Stage Four
The whole time I’m on the phone asking questions about incapacitating illness, I’m tracking the progress of two ants that have joined forces to carry a crumb back to the burrow. This is in the living room, so they are hip deep in carpet fiber, shifting this way and that, trying to get a purchase on it. It’s like watching Laurel and Hardy carry a safe—or maybe a sofa—through a field of wheat. I wonder if ants sweat. I wonder if ants swear. The anthill lies 20 feet south as the crow flies, on the other side of a solid wood door, so I wonder if they will even get there. All this reminds me that my father has come home to die, that we bear him gently on our shoulders through his last days—that I never imagined being an ant—and I wonder who will carry me when my time comes.
(Wazee Journal)
