Pen Truth Contributor
Two days he lay there, unconscious, labored breathing, skin clammy, his olive complexion now pale, face gaunt. The man that lay before me now is only half the man of my memories. Me, I sat there with him day and night for two days now with my brothers gathered around and little sleep, not realize it at the time his unconscious state was drug induced. My thoughts drifting though my attention held fast, wondering how we ended up here in this desert, little sleep, listening to the gurgled tones rising from him, struck by the stark reality, he would soon die.
How does one comfort the dieing when it is the living who endure these gates of Hell. Anubis does not tend to us, only those spirits that pass through to the underworld. Morpheus has forsaken me, sleep is short, never complete or restorative, all around ghosts wailing, moving through the passage ways and walls. This is deaths door and I am an outsider while he straddles the two worlds. Charon waiting at the shore.
Even in his unconscious state the bodies preservation mechanisms know what to do, like an infant he suckles water from a sponge when placed against his lips. My emotions riveted to the moment, each as it’s own eternity slowly ticking away into infinity, each second, minute, hour dieing it’s own agonizing death. Helpless against the ultimate fate that awaits us each, hiding in the darked recesses of our minds the cloaked beast lurks. Moments. Hours. Days. Dread. Guilt. Death.
The room was bright, lights never being turned off as I sit. In half moments of troubled sleep, half awake I hear him breath, someone calls my name, a name I thought that I long ago forget. In eerie slumber I see the ghosts of the other guests as they pass, lingering long enough to make me aware of their pressence, they move on to the beyond. Charon waiting at the shore.
The sands of time shift through that desert, seemingly barren of life, we all wander. Under our feet the sands try to swollow us whole as we strugle through this world. We find our footing, but only a while for the sands shift continually. We choose our own path, so we like to believe as it it time that truly holds sway over out presence here. Time, neither long enough nor too long, simply ever present and in a flash our mortality shattered. Charon slacks his boat’s rope from the mooring and casts off.
Charon’s boat gently glides through the water rocking my father’s sleeping soul gently as though an infant in it’s safe cradle watched over by loving parents, moving down that dreary coast. That ferryman has his gold coins, his duty clear. Our father’s body, now an empty shell sleeping that ever mortal sleep, calm, peace, empty. Charon waiting at the shore.