This week has been challenging for Team Dad. On Monday, Kate S. was talking to Dad on the phone and told him she would be coming to see him the next day. Then I, desperate for conversation topics, told Dad that he would be coming to my house for Halloween, to hand out candy to the kids. He loves children, and has always enjoyed this in the past, so I thought it would make him happy.
Unfortunately, all this information about the future overloaded Dad’s fragile memory banks and sent him into a spin. He spent the entire rest of the evening interrogating me: “Tomorrow is?” he would start. “Tuesday, Dad,” I would answer. “And something is happening?” he inquired. “Big Kate is coming to visit you,” I’d tell him. “What time?” he wanted to know. “4pm.” I answered. “Do I need to dress up?” he’d ask, in a worried tone. “No, just wear pants,” I’d tell him. “Pants?” he’d ask, confused. “Trousers!” I shouted. “What’s tomorrow?” the loop begins again. “Tuesday, Dad” . . . and we did that for HOURS.
On Tuesday, when Kate S. actually arrived, Dad repeated the exercise, except this time he was asking her about Saturday. “Something’s happening on Saturday?” he’d ask and on it went, repeating until she was on the verge of tears.
Today, during the day, Dad had forgotten all but “Something’s Happening?” which he repeated to his housekeeper so often that she called me to see if I had any idea what he was talking about. I explained to her that he’s coming to my house for Halloween, but I have no idea if she tried to explain it to him because by the time I got there tonight, he had forgotten all about it and didn’t mention it at all.
I guess it’s a lesson for us Dad-keepers: don’t mention future plans because he remembers only enough to make him know there’s more he should know and it makes him anxious.
Luckily, this evening with Brianna and I, he was pretty mellow. “What are you doing now?” he asked me. “I’m looking at you,” I told him. “That’s all you’re doing?” he replied, “Jesus, that’s dangerous!”
Later he asked me, for the umpteenth time, how old he was. “86” I replied. “Is it possible that I be that old and still walk around and talk around?” he asked me. “How old can a person be and still have kittens?” he wanted to know. “Babies?” I asked. “Yes.” He replied. I broke into laughter at the idea of a person delivering a litter of kittens.
He was playing around with his voices again, too. “Kitty cat, kitty cat, kitty cat, where are you going kitty cat?” asked his normal voice. He replied, in his special cat voice, “I’m going to shit.” The cat herself slept through this performance.
Somehow we wound up talking about yogurt, and Dad was fascinated by the sound of the word. “Yogurt. Yo-gurt. Does that mean anything?” he asked me. “I don’t think so,” I responded. “’yo’, that means ‘I’ and ‘gurt’ – I don’t know,” he said, startling me – I didn’t know he remembered any Spanish.
And then there were the just plain mysterious remarks: “There’s something different about the animal catching or seeing or believing, I think. In the old days, they either fucked him or washed him away,” declared Dad, authoritatively. I have no idea what he meant.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
10/24/09: gangsta Dad
Kate S. took this picture of Dad, wearing his hat "gangsta" style.Dad found my pants, which I had hung in the bathroom to dry. He came shuffling out of his bedroom with the elastic waist drooping around his hips and crinkly purple fabric ballooning around his skinny legs. "Dad, you're wearing my pants!" I exclaimed, and led him back to his bedroom. While I was helping him change, I said "Dad, didn't you notice that they were too big?" "Huge," he said "huge!"
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
october 8 2009: arrogance lesson
10/8/09
Showing up at Dad’s, I find him in bed, but not asleep. He’s very surprised to see me and asks what time it is. When I tell him it’s 5 o’clock, he thinks I mean 5am, and I can’t convince him otherwise. When his friend Peter calls, he wonders why he’s calling at such an odd hour. To me, he says, “your parents don’t complain about early business?” “You are my parent,” I tell him. “So, I have to pay you,” he says. “No, you don’t,” I tell him, surprised by the twist the conversation has taken. “Yes, I do,” he insists.
“Big Kate is at an Arabic lesson,” I tell Dad. “An arrogance lesson?” he asks. “No, an Arabic lesson,” I clarify. “What’s that mean?” he wants to know. “Arabic is a language,” I explain.
“How old are you?” Dad asks me for what seems like the millionth time. “33,” I answer. “Mini, mini, mini,” he comments.
