Liquid Lucidity

I was two hours into my 12-hr shift at the long term care facility when the inner musings of my 91-year-old charge crashed into my psyche in wave after telepathic wave.

Dementia had long ago adhered to his faculties like a Siamese twin, rendering him a ghost of his former self to all who had once loved and visited him.

His thoughts coursed through my veins with such clarity I thought surely I had been mistaken from whence they came.

I steeled a glance - once, twice - into his unseeing eyes before clamoring to his bedside, afraid the IV of his bygone lucidity would be ripped out and expelled from me as quickly as it had appeared.

I saw him all at once - the son, the brother, the friend, the husband, the dad, the patient. Each character he’d played in the movie of his life had lost its counterpart to Death’s inevitable clutches. His parents, his wife, his siblings, his friends, and his children had sustained him. And for one whole day I bore witness to the hydrated soul who lay before me in a motionless, dehydrated shell.

He remembered.