Care givers...

His father's diaper needed changing and it was time for his medication. He could hear his mother's slippered feet shuffling across the kitchen floor. He knows she is looking for him. Her dementia is frightening to her and she needs to have her son in her sights or she begins to panic, calling out his name, in a cry, like a small, frightened child. There's no place for him to hide. He whispers into the phone, "If they were dogs, they would have been put down two years ago."

I don't know how he manages his life like this. I'm not sure I would have the patience to be the primary care giver to the man who abused me, beat me, threatened and humiliated me my whole life, or to the woman who couldn't or wouldn't protect me. I asked him, "Why are you doing this?" He answered, "My Christian ethics demand it." Hmmm. I would like to say that taking care of your parents, in their old age, is also a Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Hindu and Jewish ethic. I dare say it's a human ethic. But, why go into that...

His father's heart attacks, strokes, cancer and more surgeries and medications are more than most people could tolerate, but his fear of death keeps his father breathing. His speech is unintelligible, his body weak and feeble. The same body that 30 years ago towered above his son screaming, "Are you a faggot? You better not be a faggot or I'll kill you." The same man who took his twelve year old son to a whore house in Tiajuana to prove his manhood. The same man who molested little girls and drank himself to sleep every night. The man who's rage raped a woman who said, "No."

His father is 82 years old now and sober for the past 20 years. He was never arrested for any of the crimes he committed, which is oddly confusing to me. How did he get away with it all ? Or did he?

After we hung up the phone, I wondered, do I have what it takes to be forgiving and loving to a human monster? Do I have the ability or willingness to love them in spite of who they are? Could I have powdered the tush of Hitler and kissed him good-night? Would I have been able to forgive Timothy McVey or Osama Bin Laden, or Jerry Falwell, give them a sponge bath, and sing them to sleep? I think not. There are special people for that job. I don't think I'm one of them.