Steven Robinson, one of the hosts of the Orthodox Radio program Our Life in Christ, posts a moving entry on the Conciliar Press blog titled, apropos of how many times it took him to post it, "Third attempt." In it he writes of caring for his father-in-law who has a degenerative disease of the brain.
The post is about what happened with him and his father-in-law at Fuddruckers, but here's a taste of the post:
Supra neural palsy they call it. It has eaten away at my father-in-law's brain stem for a couple years now. He does things because he cannot think fast enough to do something else. I know this because he lives with us.We take Gil with us when we go out because we cannot leave him home alone. When we do that we come home to him bruised or bleeding. Once he fell into the fishpond in the back yard.
We found him wet and exhausted sitting on the ground. It took him two hours to climb out of
a twelve inch deep pool of water.
Read the whole post, learn and inwardly digest.
Steven's blog is Pithless Thoughts.
From the Steven's own blog come these gems:
He [i. e., his father-in-law] has bad days. On those days he stares into space, cannot walk, has to be fed, and is non-communicative. A good day is when we can get him from his room to the dining room via his walker to eat with the family.
And this one:
I built his coffin last weekend in my carport. We brought it in and showed it to him in his room. He liked it. He said he wanted red velvet for the lining. But then he chuckled and said, that might scandalize people. I said, yeah, you don't want them thinking we're burying a whore. He laughed. It is now in our basement waiting for him to repose. Some of our friends won't go down to the basement. I tell them that some monks sleep with their coffins in their rooms. The constant remembrance of death is a good thing. It keeps us sober. Living with someone who is dying keeps you sober too. Just in case you don't have a coffin laying around as a reminder.Posted by Clifton at March 8, 2005 10:00 AM | TrackBack