Ghosts in the Tower

  I miss my parents. This whole devastating mess has really been a challenge for me and my family. We have always been close and the kids and I spent a lot of time out at their house. But that was before.
   I miss my mother, our talks, shopping, lunches, trips for coffee or just lounging around the house not doing anything, but not doing anything together. Which is much more enjoyable than not doing anything alone. I always went to my mother for advice or encouragement. Isn't that what a mother is for? That never changed after I grew up, got married and had kids. There were even times my mother rocked me in her lap to comfort me well after I got married and left the house. Odd I know, but not one of us ever claimed to be normal.  Now it is really hard to be around her. She is hurt and she had let her anger encompass her. Then her anger became bitterness.  In her mind if you did not support her you did not love her. She felt like everyone judged and condemned her even to the point of her mind twisting the words of what anyone said to her in love. Including the words of the people she respected and trusted. She has surrounded herself with people who are hurt and bitter as she is. 
  I miss my father a lot too. Unfortunately my father has not felt like my father in many years.  I remember as a little girl I looked up to my father a lot. What girl doesn't? We did things together and enjoyed each others company. We shared many common interests. Which is why I think I got along better with him than my other siblings. They always seemed to struggle to find a common bond.
  It was hard to watch him after he got sick  a few years ago. We were not here as we had moved to another state. He had been sick about a year before we came back to visit. There was concern that he wouldn't make it another year. The doctors could not find anything wrong with him, but he continued to get worse. His pain was so great that the doctors put him on an alternation of morphine and opium.  It did not take long before he was addicted to these highly potent and addicting drugs. He was either on crutches or in a wheelchair, depending on how strong he felt, or wanted to appear. 
  It wasn't long after this that we came home to visit.
His behavior had changed, and I think that it was during this time that my father stopped being the father I had always known. I still adored my father. But he was not the same. He was a ghost in more ways than one. Because of his pain and drug addictions he was a skeleton.  His skin had become somewhat transparent, he had lost so much weight and he was moody. I honestly think it was the moods that made it the hardest. He always seemed like he was angry, slamming cupboards or doors as he walked through them. Hitting things snapping at everyone. No one could do anything right for him and my father made some of the most hurtful comments during that time. Luckily over time and as he got stronger physically that got better...a little anyway.
 My life feels so empty sometimes without my Mother and Father here sharing life events. I am sure I sound like I am mourning the loss of my parents. In a way I am.
 They walk around as ghosts (or perhaps shadows would be a more appropriate term) of who they once were. They are here in life but not nearly as vibrant and solid as they should be. They seem transparent, opaque. They look like the parents I once knew, they speak like the parents I once knew. But they are not the parents I once knew. Yes they are older, but also emptier. In the past 8 months since my parents went their own way they have changed so much.  Their decisions have had consequences and those consequences are taking their toll.
  My memories are like ghosts of the past, taunting me. Reminding me that things will never be even remotely close to how they were. Sometimes I wish I could have them removed.  We will never have a family camping trip again, never have our traditional "It's a Wonderful Life" movie party at their house a couple weeks before Christmas. Never have the whole family over Christmas eve for pizza and movies again. No more summer cookouts with my fathers charcoal like hamburgers.Even if we did any of that it would never be the same.  All of our traditions that involve them simply cease to exist.  I believe that God can restore my parents. Perhaps they will not be restored to each other  but they will be restored to God. I am standing firmly on that. Once they are restored to God I believe they will be restored to me. I await anxiously for that time.

                                                  Thae