The Long Goodbye

Recurring participation meme's slide through my Facebook feed on a daily basis. Most are silly challenges or questions that I answer or hardly notice.

Then there are the meme's or posts if you will, that work hard to catch my heart and tear into it. Abused pets, starving children, health issues no one would wish on anyone. The list of heart rending stories is endless.

It seems most of us pass them by with nothing more than a glance; maybe a "like" or if we really read the captions and felt a connection, we might punch the "caring" emoji or the "sad" emoji shedding a tear. If  we feel our gut wrench, we might comment and then move on. Very few of us seem willing to take the minute it takes to share that meme that latched onto our heart strings. But never fear, because there are umpteen billion people using Facebook, the sad tale will be seen and felt by somebody.

Of course many of the cool kids; the influencers, the social media butterflies of Facebook and Twitter seem to consider sharing sappy meme's that show compassion and empathy of any kind for average Joes and Janes as exercise for losers. Unless it is about their favorite pop idol, reality show matriarch, or some other mud cricket personality, they are oblivious. They are the the really important folk who admire empty headed do nothings always embroiled in soap opera drama conjured up by their producers. They are the clowns who are worthy of our attention and idolatry.

I actually started this post a couple of months ago. For some reason I did not finish it. I had given it a title and added a picture of my mother in law who passed thirty years ago. The image and the title did give me a hint at what I had in mind when I started it.

My father died on the kitchen floor in the house I live in today. He died laughing from a massive coronary as my mother looked on from across the kitchen table. There was no time to say goodbye, no lengthy trip to death's door. We did not sit and commiserate watching a loved one slowly die of .......... there are so many choices, pick one.

As shocking and painful as my father's death was with its "here today, gone tomorrow" unpredictability, I think he was lucky. I cannot imagine a better way to die than with a smile on my face. We should all be so lucky.

And then there are the infinite number of ugly and unfair ways to die. Of them all, I consider death following a period of Alzheimer's/ Dementia to possibly be the cruelest death of all. To know your mind is going and also know there is no help that will do anything but maybe prolong the process, well, like I said, there is nothing crueler than existing in a capricious atmosphere of on again, off again clarity.

The callous indifference of Alzheimer's I would not wish on anyone. It is hard on the folks suffering from it and hard on the loved ones they leave in their wake as they slowly disappear into, well, I guess no one knows where they go. My mother in law's last years were suffered under the dementia cloud.  What was really sad was she remembered me, her son in law, but not my wife, her daughter. I could not imagine, I could only watch.

Keep it 'tween the ditches .........................................

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Music for this post  ................ Hmm. Well, it appears others have already traveled this path; this path for tunes to ease the anxiety and emotions of experiencing or watching someone we love slowly disappear until only a physical caricature remains. It is called "Music for Dementia Patients" . It is a top ten list. I picked Ben E. King's "Stand By Me".