Sometimes I participate in a writing challenge hosted by Jenny Matlock at Off on a Tangent. Jenny provides a prompt and sometimes a style of writing, and we are challenged to use the prompt in a post, generally of no more than 100 words plus the prompt. This week's prompt was:
The pain was excruciating...
I wanted to do something a bit different. I wanted to stay away from writing something about physical pain. Then, I thought about my father. I see my dad suffer when he knows he used to be able to do something, and has lost the capacity to recall how to do it now. The pain must be excruciating!
The old man sat hunched over his desk, swallowed by the worn sweater wrapped around his barrel chest. He stared at the computer screen in front of him, with rheumy eyes, a tear escaping and rolling down the leathery skin of his cheek. The mouse in his gnarled hand felt comforting, but images on the screen brought deep despair. He remembered that he used to work this computer. He used to know how to find things on the computer. He knew much of his life was inside the machine, but he was damned if he could get to it now. The pain was excruciating.
Visit Jenny's blog to read more responses to her Saturday Centus prompt:
This is beautiful. Achingly sad. I've been helping my Dad take care of his wife who has dementia. 10 years ago I nursed my own mother as she died from ALS (Lou Gherig's/Motor Neurone Disease). It isn't the same as dementia or Alzheimer's. But she was utterly trapped inside her body and I was her main carer. It was the most excruciating thing I've ever seen. A women with a genius IQ reduced to this...person who couldn't eat, speak, walk, take herself to the bathroom...all at the age of 43.
ReplyDeleteYour writing is beautiful. I found you over at Michelle (Farmer's Wifey)'s blog today and I'm so glad I did.