He’s struggling with his words, getting words that have the same sounds or rhythm mixed up. He starts a sentence, “I, under the underhand . . . “ when he means “I, on the other hand . . . “
“I’m very unused to this,” Dad declares. I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Unused to what?” I ask. “This usage of philosophy,” he responds. We have not been discussing anything remotely philosophical. “Oh,” I say, lost. “So you’ll have to be very careful,” he continues, “this should be an adventure.”
Showing up at Dad’s, I find him in bed, but not asleep. He’s very surprised to see me and asks what time it is. When I tell him it’s 5 o’clock, he thinks I mean 5am, and I can’t convince him otherwise. When his friend Peter calls, he wonders why he’s calling at such an odd hour. To me, he says, “your parents don’t complain about early business?” “You are my parent,” I tell him. “So, I have to pay you,” he says. “No, you don’t,” I tell him, surprised by the twist the conversation has taken. “Yes, I do,” he insists.
“Big Kate is at an Arabic lesson,” I tell Dad. “An arrogance lesson?” he asks. “No, an Arabic lesson,” I clarify. “What’s that mean?” he wants to know. “Arabic is a language,” I explain.
“How old are you?” Dad asks me for what seems like the millionth time. “33,” I answer. “Mini, mini, mini,” he comments.
He’s struggling with his words, getting words that have the same sounds or rhythm mixed up. He starts a sentence, “I, under the underhand . . . “ when he means “I, on the other hand . . . “
“I’m very unused to this,” Dad declares. I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Unused to what?” I ask. “This usage of philosophy,” he responds. We have not been discussing anything remotely philosophical. “Oh,” I say, lost. “So you’ll have to be very careful,” he continues, “this should be an adventure.”
Saturday, October 10, 2009
10/10/09 Coming Out Day
10/10/09
As soon as I got to his house today, Dad announced, “Thank goodness you’re here, now I can get some rest!” and headed off to bed. About an hour later, he emerged. “Are you up?” I asked him. “I don’t know if I’m up, down, or sideways,” he replied.
I tell Dad the story of Pax’s tail-vs.-flypaper incident this morning, but I had to describe flypaper to him: “it’s a strip of paper coated in glue so that bugs will stick to it and you can get rid of them,” I carefully explained. When I got to the part about Pax trying to outrun the flypaper wrapped around his tail, Dad burst into laughter.
Later, he asks me what kind of work I do. “I work with young people,” I tell him. “So you always have people alive,” he observes. “There’s not much you can do for people who aren’t alive,” I respond, trying not to laugh. “Except bury them,” he says.
Continuing on the same general subject, Dad says, in a confused tone, “people who are alive live longer than people who are not alive, is that it?”
Dad is obviously searching for something, feeling various objects in his vicinity. “What are you looking for?” I ask. “Any idea where a posture, a commonplace, is?” he responds, unhelpfully. When I don’t respond, he elaborates, “something to put over me?” “A sweater?” I ask, bringing him one. “Yes.”
“Where are we now?” Dad asks, while we are sitting on his couch. “In your living room,” I tell him. “I know that,” he says, impatiently. “Where are we technologically?” I am at a loss.
“What do you think the percentage is of people who don’t get born, but come alive?” I think of Frankenstein. “Zero,” I say. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
After dinner, Dad gets into a thoughtful mood. “In a sense, I’ve been ashamed all my life,” he says. “Ashamed of what?” I ask. “Everything,” he says.
“50 years ago, people thought about it, but didn’t talk about it, but now they talk about it. If you talked like that 50 years ago, you’d get fired,” says Dad, rather mysteriously. “Now, they don’t care. ‘I’m not normal’ ‘oh,OK, teach your class, everyone’s a little different.’ But 50 years ago you had to shut up and I’m so old I don’t give a damn.” Am I hearing right? Is my Dad talking about being a closeted teacher?
“Some people are absolutely against all of this and the moment there’s any suggestion of –‘out! Get out!’” he continues.“Nobody’s going to kick you out or fire you now,” I reassure him, since he seems genuinely alarmed at the thought. “No, of course not, not in this City. They might have been the best teachers around, but bang!” he says.
“Tomorrow there’s going to be a big march for homosexual rights in DC,” I tell him, purposely using the word that he and his octogenarian friends tend to prefer. “Really?” he asks. “I’d like to see that. And I bet nobody throws anything at it, but 50 years ago . . . “
This is not the first time in his post-Alzheimer’s life that Dad has raised the issue of his own sexual identity, and it really confuses me. I always thought he was straight, but then again, people have a way of not noticing things that are under their own noses. Was I in denial? His many gay friends, his total acceptance of me and my queer friends, the money he gave to ACT UP and GMHC, the gay pride parades . . . those could all be seen as clues.
