1/5/09

Sunday was a bad, sad Dad day. Kate S. and I arrived at Dad's at 4:30pm and found him very agitated, standing up and telling Charlie over the phone that he was "lost". I took the phone and told him to sit down, but he said "I can't find a chair" even though there was one in front of him, and one to either side. I led him to the rocker and brought him coffee and a snack, but he was still very upset.

"It's a miracle! You're here!" he kept saying. "Is it 4:30am? Why is it so dark? I just went blind, bang! Has that ever happened to you? Bang, totally blind."
"It's 4:30 in the afternoon"
"really? where have I been? is it 4:30 in the morning?"
"no, it's 4:30 in the afternoon."
"I thought that was a long night. Is it really 4:30 in the afternoon? I just wanted some water and then I was going to go back to bed to die."
"it's 4:30pm, here's your water,"
"do people just go blind like that? bang? have you ever heard of that?"
"It can happen," says Kate S.
"it's like permanent night. It is really 4:30 in the afternoon?"
"it's 5pm now."

Good thing he can't see me cry.

I've learned to cry silently. It started when he was diagnosed. I was at Ferkauf then, taking Psy.D. classes, and the more I learned about working brains, the more I started noticing that Dad was "off" - the word-finding problems, repeating himself, leaving the stove on . .. I knew what I was seeing, but I wanted to believe it was something, anything else. I took him to the neurologist, and they did their tests, and when the doctor was explaining his diagnosis to him, the way we were sitting in his cramped office, the doctor could see my face but Dad couldn't and the tears were just soundlessly pouring down.

That was one of the reasons I left Ferkauf.

Later

Dad's also still having trouble with the New Year. "What's today's date?" he asked Kate S. yesterday. "January 4, 2009." "January, 2004?" "No, January 4th, 2009" "When will it be 2010?" "Next January." "Next week?" "No, a whole year from now, after we go through christmas again." "So it's 1009?" "That was a thousand years ago!" "It's not 1009?" "No, that was a long, long time ago."

"What's this?" he asked, peering at a pan cooling on the table. "Brownies," Kate S. told him, "they're going to get cut up and served with ice cream." "oooooooooh," he said. He got two.