My
Father Is Growing Lighter
Friday, September
15, 2006
A good friend of mine has had a lot of experience
working with the ageing and the dying. She recently
told me that I am fortunate to have time to spend
with my father “as he becomes lighter”.
These words have echoed in my mind. They are not
the words one usually associates with the progression
of Alzheimer’s Disease. One is more likely
to hear: “He’s lost so much;He’s
going downhill;He’s not the same person
he was; Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease.”
All of these things may be true; but they are
not the whole truth.
My father is growing lighter. As his condition
has taken its course, he has become more and more
child-like. He delights in children, and pictures
of children. He loves the play of coloured lights
dancing across the floor of his room, cast by
the mobile turning in his window. He likes to
watch the traffic of the busy streets outside
the sunroom windows; each passing car or bike
or person is new and worthy of remark. He looks,
and sees things that I don’t see; like the
number “11” hidden in the parallel
metal bars that ornament the nearby bridge. The
world is full of things that we have learned to
treat with the contempt of familiarity. But these
ordinary things are new to my father; and when
I am with him, they are new to me as well.
As he becomes lighter, my father has shed the
distinction between “public” and “private”
space. When he comes to an open door he looks
in with natural curiosity. It is I in my confinement
and embarrassment who feel the need to move him
along: “That’s a private room, Dad.”
He doesn’t know what that means; he no longer
recognizes the boundaries that we spend so much
time defining and protecting. He is such a gentle
spirit, however, and so well liked that he does
not seem to get into any trouble for his minor
transgressions.
My father is less and less burdened with the knowledge
of acquaintance. Every time he passes a worker
or fellow resident in the hall, he is meeting
them for the first time. He is glad to see them.
Greeting them with a smile, he introduces me,
“This is my son.” “Yes, Jack,
I know. He looks like you."
My dad responds, “He’s a handsome
lad!”
Despite his profound memory loss, my dad still
makes jokes regularly – and still flirts
with the female staff.
There are perhaps four persons that he can identify
with any consistency – my mother, myself,
and my two siblings who live in town. And even
these identities are becoming tenuous. He often
seems to confuse his wife, his eldest daughter
and his sister. Occasionally he asks me who I
am. He has introduced me as his brother (though
he never had a brother). Once, as we were walking
down the hall, he turns to me and says, “So,
tell me, Kevin, how are we related?”
Another time, sitting in his room, he asks me,
“Do you know Doris?”. “Sure
I do, Dad. She’s my mother.” He laughs
when I tell him that. My mother thinks he is laughing
at his forgetfulness. Perhaps he is. Perhaps he’s
laughing at my outrageous claim that Doris is
my mother. Or perhaps he is just laughing to find
the world so full of surprises. Dad laughs a lot
now when we tell him all these strange things;
for example, that he has six children, nine grandchildren,
and a great-grand child on the way. “How
can I have kids when I was never married?”
(Mom indignantly sets him straight on that one.)
I remember my father’s frustration in the
earlier stages of the disease. As he was speaking,
he would reach for a common word, and find that
it was not there. He would berate himself for
his “stupidity”. “I should know
that!” But now, with the passage of time
and the further loss of memory, he no longer knows
“what he should know”. Having lightened
himself of that burden, he is much more at ease
with himself. He takes things as they come. In
a typical exchange, my dad has just lost track
of what he was saying. My mother says, “What
was that, dear?”. “I forgot”,
he replies. “Forgot what?”. “What
I was going to say to you!” My father laughs;
we all laugh.
I remember the time, not so long ago, when my
father would tell us the same few stories from
his distant past, over and over again. It was
a challenge to our patience to listen to these
stories again each time. Yet I came to be grateful
that I had heard these tales so often. For even
these few stories began to slip from my father’s
mind. He would frequently lose his way in the
midst of his narrative, and I was glad that I
could supply the missing piece to keep the story
going. In time, however, these stories disappeared
altogether, to be replaced by only fragments of
memories from very long ago.
In the midst of this profound memory loss, it
has been a startling surprise to discover that
my father knows the lyrics to over one hundred
songs! We had no idea that my father ever knew
the lyrics to all these songs (in my own childhood
memory, I can recall him singing three or four
of them). Yet he knows all these songs now, and
sings them out enthusiastically whenever we play
the music. It is quite extraordinary – as
he has lost so much of his conventional memory,
these hidden memories of music have floated up
to the surface. I have collected and compiled
many of these songs, and he spends a lot of his
time listening to them now. We often sit together
singing along with the music (I am gradually learning
the lines that Dad already knows). We often laugh
together at the end of a song. What is there in
our lives that is lighter than music and laughter?
The time will come when my father no longer recognizes
me (this is a difficult threshold that my out-of-town
siblings have already crossed). He will become
lighter still, shedding all such labels as father,
child, husband, wife – all the names and
relationships with which we so fiercely identify
ourselves. He will be only himself. I am sure
he will greet me kindly, will be glad to see me,
and will take me just as I am.
One afternoon I find my father sitting in the
dining room rather than in his own room, looking
a little lost. I propose that we go for a walk.
He replies, “Okay. But I don’t know
where I start or end.” I reassure him that
I know the way – a reassurance that he gracefully
accepts. But I also take his words to heart. “I
don’t know where I start or end.”
Who among us does? My father is just a little
more immediately in contact with that reality
than the rest of us.
I am honoured that my father trusts me to guide
him along paths of which he is unsure. I choose
him as my guide as well. I too will grow lighter.
In one way or another, I too will have to let
go of everything that I have as I reach the ultimate
boundaries of this life. I hope that I may do
so as lightly as my father, with his grace, gentleness
and humour.
May 2006
Kevin Quinn
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