We are supposed to be at the hospital. The rest of my family is already there. My wife is yelling up the stairs. What am I doing. What's going on. We have to leave.
But I can't leave. I'm listening to a song. Searching it. I may have already heard it some thousands of times in my life. But this time is different. I'm listening for something. Something I think I’ve heard in it before. Only, at this moment it's kind of a life and death thing.
Forty miles away my sister lies in a Philadelphia hospital bed. Unconscious. Around her several machines sustain her life. My six other sisters and three brothers shuffle around and breathe the rest of the oxygen out of the room. Right now, they're waiting for me to arrive so that we can end her life together. But I can't do it. I can't get up. I can't even make my legs move. I look down at my feet. My shoes. How do I put them on? At forty-one I'm so ashamed at all that I do not know.
Sitting here, frozen. Looking for answers from a Led Zeppelin song. It's just a reminder of how worthless I've become. Though, the truth is that I've never been good at anything. And this is my dilemma. How do I learn to become the man my family needs me to be, while somehow keeping the important parts of my world the same...as in not losing my sister.
For me, right now, only one thing is true; as long as I sit here, my sister is alive. As soon as I go there, *she dies.
Death of Candida
Teaching Zeppelin