Please remember me

I have watched him sit in the same blue armchair every afternoon for years

He would come home from work, rest his swollen foot on the edge of the coffee table and look through the square glass window

He would spot eagles and birds nests, possums crawling over the telegraph poles or smoke over the hills, beckoning me every time to come quickly before I missed it

But now when he sits in that blue armchair in his worn blue jeans, he no longer sees

He simply stares

His eyes are painted over with a glaze, and each time I come home, its like that glaze becomes thicker

Each time I come home, he sees less and stares more.

I’ve seen this before

The same empty expression and that permanent look of confusion painted onto her aged face, as if she was trapped in a body that she didn’t recognise

I was little and I though it was funny at first,

So I’d ask her a question and then purposely repeat it seconds after, knowing that I could ask the same thing one hundred times over and she’d answer in the same way each time

Oblivious to her own obliviousness.

I wonder now whether she knew that she was dying

Or whether her memory left her before she could realise what was happening

I know that she was in pain though

She would plead, distressed and desperate, for her mother to rescue her from the prison that was her own mind and body

Hearing the screams of my fragile and delicate guardian angel reverberating against the empty corridor walls of the ‘home’ still haunt me

It was as if she was a baby again, completely defenceless, wailing in pain for the warmth and safety that could only be given by her mother’s presence

I still think about her often

Caught off guard in the silence of night, or when the rain blocks out the insufferable sound of car engines,

I strain my memory to hear her voice and picture the soft pale skin of her beautiful, kind face,

If I try really hard, I can still hear her calling my name – the only name she took with her when she could no longer see, when she could no longer stare, when her eyes closed for the very last time and she could finally be comforted by her mother,

somewhere in a place gentler and kinder than this one.

I don’t know it I can watch this happen to someone I love again…

I don’t know if I can watch the glaze that covers his eyes get so thick that when he stares, he no longer sees

My tall, strong and indestructible protector is inevitably going to become small, weak and fragile

I can only hope that he will remember my name