Difficult is watching my mother decline day after day, year after year, until we have reached a stage where almost nothing remains.

She is a shell of the person she once was, stripped of almost everything that makes us willing to live. So I suppose I shouldn’t have been so heartbroken when, on her 65th birthday, the only words she could muster were, “I miss my father. I want to go be with him.” After twenty years of this disease, after always knowing we would eventually get here, I should be immune to the pain.

Unfortunately, knowing means nothing when it comes to emotional preparation.

I still feel it. A deep sadness that rattled my bones for two whole days. I don’t even struggle against it anymore. I don’t pray for better days. I don’t dwell on the unfairness of it all. I simply lower my arms and accept this awful reality for what it is: a tragedy of epic proportions, with no solution except waiting for death.

Waiting, while everyone around her does everything they can to keep her alive, because that is what the law asks of them. There is nothing else they can do except everything possible to keep her breathing.

So I do what I have to do to protect myself and my mental health. I rest. I let myself feel the sadness. I make sure she is as comfortable and pain-free as possible. And then I compartmentalize my life. I make a clean cut, cauterize the wound, and wrap it up. Out of sight, out of mind, so I can keep moving forward with the rest of my life.

Maybe that isn’t fair either.

But when nothing is, fairness no longer seems to matter.