Both Sides of the Mirror

I don’t know why, but I can hear them all. Their voices haunt me as I gaze upon them from where ever the hell I am now. Why they chose to eat Greek salad after my death still confuses me. “He was such a beautiful person,” says my middle aged son as he wipes a solitary tear from his eye. I look at him and see a man that took me thirty years to finally know and six months to completely forget. I don’t really understand what happened. From what I hear, people started getting worried when I couldn’t remember Janice’s wedding. It was only a few months previously and supposedly I danced with my grandkids. I didn’t think much of their worries; I knew I was getting older. That said, going to the doctor was something I just would not do. “One minute daddy is opening up Christmas gifts, the next minute we find him twenty blocks away banging his cane up against the liquor store,” was the nonsense coming out of my son’s mouth at the doctor’s place. If only he knew how much I hated those stupid socks. But the truth is, whatever overcame me must have been the devil himself. I couldn’t read or write. Things that I held sacred for 67 years began falling apart before my eyes. I didn’t know anybody, didn’t care for anybody, and sadly, didn’t understand anybody. I was alone. Why was this happening to me?

What I see now must be a nightmare. I drift into a room where men in white have me placed on table. Well, most of me. It seems that my brain is on another table. Those men draped in white take slices of my brain speaking of plaques and tangles. Sounds like stuff I use to have in my teeth after supper. In any case, I know they did their best to help me. I just hope they don’t start poking away at my heart too.