Issue Nine
Don't Forget by Beth Geyer Drawing by Lori Taschler
My father suffers from Alzheimer’s...
My father suffers from Alzheimer’s. When he did not carry a diagnosis, he was strong and weak. He was memorable and forgetful. He was funny and sad. He was my father. Today, he is all of those things except that he is not my father. He is alive; the body is there but all else that was him is gone. I watch him live his new life. I make him my personal silent movie by blocking out his real words and add instead the words he used to say. The words are written across my brain and at his feet in white letters. Sometimes the words are fancy scrolls like in the old silent movies; “We are going to the beach!” Other times they are in bold capital; “I NEED TO CHANGE THE OIL IN MY CAR.” Depending on what I wish him to say is how I choose the font in my head. I do this because in reality, what he says does not make sense to me. In my font reserves, there is not one for confusion and noise. What he struggles to remember hurts my heart. A lost love, a broken dream does not compare to the pain I feel when he struggles to remember who he is and why he is here. The memory of his life is gone and he cannot tell me what he remembers. The years that he could tell me I was not interested and he thought there would be more time.
I imagine the disease to be Swiss cheese–a simple explanation given to me by a sympathetic social worker. His brain is riddled with holes. Is that a statement or a question. In my story, it is both. The connection that told him to drive a car has been broken and replaced with a dark circle of nothing. In his brain, there is an empty cavity where his house used to be. I imagine a dark cave where his job used to be.
His diagnosis has made our family more fragile and frantic.
We are fragile because we know things can change in a New York minute. We are careful with our attention to him and to each other because the clarity in which we see each other has increased. My brothers are no longer distant in space and connection. My sisters are not aloof people with houses and children. My father is not the busy man. We are new people, linked by the image of Swiss cheese. We treat each other with caution, respect and at times awe. We thank each other for jobs well done. We acknowledge the paid time off not used for holidays. We respect the excuses given to bosses and children. We forgive each other the forgotten appointments and grant each other’s foibles with grace and appreciation. We watch him and each other from our corners of our own separate worlds with hopeful, sad, and smart eyes. We are acutely aware of the world around him and never have we been so aware of the dangers that it can hold. Every day we hope we have done our best.
We are frantic because we cannot express our personal loss to each other. Instead, we make plans that change constantly and we scramble to fill every single void in his life; a void that gets bigger and bigger as the days go by. We cannot mourn the way we wish for the wailing and sadness we hold is reserved for funerals. Privately we know he is gone. Publically we tend to his needs. Privately we whisper his death but do not know at the precise time it arrived and there is nothing physical to bury, no ritual to hold.
We enter his immediate world but his comprehension of us has been reduced to a shadow. We are there, but he does not act as if we are tangible. We enter his small space of time and he only knows we are important and meaningful to him because we act that way.
Who is this man I once called Dad when the word meant something. Who is the man who does not know our roles in his life?
I cannot help but wonder when the diseased part of his brain that lost the memory of me became a final hole. Was I at work when he thought of me? Was I on the other end of the phone speaking to him when suddenly the connection called me, daughter, loved one, vanished? What day was that? What day did he try to picture me, remember me but could not. Did he cry? Was he sad? Or did he not even remember that he had forgotten me? I hope that he could recall the memories of vacations, laughs, and dinners in our past. I both hope and dread that he knew the last memory of me and that he was as sad as I am now. Did he know when every memory would be his last? Did he suffer the pain that I feel now?
We are a family afraid. His illness is a mirror before us and so every forgotten name, every set of keys lost is a reminder of what may come for us. Deep in the heart of my family lies the fear that we are looking at our own future. And if not our own, then our children’s. For us, a headache becomes a warning, a chill turns us numb, and a slight dizziness is a message that we are next because to watch him has caused us to feel that our own lives are in danger as well.
For now, we bite our tongues at those who cluck theirs with disapproval of the care we provide. We numbly agree with advice from friends and we listen patiently and take thankfully the condolences given to a man still alive. More importantly, we cherish memories because we know they may be our last.