On the other hand, what about the collection of black cheerleader porn? Or his love for Andy Dupee (who herself married a closeted gay man)? Or my mother? I only saw him touch her in a romantic way once, but it was undeniably genuine. On the morning she died, when he came to relieve me after I’d sat with her all night, he climbed onto her hospital bed, gathered her in his arms and began kissing her gently all over. I fled the room, went home and fell into bed, and he was the one who was with her when she took her last breath.
I guess it’s really not an either/or situation – I, of all people, should know that sexual identity is a spectrum and he has said himself that he never knew whether he was straight or gay. At the time, I thought maybe that wasn’t really what he meant, just the dementia mixing up his words, but now I wonder whether what’s actually happening is that the dementia is lifting away his inhibitions, making him free to come out.
Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day.
As soon as I got to his house today, Dad announced, “Thank goodness you’re here, now I can get some rest!” and headed off to bed. About an hour later, he emerged. “Are you up?” I asked him. “I don’t know if I’m up, down, or sideways,” he replied.
I tell Dad the story of Pax’s tail-vs.-flypaper incident this morning, but I had to describe flypaper to him: “it’s a strip of paper coated in glue so that bugs will stick to it and you can get rid of them,” I carefully explained. When I got to the part about Pax trying to outrun the flypaper wrapped around his tail, Dad burst into laughter.
Later, he asks me what kind of work I do. “I work with young people,” I tell him. “So you always have people alive,” he observes. “There’s not much you can do for people who aren’t alive,” I respond, trying not to laugh. “Except bury them,” he says.
Continuing on the same general subject, Dad says, in a confused tone, “people who are alive live longer than people who are not alive, is that it?”
Dad is obviously searching for something, feeling various objects in his vicinity. “What are you looking for?” I ask. “Any idea where a posture, a commonplace, is?” he responds, unhelpfully. When I don’t respond, he elaborates, “something to put over me?” “A sweater?” I ask, bringing him one. “Yes.”
“Where are we now?” Dad asks, while we are sitting on his couch. “In your living room,” I tell him. “I know that,” he says, impatiently. “Where are we technologically?” I am at a loss.
“What do you think the percentage is of people who don’t get born, but come alive?” I think of Frankenstein. “Zero,” I say. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
After dinner, Dad gets into a thoughtful mood. “In a sense, I’ve been ashamed all my life,” he says. “Ashamed of what?” I ask. “Everything,” he says.
“50 years ago, people thought about it, but didn’t talk about it, but now they talk about it. If you talked like that 50 years ago, you’d get fired,” says Dad, rather mysteriously. “Now, they don’t care. ‘I’m not normal’ ‘oh,OK, teach your class, everyone’s a little different.’ But 50 years ago you had to shut up and I’m so old I don’t give a damn.” Am I hearing right? Is my Dad talking about being a closeted teacher?
“Some people are absolutely against all of this and the moment there’s any suggestion of –‘out! Get out!’” he continues.“Nobody’s going to kick you out or fire you now,” I reassure him, since he seems genuinely alarmed at the thought. “No, of course not, not in this City. They might have been the best teachers around, but bang!” he says.
“Tomorrow there’s going to be a big march for homosexual rights in DC,” I tell him, purposely using the word that he and his octogenarian friends tend to prefer. “Really?” he asks. “I’d like to see that. And I bet nobody throws anything at it, but 50 years ago . . . “
This is not the first time in his post-Alzheimer’s life that Dad has raised the issue of his own sexual identity, and it really confuses me. I always thought he was straight, but then again, people have a way of not noticing things that are under their own noses. Was I in denial? His many gay friends, his total acceptance of me and my queer friends, the money he gave to ACT UP and GMHC, the gay pride parades . . . those could all be seen as clues.
On the other hand, what about the collection of black cheerleader porn? Or his love for Andy Dupee (who herself married a closeted gay man)? Or my mother? I only saw him touch her in a romantic way once, but it was undeniably genuine. On the morning she died, when he came to relieve me after I’d sat with her all night, he climbed onto her hospital bed, gathered her in his arms and began kissing her gently all over. I fled the room, went home and fell into bed, and he was the one who was with her when she took her last breath.
