This is my father, as you may have guessed. I do not know where we were, whose house it might have been. I do not know how old I am or what time of year it was. Truly, there is nothing that I know about or recognize from this photo.
All I really know is that this is a photo of me and a photo of my father and it was, seemingly, a good moment in time, a good moment between the two of us.
As I look at this photo, I think about the words my friend Mary gave me with regard to what is happening to my body: This is not the way God designed our bodies to work, not the way He intends for my body to be. Sin has ravaged so much in this world. Bodies. Bodies and families. Disease and divorce are both byproducts of its destruction.
My father has Alzheimer's. Who he was in this photo is not who he is now. Who he was throughout all his life is not who he is now. The years in the family that was. The years in his new family. The years of being a father and a grandfather, a husband and a son. They are all gone for him. What remains are glimpses here and there. Moments of awareness flickering through the confusion. I cannot help but think that for a man who was an engineer by trade and by nature, his life now must surely be maddening ... when he is aware.
I watched his decline.
So much of my life has been not really being a part of his life. Divorce does that. So does distance. But there came a point in both our lives where we ended up in the same area once more. In a way, it was a second chance to know my father. I am not sure what I made of it.
For a few years, I worked at a job where my boss gave me tickets to the Redskins games. I took my father. Now is not the time to wax poetically about the joy that is stadium mustard, but I would not have known about it had we not traveled to the games. Nor would I have known it had my father not been willing to split the hot dogs and the chicken fingers and fries with me so that I could taste/have both. My step-mother gave my father a mini-TV, so we would jamb our heads together watching the replays. And the trip to and fro was oft as long as the game itself, arguing about the Redskins, especially since they are the mortal enemies of my beloved Cowboys. Good times.
And then there was the Wal-Mart $5.50 DVD bin, the bane of my step-mother's existence, but the joy of mine and my father's. Who doesn't love a great find in the $5.50 DVD bin? A pile of best picks acquired would result in a weekend movie fest, watching as many as possible. Twelve, I believe, was our best weekend. "The Abyss." "Total Recall." "The Hunt for Red October." Good times.
And yet I watched his decline.
One of the moments I wish that I did not remember is the first time he panicked in Wal-Mart. I was always the faster picker. I could work my way through the bin in about half the time as my father, re-stacking the movies in the process, as I moved from side to side to side. So, I would oft wander over to the $7.50 racks to see if there might be something worth spending a bit more, while my father lingered over the stacks I had made along the edges of the bin. I had done so countless times, but that day was the first time his disease punched me in the stomach.
My father did not know where I was. He did not know where he was. I did not recognize his voice at first. The fact that he was not calling my name, perhaps, kept me from noticing sooner. But suddenly my contemplation of movies was disrupted by this heart rending cry of my step-mother's name. In a flash, I was back at my father's side. When he looked at me, he looked through me. I do not know what he saw in that moment. What I saw was his confusion, replaced by awareness, replaced by what I could only imagine could be horror at what had happened, what was happening to him.
I imagine so because I have felt the same following my own confusion followed by awareness.
From that moment on, I watched him. I asked him to tell me stories. I asked him about his day. I reminded him of the games and movies we saw together. And I watched him.
I watched him struggle to remember, struggled to re-tell, struggle to order his food. I watched him struggle recognize where he was or the way we should go. Always ... always ... my father would drive. He insisted on it, even when I had to coach him through every turn, every stop. In fact, for the longest time I deeply resented the fact that he never let me drive his car, this rather beautiful white Camry I rather coveted. Especially deep became my resentment when I realized that my brother had driven it on his visits and then my teenage half-brother. But I wonder now. I wonder if my father's insistence was sort of a last stand with him.
One day, I got a call from a stranger. My father had gotten lost on the way over to my house for a movie fest. He wandered around until he gave up and pulled into a parking lot. Some man found him looking "lost" and took pity upon him. My father was just across the highway, by a bird's flight perhaps a mile at best. He was blue when I got there. My father was too afraid to wait inside or sit in his car. The stranger said he never stopped searching. Only, really, my father was not searching for me. He was searching for his wife. She was his anchor.
I am not sure how long it was after that, but one weekend my father could not stay. He wanted to be home. Mine was not safe to him. I think his driving was safe to him in a way I could not understand then. It was something he still knew and he could still do.
It would probably not be a lie to say that everyone in the family dreaded the time his keys would be needed to taken away from him. I know many families struggle with that moment, with having to argue with a loved one that he/she is no longer capable of that independence. Only with my father, the battle never arrived. One day he spoke his fear of being able to drive to his wife. She reassured him that it was okay not to drive. And that was that.
For the past week, my father has been in the hospital for uncontrollable outbursts of emotion and violence. He has been restrained. He has been sedated. Several times. The last report is that finding a balance for him has not yet been achieved. My heart breaks for him.
No matter what he knows or does not know, he must be terrified, at times, to lash out as he has. Terrified and angry and confused. How difficult to watch, but, oh, how much more difficult to live.
Our Creator did not intend for life to be this way ... or to end this way.
Lord, have mercy upon my father. Christ, have mercy upon my father. Lord, have mercy upon my father.
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