Tag: Fathers

“Just Me…”

Minutes disappear. Hours melt into days. Weeks and months become unrecognizable. Whatever the current year is – in a life previously filled with work, family, church, and hobbies – it isn’t relevant anymore. No time, or date, is vital to my dad’s day-to-day life now.

He has dementia. As you may know from previous posts, this condition is his reality.

What’s important to him are multiple calls, every day, to me from the activity room phone. “Just me. Calling to see if anything is going on today. Ok.”, he says then hangs up. Usually this is the message on voicemail. I can’t pick up a majority of the time due to my schedule. Thankfully, this message comes in on the other end of a redial button. I have my doubts dad would have recall to pull out a ten-digit cell number from his shrinking brain.

I am grateful for these messages. So thankful. Even though they overload my queue, when deleting messages, I always keep his last message. Always. One never knows what dozen, or so, words will be his last.

Returning a call is difficult. The facility number rings not only to that hand-held, but also to other phones as well. Besides, even if I call back immediately, his mind would have him take a u-turn back towards the dining hall, or back a hallway within seconds from hanging up. No matter, it’s good.

Always good to hear his voice. Only a matter of a day or so before I get in to see him. My minutes and hours are noticeable and very regulated by a tight schedule – one shared within a few seconds after dad sees me enter his room.

“OH, hey! Nice to see you…”, as his eyes light up , posture straightens, and arms immediately move toward lacing a worn pair of sneakers. “You want to go somewhere? What have you been up to?”

“Hey, dad”, .. as I scan the room for anything out of place … any irregularities from a man who is very, very meticulous about his pens, hats, chapstick, clothes, belt clip, and toiletries. “I’ve been getting your messages. Sorry I haven’t been available to answer.”

“I’m sure I’ve called you. Just don’t know how many times. Was it today at all? Where are we going?”,

By this time, those worn sneakers on his feet need a destination. So, a walk from his room down a long, ornate hallway begins as does a wonderful conversation between a father and son. Details about my work. The experiences in my daily wheres and whens have to be passed to him. He enjoys hearing of my successes and failures. My ups and downs. I know these don’t process in a normal way, however, he connects to me. To my experience, my life, as he needs to during the three minutes we walk in that hallway.

Finally ending in an entrance/exit, we depart. Final destination: somewhere. Could be a dollar store, hobby shop of my choosing, quick lunch, or simple walk through a grocery store for ginger ale and cookies. Wherever we go, my goal is his experience. His glance at new faces, new places. Fresh air and sunshine. Minutes, possibly an hour, or two, away from his norm to shake off a few old days and put new ideas into a brain stressed with anxiety, stress, and confusion.

“Stop sign sentences”, as I like to call them, are so enjoyable. Every jaunt around town, the same one is repeated each time. Meaning, when one is started as we leave his facility, it is often repeated at most of the stop signs. Usually in the form of a question answered once – yet asked again, … and again .. and again, I find myself challenged to answer differently. It’s a puzzle to be solved for me. For dad, just another intersection in his brain where logic and memory take a left turn.

These short trips always come to an end. Confusion usually follows our return, unfortunately. Life, for dad, is simple yet complicated. No responsibility. Everything is looked after.

Complicated in the worst way possible because nothing makes sense … and he kinda knows it still.

The phone messages are so nice for me to hear, yet I know he is struggling with what to say. He is trying to stay connected. I love this. Like before, I always want this and don’t want it to stop.

“It’s just me.” will be silent some day, however. This is the nature of dementia.

It’s my nature to keep up with what he needs as best I can. In as much as he needs connected to me, I need this from him. As to me … “Just me”?… I need him to add value to my life – to still be interested in what I am doing even if it’s only for a few fleeting seconds. That connection is so important.

… and I’m perfectly fine with both of us staying in touch with each other the best way we know how.

He can push redial as many times as he wants. Yes, it will go to voicemail most likely. At least it’ll be a few more seconds I can save in the archives for a later time…

… when the phone stops ringing and a very important voice in my life is silenced by a disease nobody should ever have to endure.

Father’s Day After

It is 12:01 a.m., June 22nd. If I planned my life as well as I – apparently – worked out the timing of this writing, I’d be sipping non-alcoholic iced teas, sitting on a very comfortable beach chair, while basking under a western Bahama sun. Counting my untold riches would be the least of my worries and the glistening reflection coming off the blue waters would be bouncing off my toes onto my Dita Epiluxury Palladium Aviator sunglasses.

Alas, this is not the case. I have Western-PA T-shirt tan/burn lines around my neck and upper arms from sloshing sausage, burgers, cheese-steaks, and hot dawgs (yes, this is how I spell them) around on my business grill all weekend. Melted cheese and the area’s best chili sauce is happily dripped all over my 10′ cart which has yet to be cleaned. Dishes remain cleaned out – but not washed, rinsed, or sanitized – in the ever present commercial kitchen as yesterday’s close of business left me without energy to go any further. This happens. I’m getting older all the time, so liveliness and vigor is a commodity not so easily accessible as ketchup and mustard. A long, three day eventful weekend clogged up my life’s bottle of yellow and red tastiness rendering me speechless … and seemingly beach-less as well.

