It takes a while for reality to sink in some times. I’ve spent the last year knowing that dad was changing. Deteriorating, for lack of a better word. Yet somehow I didn’t really get it. That changed today. I spoke with my aunt for a bit and learned that things in FL just aren’t going well. Guess they have lo-jacks for humans since dad now has one. He is wandering, and going into houses. He has been seeing a therapist. But the doctors no longer think depression, and now have settled on dementia. He has been going to a day program, since his wife claims her support group advocates for that. It is all about “what the group thinks and does”. What the fuck. Where’s the koolaid? Here we are in NY learning all this now. We have no say, no control. She has changed his life according to what some fucking group thinks is right. These are people, not neurologists, or other specialists. Just a fucking group of people who have people in their lives with dementia or Alzheimer’s. I don’t like it. Nope, not at all. But that isn’t the kicker. The really kick in the gut was she’s disconnecting his phone. It is my only connection to him. She monitors and erases any emails. Any paper mail that is sent goes unanswered. The very last thread of connection I have to him is about to evaporate. Poof. With that it is the end. The reality is so hard to accept, yet it clearly has hit the mark since I’m not really even functioning as I write this. All those stupid things I told myself to disbelieve the truth. To ignore the warning signs that were clear as day. He wasn’t going to get better. He wasn’t going to suddenly be his old self. How I could have possibly deluded myself into believing that I have no idea. I swore in my head she was drugging him. That he was really okay. I knew better, but I let myself fall into this false place for months on end. Today it was as if someone sharpened the focus, and the lens just showed me the truth of the situation. The REALITY. He’s gone. That feisty pain in the ass that always saved the day wasn’t coming back. There will be no magic trick. I sat looking at the tax filings knowing he would never be able to “fix it”, or call “somebody”. I was on my own. For real. It is scary, no I take that back. It is terrifying. I have spent my whole life sheltered, protected and defended by this man. He was larger than life, and involved in everything. Didn’t matter what was the issue he always had a guy. There was always a phone number. Always a person to turn to. The enormity of the emptiness I feel in this moment is just…I don’t have words to put on it. I feel a bit like a gourd that has been all hollowed out and hung up to dry. It is an awful feeling. I just don’t know if I can do it without him. My life has been so defined, and so fucking enmeshed with his. This emptiness in his absence…I really find myself struggling to even find a way to describe what I am experiencing. All I hear is the echo in this hollow excruciating place.