damocles

Remember the story Damocles and the sword?

Hero Damocles was the courier of a very rich and fortunate Greek ruler/tyrant named
Dionysius. Dionysius offered to trade places with Damocles for one day just to show him how it was to be the ruler. In the evening they had this huge feast, Damocles enjoyed himself as he ate and drank.

Then he looked up and there was a large very sharp sword hanging over his head, held up by a single horse hair. Damocles lost his appetite. The ruler had conveyed the message of how, as ruler, their lives are shadowed by constant fear.

Well I am not a ruler, but there is a certain dread in my life.

For a long long time I have had this rather unsettling feeling. It is hard to describe, sort of like the lights being turned down a notch, or having a fish net thrown over your head.

It might well be part of this Az thing. We know the first chapter in the book, but not the last ones. We would gladly read ahead, but that is not allowed. We have to do this thing, literally, a day at a time.

One week Miriam is working at the job she loved, and the next she is unemployed, retired and soon she was diagnosed with Early Alz. It was the sentence of death, and we both knew it.

In a way when we are born we are sentenced to death. The end is part of the beginning, in ways we don’t find comfortable.

And even if I can’t describe it accurately, I have come to understand the courier Damocles.