not-so-sticky

Bob in September 2009. My father, who suffers from the late-stages of early-onset Alzheimer's, has not been able to live with me for some time. Simple tasks I once took for granted - like eating, walking, talking - have become real challenges. A man who less than two years ago walked all the way from Kingston to Bloomington, albeit unintentionally, is no longer able to stand unassisted. Only five years ago, he had still regularly rode his bicycle over the New York border from his home in Cambridge, New York to West Arlington, Vermont, which only stopped after he had misplaced several bicycles. Even though Bob's no longer living with me, his presence persists.  Throughout the house, objects seem stranded. His wallet, once full of business cards and cash sits empty and discarded on the top of a shelf in the kitchen, its contents lost and the shell dismissed long ago. Bob's wardrobe. At the end of an upstairs hallway, next to the room where my father slept, is a ...

Last night, I found myself planted on the couch in my living room with a gummi worm hanging out of the side of my mouth. I wondered just how long before one of my little hell monkeys would wander by and notice? As a child, I maintained the false belief, as I suspect many children do, that my father was an infallible, rational being. Therefore, everything he said must be universally true and right. Father knows best. Now that I'm a parent, I realize how fallacious this belief was. I'm taller. I pay taxes. I've evolved but I'm still the same weird kid on the inside that I've always been. As I grew older, the world unveiled realities outside of my own microcosm and what this world reflected was that my own was more than a bit askew. My father had a lot of eccentricities that I never thought twice about until many years later. The ride home was quiet and still, highlighted by Bob's humming. It wasn't many years later that I learned 'Starry, Starry N...

My father is 70 years old. What he owns can fit into a small bedroom. There are hundreds of business cards, wrapped up with rubber bands; soaps and shampoos, collected from motels; beer coasters he habitually nabbed from bars; a large Xerox box full of maps; a variety of adhesive he used during his sock-gluing phase, among a variety of other odds and ends that had somehow called to him. In all of these items, I am aware of something intrinsically 'Bob' in all of them. To an outsider, they would signify little. But what stands out the most in this room is an object lately untouched by Bob: a plain hard-covered, black brief case. The brief case that carried back and forth various documents from the Federal building in Albany, the mysterious case I was not to touch on pain of death. I recall it being a source of mystery for me. What could be so very important in that black brief case...? The brief case left me deflated. At the end of the day, is that all there is..? Now here I w...

And clearly, I didn't. When I look back at when my father first moved in with me, I cringe. I expected more from him than he was capable. He had only recently stopped driving (a blog, for another time...). He had been home most of the time alone, sometimes for days, nights, while his partner was away at work. I wonder now what those days and nights passed alone were like for him. At first, I thought he was OK to leave home alone; he simply needed visual cues.   This one served as a reminder to Bob to eat lunch while I was at work. I littered the house with pointers. Nothing fancy. Simply Sharpee-scribbled reminders of who he was,  what to do, and where to go on colored construction paper. Bob's Room.   Bathroom.   STOP! Bob! Stay inside the house!   Attic.   Stupidly, at first, I sometimes left him in the house with notes in 'joke' format, like 'Hey Bob, don't leave the house! The police are looking for you!" which would have been really funny if m...

Bob's most quiet time of the day is the morning. While words often escape him in the evening, the morning is relatively coherent, when a dialogue is still possible. The panic does not settle into Dad's eyes until the sun begins to set on the day. This morning, his head was resting on the back of the couch, and his eyes were closed. He was quiet. The couch pillows were arranged so that the ones which were supposed to go behind him were instead piled up on top of him. He clutched the over-sized pillow close to his body, hugging it tightly to his chest. Only his glasses peeked out over the top, the rest of his face hidden by the pillow. Dana and I were sitting on the other side of the room on the love seat, engrossed by our digital devices. The morning show was droning on in the background but none of us were minding it. The children had already been shuffled off to school so the house was unusually peaceful. With his eyes still closed, Bob said dreamily, "When I close my eye...

Often Dad's reality is mismatched from the moment actually transpiring to a moment from long ago. In addition to the Alzheimer's diagnosis, Dad has recently been plagued with pneumonia, and other random viruses passed along to him from his goobie grandchildren who are laden with germs so he's been more confused than usual. Sometimes it seems like my father is already gone. In truth, he cannot do any of the things he once loved to do. He spends most of his time on a couch in a living room and cannot find his way back to the living room once he wanders out of it. Attempts at dialogue are a challenge. Dad talks with me like his words are making sense but more often than not lately, they are not. Other days, he cannot talk at all. I recently began scanning Dad's old photographs from his Air Force photo album. One of my regrets is that my father kept some mementos and photographs but that their story could 'die' with him. Most of his photographs are not nota...

