You know life is changing when. . .
the facebook status updates by friends reminiscing about their now-deceased fathers outnumber those of friends with fathers still with us.
And when my own call back home, intentionally timed, for the first time in a while, early enough for Dad to still be up, ends up with my recounting the story of my husband’s current business travel, and then my son’s broken arm, which leads Dad onto a tangent about my broken arm as a child, and how they don’t make jungle gyms any longer, and if they were going to install one around here, he’d go and protest — which shows his disconnection with reality in thinking that the city actually publishes details of the nature of playground equipment they’re planning on installing, and the fact that he’s never said before that he thought the particular piece of playground equipment was dangerous, and it’s really unlike his usual, conservative, approach to life. And then he said, “I’m going to let you go now,” and I asked for him to hand the phone over to Mom, but he never did and I eventually gave up and hung up.
It’s been over a year since his fall and subsequent head injury (some backstory here) — he’s not thoroughly disconnected from reality, but often confused, generally unfocused, and doesn’t recognize his limitations — he keeps asking when he’s going to be able to drive again. Our second-to-last visit, he played Uno and Yatzee with us, though he kept making mistakes; or most recent visit, we couldn’t even get him to play, but instead he just sat in the family room half-watching TV, or, even if in the kitchen with us, just passively.
A couple months ago, Mom took him for another round of quite substantial testing, with the question of whether there was more rehab that could be done for the injury, and the answer’s now come back that this is dementia, and not something that can be remedied with therapy of some kind or another. She’s supposed to schedule a follow-up appointment, but doesn’t have anyone to ‘babysit” Dad so that might have to wait a while.
So, anyway, I’m sure you all have your own stories, but that’s mine.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In