I must be stoic, so that others may grieve

It has only been a day, but it feels like a lifetime.

There are periods in your life when everything seems to go downhill… periods when the world seems to contain an awful lot of pain and ugliness just beneath its shining and glittering surface. It is on days like these when I tend to try to escape into a world of storytelling.

I am a storyteller by nature, and once, nearly by profession. It is often difficult to confront the dark terrors that I see around me, but even when people seem to abandon me, I try to find some silver lining to hold onto.

Yesterday, that silver lining was very difficult to find.

I went to Kansas City to visit my uncle. I hadn’t seen him in perhaps 4 months or so, but in the intervening time, he has aged more than 20 years. The man I remember as a vibrant and captivating man just barely past his middle age was not the man I saw in the hospice bed at my uncle’s house. This new man was almost a stranger. He weighed less than half of what my uncle weighed, and his loose skin hung off of his bones like so much old clothing. The man I remember as fiercely independent had been replaced by a man who could not roll over in his own bed without the aid of another, and who much use a baby monitor to summon relatives into his room to hold him up over his commode. The fire that once danced in his eyes and the passion in his voice when the two of us sparred over American educational policy had been covered over with a dullness weariness so palpable that I – the long-winded orator – was rendered speechless.

I don’t expect him to last for more than another week or so.
I got to talk to him for a little while, but his strength is rapidly fading. He can only handle talking to people for a few minutes (10 minutes at the most) before he becomes too tired to do anything else and falls asleep. The doctors said that he doesn’t seem to be in any pain, but simply that his body is shutting down as toxins build up in his body.

I can’t believe that he’s going to be gone. I just don’t feel prepared to deal with a loss like this. In times of crisis, I’ve always been the cool-headed one. I have an uncanny (and probably unhealthy) ability to lay aside the part of me that feels so that the part of me that thinks and does things can take over. When the girlfriend of my father’s boarder tried to commit suicide in my parents’ house, I was the one that went into action mode, called 911, directed the trucks to the house, and cleared a path from the front door through the living room so that they could stretcher her out. When my brother got married, I didn’t participate in the joining of two people I care about into their lives of happiness so much as I took care of the details allowing them to enjoy their day.

The only problem is that by being the cool head when other people are in crisis, I don’t have time to deal with my own well-being. The more I care about what’s going on, though, the harder and harder it is for me to divorce myself from the part of me that can do things under pressure when other people break down.
I’m just not sure I am going to be able to bear that burden this time. It’s too much weight for me to carry at once, and I’m afraid of what will happen if I try. I’m just not sure what other option is left for me.