Sunday, November 8, 2009
Six months ago I would have slept in late this morning. I would have been recovering from a late night of sitting up and talking with my dad. Hashing over current events. Settling affairs of state. While I’m sure current events don’t hold the same interest they used to the routine of keeping up with them has now reentered his life. But we don’t hash them over. We don’t stay up late at night discussing them.
The last few times we stayed up into the wee hours of the morning it seemed inevitable that he would get sick shortly thereafter. Finally, this past summer when it got to be about 1:30 am I claimed fatigue and called it a night hoping he would as well. It worked and he went to bed when I did and he stayed relatively healthy.
Now we visit in spurts. It doesn’t take long before he is fatigued - which is to say he can’t find the words he’s looking for. Names are impossible. The conversation becomes very labored. He isn’t sleeping quite as much as he was a month ago. I’m going to guess it is something like 14 hours a day now. Could be more. But one night last week, a couple of days after learning about Michael’s death, he stayed up all night watching old movies on TV.
We have to repeat some things often. Sometimes conversations end up where they started. He asks my mom a few times a week now to tell him how he "got here." Those days in the hospital a month ago are little more than a blur for him. I wish we were so lucky. And he has asked me to tell him about Michael’s funeral so many times that I have lost count. But Sharon came for a few hours yesterday and we shared the pictures with him together. I think that made Michael’s death a bit more real. Seeing a picture of his son in his casket had to do that. There he was in his new suit. The one he bought to wear at our father’s funeral. I imagined Michael coming for that knowing how proud my dad would have been that he looked so good - Michael didn’t get dressed up for just anybody. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the suit. The irony was too much. I think perhaps the photos brought some measure of closure for him. He hasn’t asked me about the funeral since.
Today we visited several times. He called for me at one point. Invited me to sit down and visit a while. Said he’d buy me a beer. That’s his kind of humor and I almost dismissed it that way. But Josie asked if he wanted one and he thought a moment - probably for dramatic effect - and said yes. We were a little surprised at first but he was having a pretty good day so we probably shouldn’t have been. It went down well. I don’t think he ever got around to finishing it but it provided an easy lubricant to our conversation - mostly about his military career. I was even able to pry out of him some insights and experiences that hadn’t come up before. One in particular that I had tried a couple of times to get him to talk about without success. When he finally told me it made us both laugh out loud.
So this is the new normal. The confinement doesn’t bother him as much as my mom. But the dependence does. Not that he complains outright. And we have all settled into a routine. There is some comfort in that. Even though it feels like we are letting our guard down it is nice to feel like we can. It is nice to even have a routine that doesn’t include the anticipation of a call at any moment. Normal is good. Just one question. Can someone tell me how we got here?
