Age was not kind to him. In his final ambulant years he would weep in the night. Sometimes he would wake up confused and afraid. We made a little sign that said, "Go back to sleep. There is still time." The sign had a clock made out of a paper plate, like a kid's school project, the hands set to a time before he needed to get up.
The stroke took so much of him. Before, he was a radio announcer, with a voice like an American Patrick Stewart. Afterward he was permanently stunned, his voice a feeble thing, and after a while he lost that too. Before, he was an artist and a cartoonist. Afterward he would stare at his art books and scribble meaningless shapes, spirals and squiggles, endlessly unraveling. He lost the ability to feed himself, clean himself, even straighten his right arm. He spent too many hours sitting in his own filth.
He slowly faded. It took almost a decade and one-tenth of his life. On Jodo's last Christmas with him, he was barely even there. But there was still enough of him to die hard. He drowned in his own fluids while strangers rushed him to the hospital.
