Tonto Rides off into the Sunset

Strapped into his wheelchair, Tonto's head nods
As though it takes too much effort to raise it.
Stubbornly he rebuffs the nurse's attempts to feed him,
His jaws clenched, his boney fingers drumming the tinnitus
Of the William Tell Overture. Over and over and over.
The music gallops through his mind, iron hooves of rhythm
That never seem to cease, that won't ever give him peace.
He suffers from dementia pugilistica.
He's as punch drunk as any ring-ravaged boxer
From too many pistol butts to the head.

He was always the obliging side-kick,
Ever faithful, willing to take the beat-down,
The whack on the head, or to be tied to a chair
Next to a fuse leading to a keg of dynamite,
Willing to endure pain and to court death
In order to give the Lone Ranger
An opportunity to arrive
Just in the nick of time
To save the day
And make the future bright
For television clichés.

Now, in his few lucid moments,
When he's cognizant enough to observe
The tape on the window screens,
The yellowing of the peeling wallpaper
And to smell the disinfectant that
Almost masks the odor of urine,
He watches his nurse disgustedly scowl at him,
Dump the plate of food she'd been trying to feed him
Into a garbage can and flounce outside
To smoke a cigarette with the good-looking janitor.
.
Tonto wonders bitterly
Why his old friend, Kemosahbee,
Doesn't come around to visit him anymore.

Saying Goodbye to One Who Can't Comprehend It.

Hospice had given him roughly two weeks to live.
I understood that he was gravely ill, but still
I walked past my father when I first saw him.
My mind couldn't equate the image of the frail being
Strapped in a wheelchair, head bowed in drug-numbed dullness
With the strong, virile man that he had been in the past.
Prepared as I was, I still just couldn't comprehend it.

There are unfeeling, mean-spirited, selfish souls
Who can abandon a trusting pet along some road
Without a twinge of conscience or remorse.  Then
Of course, there are the abusers and conniving users
Who can discard someone who has given them their love
As callously as you or I throw away a tissue,
But that's not an issue.  You cannot defend it.

This was a time though when I wished I functioned that way.
My thoughts twisted and coiled as I groped for what to say.
It's so hard to say goodbye to someone that you love,
Knowing that they can't comprehend that you're doing so.
I grasped my father's hand and I believe that he knew me.
He struggled to address me, but couldn't frame the words.
It hurt me to see him in pain, knowing I couldn't mend it.

I kept waiting for something to click, some unspoken
Bond to link us together.  At times I could almost see
The man that is trapped inside the body that has failed him
Clawing to get out.  It had to be so frustrating for him.
There was no sense of finality, no closure for me either.
Just a dull empty ache that will remain unfulfilled;
A garden of regrets that's waiting for me to tend it.

It's so hard to say goodbye to someone that you love,
Knowing that they can't comprehend that you're doing so,
Knowing that the constants of his strength, his presence
And his love are fading away, like a radio signal
That loses strength as you travel further away from it.
The ravages of age have decided my father's fate;
I'll denounce the decision, but there's no way I can amend it.

Fading into the Light

Having witnessed the pre-dawn miracle
Of my son's birth, I left the hospital
Raptly clutching the Polaroid image
Of him blanketed in blue swaddling,
His cheeks scratched by tiny fingernails
Clumsily flailing against the brightness,
The light that engulfed him after the slap
And the snip of his umbilical cord.

My Mother-in-Law's kitchen light was on.
My knock intruded upon her Sunday rite
Of communion with coffee and newsprint.
Gazing tenderly at my new son's picture,
She embraced her role shift from a mother
To grandmother, her love eminating
Already toward that image of a child
Who would come to mean so much to her.

The child whose name has now fled her memory.
A strong woman can accept growing old,
Embracing each year like a new grandchild,
Something to be lovingly fussed over.
Louise had never been that strong.  Childlike
In her vanity, she'd been an ornament
On the arm of both husbands she'd outlived.
She was happiest when dressed in fine gowns.

Never so devastated as on that day
When after having caused an accident,
She heard an officer refer to her
Via radio, with "Joe Friday" terseness
As "a confused elderly woman."
"Do I really look that old?" she asked us
Tearfully, as if our denials could help
Turn back the hands of time's ruthless advance.

Now Alzheimers is hastening her decline.
Her memories have lost their focus.
Images flee beyond recollection
Like photgraphs that have been left too long
Upon a desk for the sun's rays to caress,
Sapping them of their detail and color.
Clarity fades into a shroud of indistinct white
That wraps her thoughts in a befuddled haze.

Osteoporosis bends her body forward
Into a question mark that puctuates her
Confusion.  She hears words she no longer
Comprehends, has thoughts she's no longer able
To express.  As death approaches she'll curl up
Into a fetal-position, womb-secure.
When the brightness that spooks a newborn beckons,
She'll head toward the Light and be absorbed in it.