I guess it’s really not an either/or situation – I, of all people, should know that sexual identity is a spectrum and he has said himself that he never knew whether he was straight or gay. At the time, I thought maybe that wasn’t really what he meant, just the dementia mixing up his words, but now I wonder whether what’s actually happening is that the dementia is lifting away his inhibitions, making him free to come out.
Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Sept. 26: a very, very good foot
Dad’s hat – a maroon baseball cap today – tumbles to the floor while we’re sitting on the couch. Having gotten into the habit as a child (encouraged by my ballet teacher), I reach down, pick it up, and hand it to him using my foot. Dad proceeds to shake hands with my foot, and then pats it like a dog, saying “you’re a very, very good foot.”
Knowing that Saturdays, when I’m with Dad from noon-ish until 9pm, can get very long, I’ve come prepared. I pull sheets of bubble wrap from my bag and hand them to him. I love watching him pop them because he goes “oh!” after each one, as though he’s being surprised, over and over again. By the second sheet he has commanded me to join in, and he politely waits between each pop, so we’re taking turns.
Dad’s dessert addiction is taking a toll – for the first time in his life, he can’t get his jeans buttoned. He is completely perplexed. “I think someone boiled my jeans!” he announces, despite the fact that denim doesn’t shrink like wool. It takes a while for it to dawn on him that maybe he’s gotten bigger. “There’s lots of useless stuff in my guts that would be better gone,” he says, poking at flabby flesh. “If you take your clothes off, you see it’s bad because there’s at least ten extra pounds doing nothing,” he tells me.
Dad needs to exercise anyway, to maintain his mobility, so we go out the door – me in sweatpants and bare feet and him in jeans and orange crocs – and carefully navigate down one flight of stairs. Each time his foot lands on the step below, Dad yells “boom!” Thankfully, nobody in his building seems to be home. Then we go back up. Dad is winded, so I tell him that’s enough stairs – we’ll work our way up to the full three flights. When we get back in, I give Dad his 1 lb. weights and he does various exercises with his arms. When he’s done, he says he feels “loosened up.”
“What time is it?” Dad asks, a question he sometimes asks as often as every ten minutes. “5:49pm,” I answer. “Then we should begin singing,” he says, and launches into “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” I join in and we are loud and off-key, but Dad is happy. I have been trying to get Dad to sing “This Land is Your Land,” a song I know he knows – my grade school chorus sang it so much that every parent in that school probably heard it in their dreams – but he just bops along and won’t sing. I’ve also tried singing “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a tribute to his recently-deceased old friend, Mary Travers, who he remembers as a gorgeous blond twenty-something playing softball with him in Washington Square Park, but he doesn’t respond to the song.
“I have a whole field,” says Dad, running his hands over a month’s worth of beard and whiskers. It’s been a long time since he could shave himself. Marie has done it for years, but less and less frequently recently, and Dad says she doesn’t want to do it – I have no idea why. This produces a dilemma for me – I certainly don’t want to pressure Marie, but there’s no barber in the neighborhood, just a women’s beauty salon around the corner. The growth is clearly bothering Dad – he keeps commenting on it – so I’m beginning to think about attempting it myself. I’m definitely at a disadvantage here, never even having watched a man shave, but I’ve discovered that sometimes you just have to jump into the breach.
Knowing that Saturdays, when I’m with Dad from noon-ish until 9pm, can get very long, I’ve come prepared. I pull sheets of bubble wrap from my bag and hand them to him. I love watching him pop them because he goes “oh!” after each one, as though he’s being surprised, over and over again. By the second sheet he has commanded me to join in, and he politely waits between each pop, so we’re taking turns.
Dad’s dessert addiction is taking a toll – for the first time in his life, he can’t get his jeans buttoned. He is completely perplexed. “I think someone boiled my jeans!” he announces, despite the fact that denim doesn’t shrink like wool. It takes a while for it to dawn on him that maybe he’s gotten bigger. “There’s lots of useless stuff in my guts that would be better gone,” he says, poking at flabby flesh. “If you take your clothes off, you see it’s bad because there’s at least ten extra pounds doing nothing,” he tells me.
Dad needs to exercise anyway, to maintain his mobility, so we go out the door – me in sweatpants and bare feet and him in jeans and orange crocs – and carefully navigate down one flight of stairs. Each time his foot lands on the step below, Dad yells “boom!” Thankfully, nobody in his building seems to be home. Then we go back up. Dad is winded, so I tell him that’s enough stairs – we’ll work our way up to the full three flights. When we get back in, I give Dad his 1 lb. weights and he does various exercises with his arms. When he’s done, he says he feels “loosened up.”
