I wrote “Life’s Demise” as I watched my grandfather gradually pass away over the course of a few years. His body slowly shut down and he eventually got to the place where my grandmother could not take care of him anymore. At that point, there wasn’t much option but to put him in a nursing home, as he needed constant attention. That was a difficult decision for the family to make - especially for my grandmother. As I saw my grandfather waste away, and as I thought about him lying in a bed 1,000 miles away, it made me so sad. When I thought of my grandpa, I pictured the 70 year old who was a former farm hand - still mowing the lawn, cutting down tree limbs, and attacking physical labor head on. I thought of the vibrant, jovial grandpa. But he hadn’t been that for a few years. And as the former grandpa was vivid in my mind, the current one slowly faded out of this temporal existence – in a way, forgotten and unnoticed. It was hard to see him in his state and it was difficult to see him when we did get the chance to visit because it was just so sad. In some ways, we withdrew from him. We began letting go of him while he was still with us because HE - the grandpa we knew and wanted to remember - didn’t seem like he was really still with us.
“Life’s Demise” tries to capture this process. It speaks from a first person perspective of someone like my grandpa who is slowly being courted by death. As the affair with death deepens, the living around him withdraw. In the end, it seems it would have been better to just die than to linger, for it is the continuing to live that destroys. To die in a car accident in your prime may cut off your future, but it entrenches your legacy. You will always be remembered in your prime, and you will leave with the exasperation of many. Such is not the case when you linger. I attempt to depict this slow wasting by gradually fading out the rhyme scheme. It is why, when you get to the end, it sounds so unresolved. It just lingers without a finality to the ear.
“Life’s Demise” tries to capture this process. It speaks from a first person perspective of someone like my grandpa who is slowly being courted by death. As the affair with death deepens, the living around him withdraw. In the end, it seems it would have been better to just die than to linger, for it is the continuing to live that destroys. To die in a car accident in your prime may cut off your future, but it entrenches your legacy. You will always be remembered in your prime, and you will leave with the exasperation of many. Such is not the case when you linger. I attempt to depict this slow wasting by gradually fading out the rhyme scheme. It is why, when you get to the end, it sounds so unresolved. It just lingers without a finality to the ear.
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