It's late at night as is common for me. Insomnia becomes a companion as I get older. The hours between midnight and 4:00 a.m. are no longer the hours of productive solitude they once were, but instead, a co-conspirator to haunt the aging recesses of my mind. As I walk aimlessly through the home I work for. The place I've strived my whole life to find and to call my own. The sanctuary I've craved my whole life to which I can run and hide and create..... is now becoming a place I go and mourn my formative years. A place where I watch the video in my head to remind me of the things I can no longer find the strength to achieve. Where I watch the knowledge and drive and vigor and ambition of my youth slowly fade beyond my grasp.
It's irony not lost; that having achieved a place physically where I can go to indulge my creative impulses, those impulses are attenuated by the loss of the very energies expended to arrive there.
I wander and stop to commune with my sole remaining housemates. My physical companions. My loyal friends who are concurrently also fading from this world. One from age, the likes of which I will never see. One from a body failing before it's time, which I can wholly relate to. Time is cruel. It takes your mind to a higher place just as your body can no longer accommodate the rise. Then it takes your mind far from what your body is still able to maintain.
My housemates in solitude are my two dogs. They have been a source of love and entertainment. My burglar alarms, my alarm clocks, my consigliaries, my alter egos, my therapists, my friends. I have found that their silent adoration, while misplaced at times, is still more worthy of my devotion than most people I know. Not to disparage the people I know. They are mostly all really good people. But when it comes down to the bare bones of it, people are still about themselves. Its not a fault, it's a necessity. We all have to live, survive, make it in this world. It's just that there is a loyalty there that humans just don't have. So, I return it. I will stay the course. I will stay by them as they have done so for me. Many people may not get that. That's OK. But I owe them at least that much. To be there for them til the end. For them it will come soon enough.... too soon..., well in it's time, as nature intends... I do my best in the mean time to make it as comfortable for them as possible... And when all is said and done, I can live with that. What comes after is the hard part... The empty halls and rooms.. The early morning wandering without a fuzzy face to scratch or paw to shake.. No one to come home to, and no reason to do so. Then I will be left alone only with the video in my head, and take that next step along the path that they have treked before me... Among all their other attributes, they don't let me forget... where we all end up, and how we should try to live our lives until then.
