| The Burden |
| I can't believe it's this time of year again already. It really does come around so quickly...and it's true that time passes faster, the older you become... I might well be getting older, getting on a bit, a bit long in the tooth...what tooth? I only have five of them left and they aren't going to last much longer...But I digress... I can still recall those magical days, days of times long past...Oh you can laugh, but it used to be such fun back then, before all this, back then in the days when I still believed. I remember the first year when I no longer believed in Santa...although I'd known for quite some time by then, my Mother said the time had come for me to know the truth...to join the world of grown-ups who knew that Santa was a myth and that it was parents who bought all the presents...It was mainly for economical reasons that I was elevated to this lofty station of adulthood at the tender age of thirteen, but even so... I cannot begin to express the joy that I felt at finding that 'Santa' had left me a small offering, despite the fact that I was now a 'grown-up'...It has stayed with me over all these years. My Mother always knew the importance of the little things in life, how truly important they can be, what a difference a simple gesture can make....She still does, even today. Of course our roles are reversed now. I am the parent and she is the child-like person who used to be my Mother. The doctors say that she doesn't know who I am...but she does. I have to believe that. How else could I go on caring for her day after day, wiping the shit that she spreads around her like a mantle? I made her a promise when I was younger. It was made with all the sriousness of youth and in all innocence, back in the days when we knew we had time to spare. I had never really considered that one day it might become our reality. My Mother 'made' me promise that if she ever became senile, or a burden, unable to care for herself...that I would 'do the right thing' and put an end to it. And I did it...I promised. But how can I? How can I admit that the woman who gave me life, who carried me, who kissed away my tears, who cried and my triumphs...how can I admit that she has become a burden? I can't. And so I accept my loving burden with grace...as I face another day, another month, another year...of cleaning shit for the child that was my Mother. |