Without My Father

Without my father:

honestly, I don’t know what to do without my father, in so many ways right now — my day is suddenly full of time, bereft of ritual and concern, no voice to listen for, empty. Caregiver is a role, and after many years it’s one that’s been removed from my life. I’m without this story and with need for another to be written. I am filled with doubt of my ability to be its author.

this is a scary place to be, and the most frightening part is how familiar it is, an underlying intimacy to a story-less under space that holds us all. Life allows our stories to be told, roles to be played, but we’re always on a thin pedestal if importance, quick for any title to be removed, position to be taken, role to be erased.

to find ourselves without story.

recent years have steadily eroded my most cherished stories — divorce, family relationships, and with the current pandemic my loss of business. Caring for my father provided me a vital role, no, more honestly still, it was deeper than that — it was fulfillment, purpose, a devoted cause to simply care for the well-being of a loved one. My father provided me a fine example to follow, a life given to this very cause as well and he showed this in the tenderness of his role as caregiver to my mother as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. To be a caregiver is a role, yes, but only in its basic…