This is horrifying

 

I took a phone-call today from someone I've known for over thirty years. In truth we lost contact years ago and only recently has he come back into our lives. 

In the late 80's I joined an am dram group and this guy was the driving force. He'd direct, stage manage, build sets and write scripts. I left in the early 90's and didn't have any contact with him until much later. My wife and I had seen him at a few group productions and we'd go to his house for reunions. 

Earlier this year he phoned my wife. It was clear not was well with him. He was having trouble remembering, but it wasn't disastrous. He was still driving he said, except he'd get lost. As he talked he'd repeat the same thing over and over again. About where he'd worked and how he met Maggie Thatcher, how he didn't know how long he'd been retired.

He's want to talk to my wife. This Monday he phoned to say he was locked in his house. Apparently a friend had come round on Sunday, took his keys and locked him in. In the meantime he'd gone to the crematorium to visit his mother's grave - he'd driven there.

My wife phoned the friend to be told he hadn't been over to this man's house since lock down as he was very vulnerable with breathing difficulties. He also said that it was the man's helpers who drove him to the crematorium. In the past he'd gone there and got lost. We learnt he had two helpers who attended to him in the morning and evening to give him his medication. He wasn't able to drive and the local council were to sell his car to provide him with cash.

Today he said that someone told him he had to sell his car - he didn't know who. He then said the people who have been helping him were against him. Also he went for a drive to somewhere, he couldn't remember where and ended somewhere else he could remember. Asked if he had had any visitors - he said no - couldn't remember, but he was waiting for someone to come today but didn't know who or why. He  said his mother was in his up stairs bedroom - she died 30 years ago.

He was talking to me from his front porch - looking at the traffic going up and down the road outside. He kept talking about his car and that someone said it was to be sold. Pathetically he described how he felt. He could remember nothing - he was living in a fog.  He didn't know what he'd done from one moment to the next. The traffic going past his front porch was a focus when all the rest of his life was a blank. His front porch was a bubble of  "now" surrounded by a miasma of what? - a void?

He's 72, thinks today he has no friends, he can recall nothing and it seems to me he is experiencing a living hell. 

Life can be so wonderful, but in his case it is unbelievably cruel, A loving God I think not!