Member-only story
How to Sharpen an Ax
All I can hear is my dad saying, “Come home as soon as you can. I need you.”
My parents are my heroes, my monuments of stability, my jumping-off point, but never in the ten years we’ve lived in different states have I heard Dad say, “I need you.” I know why he’s asking. My mother, the heart of our family, is sick. It’s not cancer or an autoimmune disease. It’s not head trauma or heart failure. What is plaguing my mom is more insidious than diseases that come attached to reason, if not a cure. Mom has early-onset Alzheimer’s. Like her mother, older sister, and several aunts and uncles, she is losing her memory.
I find a flight to Alabama and start preparing for the worst.
As I’m packing yoga pants and plaid shirts, I keep a running list of what I might need. Books. Lots of books. And journals. Pens. Socks. Lightweight clothes to deal with the pea soup humidity. Whatever else is missing, I can find at the local Walmart.
What I don’t need is a cigarette. I haven’t touched a nicotine product in two years, a fact that doesn’t fail to surprise me. Every time I tried to quit smoking harpoon-sized cravings would sneak up and punch me in the jaw. But I feel almost like I did as a young non-smoker. The incessant want isn’t with me.
