How do you walk away from more than thirty years?  How does that moment fall?  That instant when you firmly decide you're through with it all.  That all those good times - laughter, kisses, memories - are worth nothing, shadowed by dementia and aged eccentricities.  How can it come to that?

I am angry.

My heart hurts.

Has it really been so long since I've seen him?  That moment when I walked through the field, burdened heavy with unborn Liam, picking through thistles and daisies to where he lay on an old hay wagon - unmoving - my heart in my throat thinking he'd wandered out there alone to die.  And the relief, oh the relief that coursed through me when he stirred and pulled himself to sitting - I could hardly breath because of that relief - and he smiled that smile that cracked around his eyes and called me Sweet Girl and held my arm as we walked back together.  Has it really been so long?

And now, perched in the west, not knowing what day it is, he's telling the same story five times because he thinks it's fresh.  And she's leaving.  Leaving in the moment that it seems he needs her most.  Who will give him his medicine?  Who will sit beside him when he's ready to go home?  Will it be a ripe new hurt every day when his daughter has to tell him she's left?

I can't begin to know what it's like.  To watch the man you've loved shrink from vibrancy to dependancy.  To watch him loose zest.  To watch pieces of his mind fall to the ground - refuse of life.  But he still loves.  Can't that be enough?

I need it to be enough.  

Is that why her wedding dress was blue?  Because someday it would come to this sadness?  This abandonment?  This giving up that only looks like selfishness?

He stood by the first while cancer stole her from him.  Now who will stand by him when his own mind won't?

This is for better or for worse twisted into an ugly lie.

I am angry.

My heart hurts.