Well, it's looking as if I were a bit too ambitious with this whole "weekly ramblings" bit. It's more like bi-weekly ramblings, or twice-monthly ramblings. But I assure you, Unknown Reader, that I ramble on those weeks I don't post as well as on the ones I do!
Today I'm thinking of reasons to avoid visiting my father in assisted living. He suffers from mid- to late-stage dementia, which means he recognizes me and smiles when he sees me, but has no idea who I am. Conversations tend to be repetitive, with lots of explanations of ordinary concepts, like how to open a car door from the inside, how to eat a sandwich (he tends to deconstruct them and eat them piece by piece, starting with the top slice of bread, moving on through the lettuce, tomato, and meat, then ending with the bottom slice), or how to zip a jacket. Most of his comments run along the lines of, "Oh, I remember this place! I've been here before!" or "I don't think I've ever seen this place before." Sometimes he'll utter both of these statements in quick succession.
It's not that I don't love my father. I do. He is the parent on whom I could depend for love and affection throughout my childhood. But this shell of a man is not my father. He's a dull, shambling, confused creature that inhabits my father's skin. Occasionally, flashes of my father's wit come through in a joke, a mannerism, a bit of wordplay. What an epic struggle it must be to make a pun when all language is slipping away!
It's been a week since I last visited him. For a while, I was visiting him three times a week, because if I didn't go that often, he would make a break for it, shouting, "This place is a prison!", heading out the front door of the residence with a purposeful stride, making a beeline for the woods surrounding the home. Now that I've moved him to a more secure unit closer to my house, he seems content to stay put. The attention paid him at the new residence, and the daily care lavished on him seem to have a soothing effect on him, and he's much less restless, more happy. Also, it could be that the dementia that's increasingly eroding his memories is also robbing him of his will.
The particular form of dementia that my father suffers from is called Lewy Body Dementia, and it is relatively rare, though the second-most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's. My mother had it, too, which means that the odds of my brother and I inheriting it are significantly higher than for others. So seeing my father is a sort of reminder of my probably eventual fate, a sort of senile memento mori. Yet another reason to find a thousand other things to do, rather than pay my father a visit.
Yet I go back, week after week, grudgingly, to spend time with him. I have given up trying to shake up his memory, because it distresses him now to realize how much he's forgotten, but I take him for walks in nature, so I can hear him exclaim "This is magnificent!" as we stop to watch a sunset or a creek tumbling over some rocks, or some deer emerging from the woods. That familiar phrase, more than anything else, brings my father back to me.
