Fuck you. Fuck you for what you've done. Especially after what we do for you...
We get on our knees, we pray, we try to do right in this world and by your name and we praise and revere you. We start wars in your name. We bless our children in your name in your houses of worship. We inaugurate our Presidents by putting their hand on one of your Holy Books. We invoke your name at the start of sessions of congress. We make the time in our lives to acknowledge the Blessed Perfection and Peaceful Goodness that are the hallmarks of the All-Knowing and Supreme Father.
And, in return, you denegrate my father. You insult his legacy. You spit in the face of a man who has served your children well, a man who dedicated his life to treating the ill and helping them to regain health. And you're not just taking his body and physical abilities, like his ability to dress himself or his ability to wipe his own ass, or his ability to just get up from a mother-fucking chair.
No, that's not enough for you, God. Because you're a sick fuck. You're taking his mind as well, his ability to know what's going on around him, his ability to cognitively navigate the world. And today, you took his ability to remember that we have steps in the back of our house. And so, when it was time to say goodbye to the cousins who'd come over to visit, he walked out the back door, forgot that there were steps there and then... just tumbled wildly through space.
There were four of us nearby too, so you really planned it out well, you evil fuck. We were close enough to watch everything unfold in that blink of an eye but not close enough to reach out and grab his arm and help him. He fell to the ground on his right hand, hip and knee and as head tumbled forward. Our two tomato plants stopped his head from cracking open on the cement porch. Disgraced. Shamed. Embarrassed. Face literally covered in dirt.
And there he sat, stunned on the ground, in front of his wife, his son, his cousins, and the at-home aide who comes here every day to try and make his life and Mom's more easy. So we all rushed to help him, us puny humans, us limited and imperfect creatures of habit because you didn't, God.
You're a pathetic sham of an illusion. You're a douche bag magician who can't pull off the simplest of card tricks. My father doesn't deserve this undignified, disgusting, degrading decay. Not at all. So fuck you, God. Fuck you for your contempt of a man that served. Fuck you for your ignoring a man who provided for his wife and three children. Fuck you for the disgrace you permit despite our best efforts.
And if this is how you've seen fit to treat a man who's served others for his entire life, it makes me wonder about what your plans are for a selfish prick like me. Because I haven't spent my adult life tending to the sick and trying to heal them.
A mentor and spiritual advisor suggested that I get on my knees this afternoon and pray after what happened. To open up to you and humble myself and just give it all over to you. I replied, "Why should I pray to the God who's taking my Father's life?"
"Tell him you're angry," my friend responded. "He can handle it." And so I have.
As for your houses of worship, they mean nothing when my own house is in mourning and decay. As for your Righteousness, I don't see it. As for your Grace and Perfection... Fuck you.
Later, this afternoon, when I was cleaning up my Father's urine from the bathroom floor, and from his shoes, and from his pants because he can no longer urinate while standing, I pretended that what I was cleaning up was you, you twisted fuck. Cleaning up the remnants of my faith that you actually matter, that you actually listen and that you actually care.
And then... I tossed you into the toilet with what was left of Dad's piss and flushed.
David, thank you for so honeslty describing the anger we as caregivers feel. I appreciate your courage. Best to you as you navigate such a tough situation. I understand (really, I lived it too).
ReplyDeleteTerrible situations always provoke anger, they always provoke a question of why me, why now, why my family? There is no answer, we are to small, to simple minded and to angry to grasp the answer and in the end the question is always one of faith. We question god regarding wars, but that answer is simple, men, their egos, their desires for power create wars not god. One cannot ask for free will and yet have God join in and not allow free will to flow on a case by case basis. When looking at Iran today, its leader we can all see this is man not god leading the charge, but when a loved one falls prey to sickness or violence we want an answer as to why? He was a good boy God, he is a good man god, why are you doing this? When no answer is forth coming as if we were shouting into a dark room we are filled with rage. This rage is expected from us, and we deliver it to all around us, including god. I do not know what the answer is, there are questions that are bigger than I am capable of understanding, perhaps we are availed to show our love, our care giving, our ability to supplant our egos our lives on behalf of another. Perhaps its to pick up a cause that we would not have availed ourselves to, if not for the circumstances, I do not know. Perhaps if we have faith we understand that someone, something is calling the shots and perhaps they know what they are doing? What I do know is that in the final analysis it is a question of faith, it is that simple. I would be rageful if I lost a child, I would probably strike out not only at god but the world and man, any man. But then after some time I would have a choice to love my anger and disappointment or love my fellow man and have faith, faith that will grow deeper with the pain. Our lives will never be without pain becasue we have emotions that we attach to others and to things, when life changes which it does every second and we dont want the change then pain is the by product. Thus faith, that someone, something is higher than me, smarter than me, has my back will grow. That is my hope and my faith.
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