A Field Guide to the North American Family

Guilt

By Daniel Whatley

image uploaded by Rebecca Smeyne

All was in his hands. She had been unwell a long time. Things had gotten to the point where action had to be taken. When it came time, she complied, which was a minor surprise. Confinement in a medical institution had become necessary.

The confinement, predictably, produced layers of ordeal on top of and beyond the root cause of the confinement. The confinement clouded precise identification of the root cause, which was nonetheless related to age, physical debility and the uncertain realm of dementia.

What she had been afraid of, and this extended back forever, past that infinity that existed before he existed, was being thought of as crazy. That word exactly. Not that she couldn’t accept that judgment of herself, made by herself. She was insanely afraid of being labeled as crazy by others.

And his was the sole responsibility, granted by her and by the doctors. There was no other.

She gave him full discretion. And she reserved for herself all manner of reaction to the choices made. The choices HE would make. That he would be forced to make.

And consequences he would be forced to live with.

The doctors were pliable.

She was exact in certain wishes. None of which were remotely attainable. Part of her knew this, part refused to accept it. That part held him responsible. The first part ceded him authority.

The doctors would do whatever he wished.

For so many years, long decades even, she wished for everything to be over. Her life consisted of waiting. What she wished for produced anxiety in direct proportion to the nearness of its arrival. He was mindful of the conundrum of halved distances: on a line, if you cut the distance in half, then cut it again, and again, even to infinity, you will not get there.

Until, of course, you were there.

Two separate things become one.

She could be sedated.

Sedation worsened her symptoms.

To not sedate intensified the misery she was in. Accented the pain of the debility.

She had asked him to ask God to take her.

She wanted sedation to take her there.

Under sedation she was crazy. Her misery would increase when the sedation no longer sedated. Whether this crazy or that crazy was his to say.

His to choose.

And his to forever regret.