This started off difficult and is heading down the road towards devastating.
His voice is changing, altering, becoming more and more odd.
He knows it. He asks if it still sounds the same to me.
I say yes.
What am I supposed to say?
Nothing else matters now.
All that playacting, all that stultifying corporate garbage, all that utter rubbish; those dazzling annoyances I have to deal with on a daily basis, they have almost disappeared from my conscious thought.
They're still there, at some level, jagging around in my peripheral vision like filthy black cobwebs.
But they don't register.
I know they will have to be accommodated; the machine makes few allowances for such personal diversions as a parent's fear these days.
Nothing else matters now.
And though I try and pray and hope, I know there's not a goddamned thing I can do to make him better.