Before my father moved in with me, I'd occasionally go up to Cambridge to spend the weekend with him while Barbara was working. "So, are you planning on spending the night tonight?" he'd ask. When I'd announce I was spending the entire weekend, he would look overjoyed, "Oh! Good, good! So..., you'll be here all weekend, then? That's great!" Sometimes, he would ask me this more than once and when he realized it, he would simply laugh and say, "I already asked you that, didn't I? Why am I repeating myself?" and he'd laugh, and then drink another glass of wine. I'm not quite sure why - if his intention had been to regulate his amount of drinking? - but he often drank wine out of a small juice glass. Unfortunately, he had a tendency to continually refill his juice glass. It was difficult to tell whether his drinking confounded his memory, or his memory confounded his drinking. It's hard to know. Today, Dad asked me, "A...

For many years, I mocked my father for the trail of enigmatic notes that littered our home. They never made much sense to me so it was easy for me to poke fun at them. But the older I become, the more I appreciate how genius this truly was. His notes were obviously a part of his master plan to overcome his memory loss. Written in his own hand, he was not required to rely on his degrading memory. He would remember anything - and everything - by writing a note about it which he could simply refer to later. Who needs a memory with a trail of documentation? I think this one may be my favorite - a typical Bob Brown grocery list. Guinness Stout and Scotch tape. He wrote this one shortly after he moved in with us - hence, our address on it as well. Dad used to walk up to Rite Aide in Cambridge every day, when he was still able, and alternately purchase rubber bands, paper clips, and scotch tape. A cashier told me this one day when I was with him, and Barbara confirmed he had an ever-growing c...

"What I would like is a piece of ice, something that would make me hungry right now for at least two hours...oh well..." Bob sighed . "Such is life." Dad and I are sitting on the sofa, enjoying a surprisingly sedate moment. Any moment in my house that is sedate is a surprise. I can hear Lil and Liam pestering Dana in the kitchen. He's breaking open pistachios for them - a tedious chore. Seth is upstairs, being his reclusive teen-aged self. I'm poking around online while Dad is chattering. He's peering over my shoulder at the screen of my laptop, resting in my lap on the couch. We already ate dinner, and are lazying about in our pajamas. "Why is it that when you are hungry, you are really hungry? but that when you're not so hungry, you're not. It just seems so strange that it is this way. I mean, I was just wondering what I was going to be eating tonight. not that I'm going to be eating tonight... because it's just too cold to go out...

My father never knew what to do with me. I lived alone with him from the age of 10 on, and I realize he really did the best he could as a single father with a preteen daughter. I wouldn't have wanted to trade places with him. Now that I'm on the caregiver side, I'm more empathetic with his motives even if the actions sometimes seemed askew. He was concerned with my well-being and success, and tried to point me in the right direction, but I imagine it was hard for him to know what the right direction was. Unfortunately, growing up has unmasked the illusion that parents always know best. We can aim to be good parents but it's a constant practice, not an end goal of perfection to be attained. As the primary caregiver of my father, I practice to be a good caregiver. But I will be the first to admit that my practice falls short from time to time. With diligence, I pick up and try again. And so did Dad. Again, and again. And that really is something. * * * The importa...

I was standing at the sink washing dishes when Dad made his first round down the hall to the kitchen from the living room. He seemed a bit anxious but the day had been a long one so I didn't think much of it. It would be time for bed soon. As always, he stopped by the sink in his circular trip through the house. Typically, he comments on what a great job I'm doing washing the dishes but today, he said something I thought a bit unusual. "Are the blogs all OK?" he asked. I paused. Dad has long ago forgotten how to use a computer and to reference a blog in any universe is new knowledge. He has heard me mention the word before, and seems fascinated by it; he always demands to know what a 'blog' is when he hears the word referenced. However, he never pulls it out of nowhere. It's always in connection to something he has just heard. And no one in the house was talking about blogs at the moment. "Yes, the blogs are all O.K.," I said. He didn't loo...

It was pure laziness that I brought 2 rolls of black and white 35 mm film to Walgreens for processing. I had Dad, Lil, and Liam in tow and didn't feel ambitious enough to go to the Artcraft , which is sad since this store is walking distance from Walgreens... I could have waited altogether...but I had been holding onto these two film canisters for a few weeks now. They had made several journeys back and forth in my laptop bag to USR and around again and I was afraid if I didn't drop them off soon, they'd end up lost entirely. And I have good reasons to support this fear. In the last 24 hours, I have misplaced both my digital camera and my cell phone. In the past month, I have misplaced both of these items countless times - along with my ATM card, my wallet, and my keys. Last night, I pulled the cushions off the couch. I found many odd things, but none of these things were either the camera or the phone. Lil was standing by, excitedly announcing each 'find'. I unco...

