a whole life, vanished

Yesterday we had an early Father’s Day celebration for Dad. I gave him a box of 25 cigars, and he was thrilled. He also really liked the ice cream cake, even though it didn’t get frozen through completely. I guess I should have started TWO days in advance.

While we were eating, he startled me by saying a sentence in Anglo Saxon – I haven’t heard him use Anglo Saxon in a year or more, but there it was. He used it so rarely before that I don’t think either Kate S. or Brianna had ever heard it and it’s an odd-sounding language, so they were pretty confused until I explained.

Kate S. took this picture of Dad in his festive leis, with her camera phone.

Going to Dad’s today was an exercise in self-discipline –it was pouring, what we call in my feline-centric household, “raining cats and more cats” and I was tired. But when I got to Dad’s, I was reminded why it’s important that someone be there - he was very depressed because he was thinking that he hadn’t done anything with his life and that he was going to be alone until Monday.

I gave him some soup and a muffin and coffee and told him a whole lot of things that he had done, most of them from my childhood, like making his own fake money so Franka and I could play store . He had trouble believing me and kept asking if he’d really done all that. Then he said, “a whole life, vanished.” He started thinking that he might have erased his memory on purpose. He said, “it’s like I deliberately denied all of it. I told him, “it’s wasn’t deliberate, your brain just isn’t working properly.” “You’ve created my whole life,” he told me, and then asked “how could I forget all that?”

Thinking over the childhood stories I’d told him, he said, “then, in effect, you were my child.” “I AM your child,” I replied. “Maybe now that I’ve remembered all these things, I’ll die,” he said, freaking me out. After that, he fell silent for a while and then said, “now I’m fabricating.” I thought maybe he was using the wrong word for something, and said “what do you mean?” “Making up things,” he replied, the exact definition of the term.

He decided to try to talk himself out of the gloomy mood. “I must chuck this thing. Chuck this thing and say ‘ooh, yah, I’m ready, rah, rah, rah!’” This strategy had limited success. “I wish I could say sprightly things and all that, but I can’t,” he reported.

Luckily, dinner and another serving of ice cream cake – which he called “the best dessert I’ve ever eaten”, a cigar, and listening to country music on TV seemed to cheer him up, because he started dancing with his feet and clapping his hands.

When I got ready to leave, he was in a joking mood. “Dad!” I said “I just put on my shoe without putting my sock on first!” “Carelessness! Carelessness!” he reprimanded me, in a mock-stern voice. “Oh, well, you have a long life ahead,” he concluded. “So I have plenty of time to practice putting my shoes on correctly? I asked. “Yes, practice 4 or 5 times a day,” he commanded me, smiling.