Hello. I was on the fence about calling this one Choose Your Own Adventure or Shaken and Stirred. As you can see, I went with the latter. Mainly because this time does feel fairly active in the way a rollercoaster takes you up, down, and sideways with the only option being to hang on for the ride. Adventure choices are not NOT happening (double negatives, so much fun), they just lean more toward stuff popping off unbeknownst and him deciding how much he cares to respond or remember. It’s altogether wild how 96 years of life looks from the outside in.
His inner perspective is one I’ll never know. I can’t pretend to actually understand how synapses bzzzz and frrrggghhh, but yet from my completely unscientific observation, there seems to be a protective mechanism that takes in just what’s wanting to be seen or felt, and the rest sails along to parts unknown. Sure, I could look all this up and find a gazillion peer-reviewed-and-not articles about how the brain and memory work. Obviously, I’m not doing that. More I’m just laying out what I’m seeing from my side of the room. I’d heard tell and now see with my own two eyes how older folx are put in the corner when it comes to day-to-day dealings with people all around them. The amount of times my dad has been spoken to as if he’s actually six (sometimes nine if it’s the doctor’s office) is cringe-y. Or the moments a person will bypass him altogether and just talk to me as if I’m his eyes and ears. I mean, Im definitely here for it if necessary but usually if my dad’s standing right there, I wonder why not speak directly to him. Possibly they assume he’s deaf. He may ask What? but you know, I ask that a lot too. (Thank you, music biz.)
He rarely seems offended by it though. Perhaps it’s a relief. A fine-I-didn’t-want-to-talk-to-you-anyway kind of stance. That said, I’m also noticing a really willful streak coming up around stuff he doesn’t want to do. I don’t have kids, but know from my friends with them how it works with boundary testing and all that good development stuff. In this case, it seems when you reach a certain age, you’re just done with agreeing if it requires you to be annoyed or put out. Two examples are currently in play:
Me: “Dad, I’m wearing a mask into this (fill-in-the-blanks-place). What about you?”
Him: “Nope. I’m done wearing masks. I want to get Covid.”
Me: “Okay, dad, I don’t really think you want to get Covid. It’s nasty.”
Him: shrugs. Mask stays in car.
Me: “Don’t forget your cane.”
Him: “I hate that cane.”
Me: “Of course you do, although it comes in handy, right?”
Him: “Nope. I’m done using that cane. I’m fine without it.”
Me: “Okay. It’s just this parking lot is pretty uneven.”
Him: shrugs. Cane stays in car.
I too look forward to saying no to stuff that annoys me as I use up more years on this planet. Taking a page on that but also I notice how I hold my breath as he interacts maskless with cashiers and the like or does a tottering side-shuffle as we walk across short lengths. Maybe it’s just all about me. I mean it is a little given I’d like to bubble-wrap him so no harm or hurt comes, then I might breathe easier. But then also he wouldn’t be living in any fullness, which would be just as bad as treating him like he’s six (or nine). So, yes, he’s a little(!?) cranky and willful at being at the mercy of a winding-down body and mind. He’s also equal parts sanguine about it with a dose of just-can’t-remember-yesterday thrown in for good measure. This is no joke the not-remembering stuff. The level of it has come very very quickly, which is why this post is called Shaken and Stirred. Every day noticing a slight shift in how his planet moves farther out into a part of the universe I know nothing about. And perhaps this orbit is kind in its own way given he does not dwell.
Yesterday we went to see his oldest friend, Tom, who is in his final moments here on earth. The last time we saw him two months ago, he was moving around his house, albeit with a walker, talking a bit of whimsy nonsense that to him was absolutely real and in no way made us feel weird altho my dad chalked it up to him just waking from a nap. Last week, Tom decided he wasn’t really interested in food anymore, which according to his in-home nurse and all the medical dramas I have(n’t) seen, is the beginning of decline. I don’t think my dad knew what to expect and on coming out of his bedroom after their first conversation, he looked shaken. Of course. Looking at someone you’ve known for sixty years and seeing their twilight of them is a special kind of moving. When my dad went in for a second chat awhile later, he seemed more accepting that he couldn’t really understand what Tom was saying, but was okay with just being in the room.
Interestingly, as we drove home, he had some hopes that Tom would eat again and pull out of it, even as Dennis and I gently said otherwise, then stopped saying anything otherwise because why? After we left him in his house on his way to a shaken not stirred martini, he said, “I’m gonna sleep the hell out of this night.” And from the sounds of him this morning, he did. He also said yesterday was fun. I’m taking that as his memory of us all being together. I’m not dissuading him from it. I’m letting him choose whatever adventure he wants to take from the day as he steps, without his cane, bare face to the wind, wobble in his step, facing the day that I will not ask him about tomorrow because he’ll tell me “I don’t know how yesterday was. I’m here, so it must have gone okay.” I can’t argue with that.
Below find some audio fun I’m trying….
Does This Make Me Look 