With your permission … almost speechless. Those fortunate enough to be around my humility (sarcasm) are aware I have no problem engaging in conversation. Serious or silly soliloquies, banal or bright banters are never far from my reach when others pull their conversational wagons around for protection from the outside world. I could argue, earnestly, it is for this reason I am happy to inhale and exhale, minute by minute .. oh, and to stay alive as well. Existing is a good reason to breathe. (Didn’t mean to minimize the importance of the oxygen and carbon dioxide gas exchange in the lungs).

While sympathetically breathing, it is great for me to engage with my fellow and fellow-ettes stomping around on this 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilogram rock bouncing through the silence of a dark matter, dark energy, neutrino filled, infinite space …

A space which knows no boundaries, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, masking, hot dawgs, Bennett Cerf (I’ve been watching a lot of “What’s My Line?” re-runs lately), racism, football, bond valuations, or why muskrats even exist. My space, though, the used-to-be within 6-feet distance where words could be safely exchanged, is well defined: beautiful. If for no one else, for me.

… And this is why “Father’s Day After” is so well timed.

To write about my dad on the day for fathers would be untimely. I called him yesterday – during a break at my business – to wish him the usual as I always do. He’s a shorter man than I with a receding hair line I like to define as “completely bald”. Marks scar his head – from years of sun beating down – as his work ethic drove him to stand on ladders, painting houses and windows, during the summer months between the academic Septembers through Mays. Those 33 years spent teaching English in a classroom full of (later) appreciative teenagers who didn’t fully appreciate the value of his teaching at the time.

We lost mom eight years ago. She died with a full heart and a body full of cancer. It was an inevitable end of a five year journey. Dad’s relationship with her to this very day is a mystery. He speaks of her in muted tones, with quiet words, in almost silent idleness. I will not, in respect, challenge his memory of her. There are some frequent conversations with my siblings about our parents’ relationship, but we cannot draw an outline clear enough to even start coloring in the lines with vibrancy, life, and fullness. Suffice to say, we had food, shelter, and clothing … and love as our parents were able to provide.

The response to my call was predictable. “Where are you set up today?”. This would be my dad. This had to be my dad. I know as sure as I am a partially tanned, overly talkative male that he didn’t hear my “Happy Father’s Day, Dad” coming through the phone … And, I know why. Every day, for as long as I’ve been tonging and dipping my way around town, hearing my voice on the phone – to him – meant I was calling to check in and was selling somewhere. Yesterday was no different. He heard my voice, but didn’t listen to my words.

Since mom died, we’ve worked at developing a closer relationship. Mom and I were inseparable. Music, humor, silliness, etc … pumped through our bodies – saddled on every drop of blood circulating around and about the very tip of our toes and fingers. Dad? Serious, methodical, organized, and prognosticatingly predictable. The chasm between dad and I, emotionally and structurally, could not have been wider the day we – along with my siblings – rode down the elevator in the hospital minutes after mom died.

In as much as I dislike the phrase, “That was then, this is now”, there is none more appropriate. He and I are older now. Dad isn’t the same. I am not, either. Our relationship isn’t defined by what it once was. We had a horrible time when I was young. There’s no language I can use other than those words. There’s no fault to attach. He made decisions based upon what he knew to do at the time. I grew up and learned to manage my life the best way I knew how. Then mom died.

We struggle through conversations now … not because there is miscommunication. I am tasked with the responsibility to laugh with him – all the while wondering if he’s able to focus properly and stay with a line of thought. Probably the usual concerns a son has for his aging father, I guess. We hug more than ever before, jiggle a few jokes around the table, and argue a small stew pot’s amount of political positions. The quarantine he weathered well … considering all of his social stilts were kicked out from under him. I gladly searched for low-sodium canned soups and granola at the local market while he dutifully remained indoors – fearful of an airborne virus. That’s dad. The overachiever.

We did finally re-connect last night after I got back. I tried again.

“Happy Father’s Day, Dad!”.
“Are you still set up? I was going to get a hot (dawg) …even though I just ate”.
“No, I’m done for the day. Wanted to call you to see how things were.”
“Oh, well … Did you have a good day?”
“Yea, I guess. It was a long weekend. I’m tired”
“Glad you had some sales. I’ll let you go.”
“Ok, Dad. Talk to you tomorrow. I have the day off, so I’ll stop in.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”

I’ll stop in today for sure. Father’s Day after. Another day. Not a day I will find myself on a sandy white beach, under a big colorful umbrella, stretching out my muscle-less middle-aged arms over an over-sized beach chair. There are no piles of money to worry about at this time … and probably not in the near future as I continue forward in life – as most of us do. One step, one breath, one heartbeat at a time. And, yes … one word at a time as well.

Words I like to use – sometimes not grammatically correct, or in proper syntax, but meaningful to me. Dad will most assuredly never see these words as he does not read this blog. Well, let me assert I do not know for sure he doesn’t, however, I can reasonably assume the English teacher in him would be hard pressed to not correct my error(s) if he, indeed, did.

That’s my dad. He’s my one parent left here to still love me as his son … and I’m here, as a son of his, to love him as my dad. There will come a day when this isn’t a part of my existence on this heavy rock. For now, the day after, I’ll accept the blessing.

Happy Father’s Day, after, to all.