The New Everything

I just talked with my mom and she mentioned something to me that hit me like a ton of wet cement.
With my dad's condition, it affects not ONLY my mom and my sister and me, but it affects each of our relationships, with him and with each other. This is a different person than the man who raised me, because of his condition. I wondered how my mom was really doing, and she told me.

Thirty-four years ago my dad married my mother. Since then they have loved each other through all of their ups and downs of life and marriage. My dad encouraged and supported her through a journey of self-empowerment and spiritual fulfillment, and NEVER would give up on her, his family, or their happiness. And he is not that man any longer, not all the way. While my sister and I grieve for the changes our father goes through and how they affect our lives, my mother grieves for the loss of some of the strongest and finest personality traits of the man who stood by her through everything good and bad in her life for the past 34 years. He is not who he's always been, and it seems as if it has happened over-night.

Excuse me while I deny the gravity of your parking ticket.
What a time to try to quit smoking.