Hug Your Loved Ones

     Not that I expect many people to care but I'm not going to be online much if at all for the foreseeable future or ever. Mrs. JP may have reached the end of the road and I just have to prioritize my time and energies moreso than usual. I'm sorry for the promises I've broken and for everything else I'm letting fall by the wayside. But life and especially death supersedes all else. As it is, I can't even be seen in public any more let alone online because I can't stop crying. So I apologize to all I've disappointed. 

     Dementia is such a cruel fucking disease and, even though it's called "the long goodbye", it's shocking how abruptly it can advance. Just last Friday, Mrs. JP, a friend of ours and I spent much of the afternoon in historic Concord, Massachusetts. We went to a restaurant and had lunch and walked around town and she seemed as fine as could be expected.

     By Saturday, she could barely walk. Sunday, I had to take her out to do her laundry and she collapsed in the parking lot. She just stopped eating, drinking or trying to do anything. I was going to take her to the hospital yesterday then I saw her walk into the bathroom under her own power and I thought she'd turned a corner.

     I was so wrong. I can't get her to eat or drink and I have to practically carry her to bed. I have to do the right thing by her and acknowledge that a hospital can care for her in ways I cannot any longer. And I just know when the ER staff sees what they're dealing with, they're going to insist on putting her in a nursing home.

     Every year, since at least 2020 when the pandemic began, has been worse for us than the previous one. And this year has been the most horrible one, yet. Her dementia had advanced to an alarming degree and she's finally hitting that dreaded wall, I fear. My van's falling apart, my computer is failing. I ever lost a lens out of my glasses last night lugging her to bed. Everything is falling apart in my life, including my girlfriend, and I'm powerless to stop it.

     And if she doesn't make it back, it'll destroy my life in more ways than one- Emotionally, psychologically, creatively, financially. So much of our routine is woven around each other and everything I ever did or tried to do I did for my girlfriend of over 13 years. I don't know why the universe keeps subtracting things and people I need and love but I'm getting tired of it.

     So if I don't make it back myself, you'll know why.