Walter's Willie

Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toon,

Up stairs an' doon stairs in his nicht-gown,

Tirlin' at the window, crying at the lock

~William Miller

There is a resident at Daddy's nursing home named Walter. Walter is a very little old man, and looks astonishingly like the man from "Monopoly". He spends most of his time curled up quietly in his wheelchair, bothering no one.

That is, until one day while I was visiting Daddy I heard Walter muttering to himself. I happened to glance over, and Walter was sitting there with his pants completely down! I damn near died. Thankfully the nurse saw him, came over and yanked his pants back up, admonishing him NOT to do do it again. Well, she had no sooner turned her back than YANK! Walter had his pants down. She came back over and YANK! pulled them back up again. Once again, she turned away and YANK! Walter's pants were around his ankles. YANK! The nurse pulls them up. YANK! Walter pulls them down.

This went on for fully 15 minutes, until the nurse finally moved poor Walter out of the sitting room and into his own room, where presumably he could be happily naked. I was greatly relieved, to say the least. Any more of Walter's willie peeping out at me and I think I may have gone blind.

Apparently this is Walter's "thing" (no pun intended) because others in the family have been treated to the same vision as me. It's darkly funny, of course, but imagine how the poor man would feel if he were aware of what he was doing. Unless he used to be a flasher..........

Suggested Reading

"I don't understand a word I'm thinking"
~Frances Nora O'Connor, Ph.D.

I have recently finished a book that I think would interest anyone who is reading this blog. It is titled "Still Alice" and is written by Lisa Genova. It is a novel that tells the story of a 50 year old female Harvard professor who is diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease. It is beautiful, lyrical, heartwarming, and ultimately hopeful and inspirational. I can not recommend it highly enough.

Surviving the Holidays

“The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree

is the presence of a happy family

all wrapped up in each other” ~Burton Hills

Yeah, right, Burton. We had no Christmas tree, and the family sure as hell wasn't happy. We WERE all wrapped up in Daddy, though. Does that count as a merry Christmas?

Sigh. We tried. We really did. We all put on our game faces and muddled through the holiday season. It was fairly dreadful, although not quite as suicide-inducing as I had feared.

Thanksgiving was easier than I had hoped for; Christmas Day was as well. I found the preparations for both; the anticipation, the second-guessing, the angst was nearly unbearable. In each case I was coping with my own emotions as well as those of my mother and the rest of the family. In the end, we tried to do some things the same and some things differently. As attempts go, it was a good damn try by all concerned. What was missing was Daddy -- both physically, since he couldn't come home, and in all other ways since he has no awareness of special days; if he had he wouldn't be able to remember.

Each of us dealt with it on our own level. I made Daddy a crocheted blanket for his bed. He loved it when he saw it, then promptly forgot where it had come from. I'm OK with that. I made it to keep him warm, and to warm my own heart by knowing it would cover him every night. The other gave him presents he could use and enjoy -- candy & treats, warm clothing, and so on.

At dinner, while saying Grace, my youngest brother mentioned how sad he was that Daddy wasn't there, but how happy he was that our great-nephew was with us. That truly summed up how I felt, too. I am so very, very sad that Daddy -- the Daddy I always knew, loved, and looked up to -- is not with us any more; instead we have this small, frail, forgetful old man who often doesn't recognize our faces. The Ying to that Yang is this beautiful baby boy, Daddy's great grandson, who is not yet two years old; he is new life and hope. Maybe the baby really IS the true meaning of Christmas.

Voices of the Damned

"...tormented souls I see around me wherever I move,

and howsoever I turn, and wherever I gaze."
~Dante, "Inferno"

A nursing home is never a happy place. At best, it is sad and vaguely lonely; at worst it is hideously depressing.

My father's nursing home is a "good" one --it is clean and bright, bustling with activity, and the staff is loving and attentive to the residents. It is as fine an example of this type of facility that you are likely to find anywhere, and I am happy that Daddy is receiving exceptional care.

That being said, a locked Alzheimer's ward can be horrendously heart-wrenching. Alzheimer's patients frequently wander, so the door is locked and has key-pad entrance and exit, a task too difficult for the patients to master. It keeps them safe, and that is a good thing. Many of the residents are end-stage, and thus are lost, lying in fetal positions, and apparently unaware of the world around them.

For me, the worst are those who are lost, yet still capable of some type of vocalization. There is Gertie, who giggle disconcertingly in a high-pitched squeal. Then there is Margaret, who moans and cries out "helpmehelpmehelpmehelpme" Most unnerving is Sheila, who shrieks like a banshee, seemingly without the need to breathe. There is no comforting these poor women when they are in this type of crisis, although the staff tries valiantly.

Are they merely acting spontaneously, without any causation, or are they reacting to remote memories? Worse yet, are they railing against the injustice of their disease? Do they somehow see how damned they are, from now until their ultimate death?

Whatever the cause, it all shatters me to hear and be unable to ease their misery. Like a coward, I cut short my visit and run home to sanity.

Fuck the Bird

Some hae meat and canna eat, -
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

~Robert Burns

Why should I thank God, Robbie Burns? For fucking what--each holiday being worse and more stressful than the one before? What a great damn benevolent God ye hae' laddie.

I hate holidays. I've hated them since Daddy got sick. This bloody Thanksgiving makes me need to scream and rage. Daddy isn't here: why celebrate? He's dying slowly: why celebrate? He's spending his Thanksgiving--and every other holiday--in a nursing home: why celebrate?

I can't bear the thought of Thanksgiving without him here with us. If he were dead it would be different; this is a torturous limbo. I can't picture the table without him at the head. I can't picture him eating ground-up turkey in the group dining hall of a locked-down nursing home wing.

I hate this shit. And I can't "pray to a God that I don't believe in" to give me faith and love and joy. Fuck that noise. I'm just angry and depressed and not coping at all.

I have to stop. I"m crying to hard to see and shaking too much to type.

Damnable Metaphor

You can't pay enough money to cure that feeling
of being broken and confused.
~Winona Rider

Daddy has moved to his new nursing home, closer to home. He is even more discombobulated than ever, since he is in new surroundings. He doesn't have a sense of belonging to this place yet. That will come; of course it will just take some time for him to become acclimated.

He wanders around in his wheelchair. In his old placement he was safely comfortable, and knew everyone. "Rambling Man could have been written for him. He wanders here, as well. Here, though, he doesn't know how to get back to his room. He doesn't even know that his room is HIS.

In an effort to keep him from getting lost, I took a picture I had made and wrote his name and room number on the bottom. I posted it on the wall, at wheelchair-eye-level, so he can find his way back to his place. The picture I added to this post is the one I used for Daddy's sign.

Now if only I could find a way to post a sign that would direct his brain back to good health. Instead, I feel, once again, like I'm putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. My Daddy's brain is lost; nothing I or anyone else can do will bring it back.

I cried all day today. Again.

The Nature of Reality

Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight,
Red is gray and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion?
~The Moody Blues

I have been thinking more and more about the word "reality" these days, so I dusted off my Webster's and looked to see what they had to say. Webster's defines reality thus: "the quality or state of being real". I found it to be an intriguingly philosophical definition.

For most of us, reality is multi-layered; the tangible bits of our busy days, the anticipations and expectations of tomorrow, and the regrets and joys of yesterday. That is reality, no?

Maybe not. Maybe Daddy is the one with the firmest grasp of what reality truly is. He has no sense of the past or the future, he has only the "here-and-now". As a result, his reality is very tangible: how he feels at any given moment, what he sees, hears, thinks is all he is aware of.

Whose reality is real--his or ours? I have no idea at all.