Excerpt from Adventures in the High Wind ©1989
                 

The Insensitive Man

It had been coming for years, the cloudiness.  It wasn't until the kitchen fires that my father had to acknowledge the existence of a problem with Mom.  Until then, in his strong and firm manner, he had shown no outward recognition of the fact that she was losing track of things.  He has always believed in ignoring, as long as possible, matters about which he has no control.  At times, those of us who love him have thought him to be insensitive to some of the dilemmas of our lives.  It has turned out, however, that, early on, he realized he wasn't God and, hence, couldn't cure all of the ills afflicting either the world or his own family and chose not to waste his mortall-limited energies doing battle with impossibility.

But then the cooking oil would be forgotten on the electric burner and the kitchen walls would have to be repainted; and eventually he would have to cook for himself and for the lady who had prepared his meals for forty years.  It had started with momentary lapses of memory and then progressed over the short span of a few years to occasional moments of clarity. 

Senility he couldn't fix; helplessness he could work on.  For months leading to years he expended his physical and emotional being in the constant care of his mate.

This insensitive man.

And by the final weeks, when her wonderful mind had gone from being partly cloudy to having the steel-smooth cast of a winter's day, and even her own childhood, her own history, had retreated to inaccessible realms of her fading mind; when even "now" had ceased to have focus--when all who loved her knew death was the only kindness left for her; he, too, had nearly wasted away in the struggle for the last days of her life and dignity.

My robust father was bone-thin and his voice was a near-empty vessel by the time that Mom died. 

And so it was that this insensitive man taught me such a lesson in love.