A friend of mine (not Kyrce) recently left her laptop at work and had to go back to work to fetch it. She was ashamed she had forgotten this, though she shouldn't have been. Only a couple of weeks earlier , she was also the same person who reminded me that I was 'human' not 'stupid' when I sought help from her with my head hanging low when I had forgotten to track time against all of the projects I'd been working by the deadline. Nor did forgetting the laptop actually surprise me, either. I know several who have done the same thing (though it's usually the other way around); I think this happens far more frequently than one would realize. I don't think there is any shame in this, although I completely understand the frustration she must have felt - particularly so since she didn't remember until she had already made the hour commute and had to promptly turn around to do it all over again. In the super, fast-paced lives we have created for ourselves, ...

Even now, Dad tries to hide the issues with his memory. It's embarrassing to him and I think it was for a long time before anyone could identify a 'problem' with Dad. In some ways, Dad is still very clever so it's hard to tell when he's kidding and when he isn't. And I think because of this, I am uncertain the problems with Dad's memory really began. A couple of Friday afternoons ago, Kyrce and I wandered Uptown to Hudson Coffee Traders with Dad to meet an old friend of ours we hadn't seen in a year. No one was around to keep an eye on Dad so I decided to bring him with me. I thought he might enjoy tagging along and getting out of the house for a bit. Dad was truly in rare form on this afternoon. I don't think any of us could get a sentence out without Dad interrupting. When I asked him to please not interrupt, he insisted that if he didn't interrupt, we'd never let him get a sentence in! Disgusted with us trying to quiet him, he decided he...

Trying to be economical, I vied for the generic bar soap over the shower gel I typically buy. 59¢. What the hell. Why not? The savings equaled at least a cup of coffee. The width of the bathroom, between counter and wall, is little more than a 3 foot span. At the far end of the bathroom is a shower, which itself is not much wider than 3 feet and is no more than a stall; there is no basin for bathing. Four of us stood going no where fast. Lily was the furthest in, then Dana, then Liam, then me. Lil had already stripped down but refused to get into the shower until Liam was in the shower. "But Lil! We can't get past you. You have to get in so then Liam can get in," I pleaded. Lil didn't get the logistics of it and refused to budge. The plan was to get Lil and Liam in the shower. Dana and I believe the angst and frustration is far lower if we tag-team child-wrangling. Dana will take Lil, I'll take Liam. Dana once said to me, during a bout of sleeplessness and sick ...

Getting Dad anywhere in the car is not easy. So, I was happy to get an invitation from Aunt Babs to a family gathering in nearby Livingston. It wouldn't be too far - about 40 minutes. Typically, even 40 minutes would be far for Dad but I thought it'd be worth it for him to be surrounded by all the familiar faces he conjures up so often, especially his brother, Leo. Dad would be comforted by this since he spends much of his time gripped by fear, confused because he doesn't know who people are or where he is. Even though there isn't much left that is tangible to the Columbia County Dad remembers, the desire to get there is as strong as if there was. Throughout the day as habit, Dad typically seeks "a ride back to Columbia County". So today would be a bit easier than usual to get him into the car. [Exhibit A: children not properly attended causing mischief.] We spent most of the morning getting ready. It takes small milestones throughout the morning to make it ...

There wasn't enough time to act; I was paralyzed. Dad rode off into the dark abyss. Last night, we went to the carnival. Everything about the carnival was quintessentially carnival, even the part where we got ripped off on admission but walked away from the window before we realized this. I'm not particularly a fan of carnivals much anymore. At least, it doesn't bring me the glee it brought to me when I was little. My tastes have become a bit more sophisticated...though, I admit, not much... But just because carnivals are less fun to me doesn't mean that I don't feel a certain obligation of bringing my children the same amount of glee I had as a child at the carnival. Now the fun of the carnival is witnessing the kids and trying to absorb some of their enthusiasm. Cotton candy. Fried dough. The merry-go-round. Sausage and peppers. The 'Fun House'. Ah yes! We did it all. The rides looked a bit suspect. The brought me a high degree of nostalgia, but I wasn...

Step by step, I walked Dad through the routine. "Empty your pockets." He emptied his pockets. "Take off your shoes." He took off his socks. "Now take off your socks." He took off his socks and looked up at me from where he was seated on his bed. " You're really enjoying this, aren't you? " he asked. I sighed. "O.K., let's go to the shower," I said. " What? But I don't have any shoes on! " "You don't need your shoes in the shower," I explained. He looked at with suspicion and a touch of irritation but he cooperated. "O.K., take off your shirt...now take off your eyeglasses...O.K., now I'm going to put shampoo in your hair," I explain as I dampen his hair over the sink and suds his hair. " Don't over-do it ," he directs me, sounding a bit cranky. His hair soaped up, I fiddled with the temperature of the water. "O.K., now take off your pants." " Heavens! ...