Loss lives in a dark prison somewhere near my heart. I keep it trapped there, most of the time. But, sometimes, something happens to set it free and a wave of breathlessness tears through my body. The closest thing I can compare it to is being winded by someone who really knows how to throw a punch. The eternal seconds when one’s lungs refuse to fill, the sense of suffocation, the burning pain. Yet, with loss, it’s not a matter of waiting for one’s body to remember how to breathe, not merely a matter of wiping away the tears and getting back into the fight. Instead, all one can do is wait for it to crawl back into its hiding place and do one’s damnedest to render over the broken wall with a thick coat of denial. Broken. Now there’s a word. Broken means fixable, right? Wrong. Some things cannot be fixed. For some things, broken means over, defunct, never again to work correctly, beaten… lost. The ability to smile if you have Parkinson’s Disease. The ability to draw if you have arthritis. The ability to read if you have macular degeneration. The ability to recognise your own family if you have dementia. The ability to build a career if neurological fatigue cripples you in your early thirties. Loss of a loved one is a heart-breaking reality of life. Loss of oneself is a bewildering, destructive whirlwind that crashes through a mental construct that has taken a lifetime to form: the very essence of who you are. ‘Experts’ talk about going through the five stages of grief when a medical diagnosis smashes your hopes and dreams. What they don’t tell you is that, once you master Acceptance, that sense of loss will lie dormant, deep within your soul, ready to be awakened by the slightest touch. That’s what happened to me this morning when a bereft, beaten face smashed through my defences. I sobbed as a young man kissed an elegant, elderly hand and she began to dance. I sobbed for her loss, and mine, but also for the miracle that, through the desolation of Alzheimer’s Disease, her ballet had survived. When I reach my final years, will my memories be defiled by loss or will the prison walls have been reinforced with unbreakable steel, my mind free to look on my past with perspective and a sense of achievement? I pray for the latter. I pray that, when someone plays the music of my life, my mind moves with the beauty and grace of Marta C. Gonzalez. https://www.facebook.com/paul.bunton/videos/10223790543934452
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