Aspects of an Illness

He sits, completely still with his eyes averted, looking down at his hands in his lap. His face is emotionless, like a mask.

His immovable face no longer seems familiar to me, although it is engraved in my mind forever. He struggles to speak, but then gives up and says, "Never mind."

The day before he had gone out into the cold rain to buy groceries without money and without his food stamp card.His medicaid card was also missing but a replacement was coming in the mail to me. When I got home from work I piled under a cotton blanket on the couch to rest and to get warm and dry while he made steaming hot vegetable soup for our supper from the meager ingredients that could be rounded up in my pantry.


In the early afternoon after his visit and after we take him back to the hospital, eventually he will re-emerge. In a day or a week or a month he will be released from the hospital and return to us who love him.

I will take time to be alone. I will relax with a cup of coffee, paint, draw and meditate on why things are as they are.

I wrote to my mother that my brother wanted to buy another guitar. He had pawned his to buy drugs. Sometimes he played a friend's guitar when the friend came to visit. My brother missed his old guitar. He missed the pleasure of playing.

The years go back and on another night over the phone my sister assures me that my brother is alright. I wish I had his telephone number. What is his address? He was court ordered to another group home. His words were so jumbled when we last talked that I could not understand him.

I am sleepy but I can not seem to go under because of my concern. Ah, to come to the end of this anxiety and fear.