relationship at best. His memory is failing like his mother, sister, and brother before him. He could barely make sense. My memory, he would say, my memory is so bad. I think that is why he keeps reaching out to me. I am in his memory and isn’t that the saddest thing? I am not in his short term, his quasi-abandoned child, I belong to the only reality he has left to cling to- his past. It’s a strange reckoning to see the bits you love, in a person you have struggled to love, begin to vanish. Suddenly there is nothing more precious than those bits you once refused to acknowledge.
A person always thinks there is time: time to be mad, time to be selfish, time to heal, time to move forward, and then you learn you’ve taken too much time and now it’s too late.