“What time is it?” Dad asks, a question he sometimes asks as often as every ten minutes. “5:49pm,” I answer. “Then we should begin singing,” he says, and launches into “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” I join in and we are loud and off-key, but Dad is happy. I have been trying to get Dad to sing “This Land is Your Land,” a song I know he knows – my grade school chorus sang it so much that every parent in that school probably heard it in their dreams – but he just bops along and won’t sing. I’ve also tried singing “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a tribute to his recently-deceased old friend, Mary Travers, who he remembers as a gorgeous blond twenty-something playing softball with him in Washington Square Park, but he doesn’t respond to the song.
“I have a whole field,” says Dad, running his hands over a month’s worth of beard and whiskers. It’s been a long time since he could shave himself. Marie has done it for years, but less and less frequently recently, and Dad says she doesn’t want to do it – I have no idea why. This produces a dilemma for me – I certainly don’t want to pressure Marie, but there’s no barber in the neighborhood, just a women’s beauty salon around the corner. The growth is clearly bothering Dad – he keeps commenting on it – so I’m beginning to think about attempting it myself. I’m definitely at a disadvantage here, never even having watched a man shave, but I’ve discovered that sometimes you just have to jump into the breach.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Sept. 26: I just sit around and eat people
2/26/09
“Do you have any dessert?” Dad asks as soon as I walk into his apartment. It’s only 4pm and I haven’t even started cooking dinner yet. “We’ll have dessert later,” I tell him, “After dinner.” I can tell he’s still focused on dessert, so I tell him what I’m going to be making. “We’re having oranges in a caramel and rum sauce, over vanilla ice cream.” He's thrilled
“Do you know where the witches are?” Dad asks, just as Brianna, a pagan, opens the door. “Everywhere,” she tells him. I have no idea where the question came from, but he seems satisfied with the answer.
While I’m cooking, Kate S. and Brianna watch the BBC. The trouble is,Dad can’t follow most TV, though he tries. He winds up having to ask what’s going on, and it’s way too complicated for them to explain. For the rest of their visit, he stays pretty quiet.
Once they leave, he’s back in his down mood. “Who did me in?” he asks. Later, he gets discouraged with his halting efforts at conversation. “What’s the sense of talking?” he asks. “We like talking to you, Dad,” I say. “Yeah, but I don’t enjoy talking to other people.” I wonder what other people he means. He has been growing more and more silent recently, a jarring contrast from my younger days when he used to expound endlessly about history and archaeology, oblivious to the fact that my mother and I were nearing catatonia. When she got fed up, my mother would amuse herself by making faces at him, knowing that he couldn’t see well enough to notice.
“I’m all through,” he says. “I can’t do anything more, I just sit around and eat people.” The amusement I would usually derive from this sentence fades into the general gloomy mood of the evening.
Finally, I decide to distract him with a cigar. Dad rarely smokes cigars spontaneously anymore, but if you offer him one, he is pleased. I’m the “cigar person” because Marie doesn’t like their smell and Kate S. has asthma. Even though I’ve never smoked one, I now go through the whole ritual of removing the plastic covering and the paper band, and cutting off one end. Dad used to bite off the end, but I can’t bring myself to do that. Once I get the cigar ready, he puts it in his mouth and I fetch the hidden matches and light it while he puffs. It was awkward at first, but we’ve got it all nicely choreographed by now. When he’s done, he announces “finished, finished, finis.” It’s the first French I’ve heard him use in quite a while. Even though they say first and second languages are stored differently in the brain, they both seem to be fading now.
I look up and see Dad’s face strangely contorted. “Dad, what are you doing?” I ask, alarmed. “Making faces,” he replies. I’m relieved. Silly Dad is back.
On my way out he says, “you live a lofty life.”
“Do you have any dessert?” Dad asks as soon as I walk into his apartment. It’s only 4pm and I haven’t even started cooking dinner yet. “We’ll have dessert later,” I tell him, “After dinner.” I can tell he’s still focused on dessert, so I tell him what I’m going to be making. “We’re having oranges in a caramel and rum sauce, over vanilla ice cream.” He's thrilled
“Do you know where the witches are?” Dad asks, just as Brianna, a pagan, opens the door. “Everywhere,” she tells him. I have no idea where the question came from, but he seems satisfied with the answer.
While I’m cooking, Kate S. and Brianna watch the BBC. The trouble is,Dad can’t follow most TV, though he tries. He winds up having to ask what’s going on, and it’s way too complicated for them to explain. For the rest of their visit, he stays pretty quiet.
