When I'm alone, I think. I revisit the times that we had.
It starts out with happy memories but I hate the ending.
It always ends the same, with guilt and tears.
I visualize your face, and attempt to remember the sound of your voice.
But it's difficult, because it's been so long since I've heard it.
It hurts to know that when you left us, you were alone.
Alone in your own prison, your mind.
The guilt is unbearable, to know that I wasn't strong enough;
to be there, or to keep a promise.
I couldn't take what they turned you into.
An empty shell, of a once so energetic beautiful human.
They drained you of life. They killed you quicker.
And they did it because it was easier on them.
When I was four, I spun around in circles in between your chair and his.
I stopped at his, I told him that I loved him more.
But, I was just talking to talk.
That's just what kids do.
I declared that I loved you too, but him just a bit more.
I felt bad about it, even though I didn't know why.
I could tell I made you sad.
So I made you both a promise that day.
I told you that when you got really old,
that i'd never let them take you away,
I said i'd take care of you.
He passed long before you, in 1996.
Three days after my 6th birthday,
My first encounter with death,
I thought he'd comeback, but he didn't.
I looked for him in my dreams, in nature, in the birds that he loved so well.
by filling my misunderstood void, with love and companionship.
You were my new favorite, and it stayed.
Rummy cube, buttered turkey sandwiches, Sunny Slope.
All of which were our routine.
You told me that you aren't supposed to wear underwear to bed, because thats the only time of the day that it get's to air out.
And that a lady never goes to town without putting her lipstick on. So you would let me put on your classy peachy pink lipstick before going to town.
I remember the way that it felt when you'd wash my hair for me in the back kitchen sink, and how i'd beg you to use the blue shampoo. But you'd say I wasn't old enough yet.
I'd hide when I would see my mother's car pull in, Her uncanny guilt trips were always just strong enough to get me out from underneath the table and leave with her.
But every time I left, I'd peer back at your kitchen window, knowing that you would inevitably be standing there, sadly watching us leave, and you would be alone again.
This image stays burnt in my mind.
You grew older, as did I.
But mine was obvious, I grew taller and more feminine.
While yours seemed to come from nowhere.
Only seen through slight differences.
Like your macaroni, the time you used Orange Juice instead of milk.
But I ate it anyways. Because it was the right thing to do.
You started having hallucinations, time confusions,
and forgetting the things you did daily for the last 30 years, like how to play rummy cube,
you started playing out of turn, and soon you didn't play at all.
I was a teenager and I didn't see the severity.
I thought your mishaps were amusing at first.
I was easily flustered with the repetition of things.
Not as patient as I should've been.
I was unsure of how to handle it anymore.
I was too concerned with myself and fitting in at a new school.
I stepped away from you when you needed me the most.
I wasn't aware of what i'd soon regret.
The time came and they took you.
They put you in that forbidden place.
They hollowed you, taking all that was left,
with the prescribed pills and sedatives to keep your mind at ease.
Because It made their jobs easier.
Leaving you unaware, confused and afraid.
You grew frail, and emotionless.
Deaf and blind because of their lack of concern,
Theft of your hearing aides and glasses.
You no longer recognized me.
Only 15, I couldn't protect you.
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