My First Lie

My stepfather had Parkinson’s disease. Before he died, he was one percent of the person he had been. It’s cruel to say that at fifty percent he was a kinder person.

I found him once, on his back, like an upturned ladybird in the garden. I was now a stranger. I helped him up and in a moment of rare clarity, he asked, "When will this end?" He was all ears, his face ready enlightenment.

I lied to him once. It was my first ever real lie. “Soon,” I said.

Four years on, at his funeral my lie became true.

From Guest Contributor Alice Kibbe