Our dinner was finished. Yet, the empty dishes remained before us. We three sisters, either merging quickly into or out of our 50s, sat around the table.
We talked. We laughed a little. Bickered none. Our mother died barely three months before. Our father, left behind, had yesterday fallen for the 12th time this calendar year. It is a year so new March has not lost its chill and had only managed to birth but an early inkling of her spring flora. The 12th time had occurred within days of the same week that falls 10 and 11 had happened, each necessitating a dreaded trip to the Emergency Room. Falls one through nine had resulted in "a busted head," meaning a searing wound in the flesh of his age-spotted and balding head. But fall number 10 had produced a cracked vertebrae and 12, a cracked rib. Since Mother's death, Daddy had been diagnosed with Parkinson syndrome, marked namely by heightened dementia and rapidly increasing limitations to his mobility. His frightening spiral amazed all of us, his daughters, his doctors, the staff that cared for him at his assisted living facility.
As we, his offspring, sat around the table Saturday night, we wondered to ourselves and aloud how long the horror of what his life had become would persist in time. It was a horror our eldest sister, the only one remaining in our home town, bore daily. Her stress was palpable, managed by food.
In two days, we would move Daddy into the"reminiscent unit" of his assisted living facility.
We sisters sat together with sadness and resignation, knowing this is what our father's proud life had become. And we were helpless but to watch it unfurl. One of us, the eldest, always on call to run rescue. The other two of us in different cities, in two different states, connected only blood, worry and cellular phones.
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