Once they leave, he’s back in his down mood. “Who did me in?” he asks. Later, he gets discouraged with his halting efforts at conversation. “What’s the sense of talking?” he asks. “We like talking to you, Dad,” I say. “Yeah, but I don’t enjoy talking to other people.” I wonder what other people he means. He has been growing more and more silent recently, a jarring contrast from my younger days when he used to expound endlessly about history and archaeology, oblivious to the fact that my mother and I were nearing catatonia. When she got fed up, my mother would amuse herself by making faces at him, knowing that he couldn’t see well enough to notice.
“I’m all through,” he says. “I can’t do anything more, I just sit around and eat people.” The amusement I would usually derive from this sentence fades into the general gloomy mood of the evening.
Finally, I decide to distract him with a cigar. Dad rarely smokes cigars spontaneously anymore, but if you offer him one, he is pleased. I’m the “cigar person” because Marie doesn’t like their smell and Kate S. has asthma. Even though I’ve never smoked one, I now go through the whole ritual of removing the plastic covering and the paper band, and cutting off one end. Dad used to bite off the end, but I can’t bring myself to do that. Once I get the cigar ready, he puts it in his mouth and I fetch the hidden matches and light it while he puffs. It was awkward at first, but we’ve got it all nicely choreographed by now. When he’s done, he announces “finished, finished, finis.” It’s the first French I’ve heard him use in quite a while. Even though they say first and second languages are stored differently in the brain, they both seem to be fading now.
I look up and see Dad’s face strangely contorted. “Dad, what are you doing?” I ask, alarmed. “Making faces,” he replies. I’m relieved. Silly Dad is back.
On my way out he says, “you live a lofty life.”
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sept 19: Sing-Sing
“Many horses are going by. They’re ready for their daily dessert,” Dad says, projecting his dessert obsession. Last night he kept insisting he wasn’t going to eat dinner – he wanted to have plenty of room for dessert! We got him through the meal by convincing him to have “just a little” soup, “just one piece of bread,” etc.
Tonight Dad is kind of down. “I’m not the guy who used to be here,” he tells me, settling beside me on the couch. It turns out that he’s having an attack of awareness about his condition. “The last two or three days have been a real shock to me,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, the last two days.” “I’m scared,” he says – a statement that always brings tears to my eyes when he says it. I get the cat and she and I snuggle close to him. “I’m going to land in Sing-Sing,” he says. “They don’t put you in Sing-Sing for being confused,” I reassure him. “What do they do with people who are completely dumb? They have to put them someplace,” he wants to know. “They just take care of them,” I say, hoping this will make him feel better, but the issue is still on his mind.
Later, he repeats his theory about the “vision utility” turning him off and making him blind, but this time it has a new twist – the motivation for doing this he tells me, is to get new customers for old-age homes, since people keep dying and they have to be replaced, so they make older people blind to get them to go into the homes. “I don’t want to be in an institution. I DON’T WANT IT!” he says.
I don’t know what to say to this – I’m definitely committed to keeping him at home as long as possible, but I don’t want to get trapped by promising him he’ll never be in a facility, because I don’t know what path all this is going to take. All I can do is assure him that he’s not – and won’t be – alone.
Tonight Dad is kind of down. “I’m not the guy who used to be here,” he tells me, settling beside me on the couch. It turns out that he’s having an attack of awareness about his condition. “The last two or three days have been a real shock to me,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, the last two days.” “I’m scared,” he says – a statement that always brings tears to my eyes when he says it. I get the cat and she and I snuggle close to him. “I’m going to land in Sing-Sing,” he says. “They don’t put you in Sing-Sing for being confused,” I reassure him. “What do they do with people who are completely dumb? They have to put them someplace,” he wants to know. “They just take care of them,” I say, hoping this will make him feel better, but the issue is still on his mind.
Later, he repeats his theory about the “vision utility” turning him off and making him blind, but this time it has a new twist – the motivation for doing this he tells me, is to get new customers for old-age homes, since people keep dying and they have to be replaced, so they make older people blind to get them to go into the homes. “I don’t want to be in an institution. I DON’T WANT IT!” he says.
I don’t know what to say to this – I’m definitely committed to keeping him at home as long as possible, but I don’t want to get trapped by promising him he’ll never be in a facility, because I don’t know what path all this is going to take. All I can do is assure him that he’s not – and won’t be – alone.
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