My father died this morning.
He had not been himself for half a year. He unwittingly messed up my life badly in most of that time. I made a point to see him last night, and I saw a look of terror that I had seen only on my mother as she approached death.
I took the dog (who had a right to know) along. Supposedly he could hear, and about the only thing I could think of was to read the Bible. If he could still hear, then that could offer more assurance than anything else. It's not that I am a religious man; I am not. I had asked the nursing home staff to try to bring over a clergyman to give him some assurances.
Psalm 23, of course, and Psalm 33... the latter a psalm that Johann Sebastian Bach set as a delightful motet (but in German and not in English as in the King James Version).
But today I can almost cite Schopenhauer on how I feel: Obit anus, obit onus. It has been that hard.
He had not been himself for half a year. He unwittingly messed up my life badly in most of that time. I made a point to see him last night, and I saw a look of terror that I had seen only on my mother as she approached death.
I took the dog (who had a right to know) along. Supposedly he could hear, and about the only thing I could think of was to read the Bible. If he could still hear, then that could offer more assurance than anything else. It's not that I am a religious man; I am not. I had asked the nursing home staff to try to bring over a clergyman to give him some assurances.
Psalm 23, of course, and Psalm 33... the latter a psalm that Johann Sebastian Bach set as a delightful motet (but in German and not in English as in the King James Version).
But today I can almost cite Schopenhauer on how I feel: Obit anus, obit onus. It has been that hard.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.