Blood & Water

My dad is fading. Slowly the memories and mannerisms that made him who he was are losing their colour and bleaching out to white. He is becoming unbearably light and as his history fades so my experience of him degrades and my own memories of the man who brought me up, taught me to be who I am, are being replaced by this pernicious disease. My mother, a force of nature, carries on. She cares for him; she cries for him, and she prays that his heart will finish long before the final memories do. To my left and my right my own children take their place in the world and I assume the position my father held for me. In memory of Jeffery Valentine Turner, December 17th 2916 to June 29thth 2018