It was the shoes that got me. Well, the photos too. But really the shoes. Cleaning out and boxing up the last of the items at #277 (my dad’s former place that we’re readying for the sell) having already set up his new place with the necessary creature comforts, I was gathering up the doo-das for donation. And these: a pair of golf shoes, the left one with cleats, the right without (?maybe that’s a thing?); a pair of penny loafers that he began to spontaneously wear again last summer even though the soles were slippery as F so I retired them to the back of the closet; two pairs—one black, one brown—of shiny lace-up dress shoes—or rather they would be shiny once the layers of dust were removed, suggested a time. If their tongues could wag, I’ve no doubt they’d tell of days on many golf courses all over Southern California, of wanders through bookstores like Vroman’s, and a lot of sit-downs at Monty’s Steakhouse with his buddies and martinis and slabs of meat and salty fries. Somehow the visions of how his feet were covered as he walked through those bits of life moved me in a way I didn’t expect. Because they told me stories of who he was. Because they reminded me of who he is today. Still that guy but now with grippy, rubber-soled black canvas slip-ons that are, frankly, challenging to get on because of edema.

Today he is a guy who eats pretzels out of his coffee carafe, slips donuts under the sink, stuffs the phone in his glasses case, and wants the portable phone to turn on his TV. And none of this is an experiment or a lifestyle choice. Well, actually, it is a lifestyle choice although one made in a way that makes sense only in his world. A place where he toggles between frustration in acknowledging that he really doesn’t know how to do the things he once did and often wanders around his new place shaking his head, and another in which he sits and looks around him without much movement. I’m well aware of how lucky I am to know him in every stage of life from now and all the way back to my first memories of him and me reading in the den or him watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus while I tried to figure out what was so funny.

Currently, I’m almost constantly gnawing on worry that he’s OK in his twilight world while also served with a side of relief that he is surrounded now by people who can help him if/when he needs it. I wonder when to just let him be. To give him the autonomy to make his way to the dining room on his own (WITH. HIS. WALKER. Which he despises so far and I suspect will not take without reminding/forcing). When to stop showing up every day to set up the coffee machine and share a meal with him. I’m not sure I ever actually have to stop that but I do know from some conversations with people who work at his new place that at some point he’ll need to do some stuff like eating independently of me. Like when a parent(s) decides a child can walk on their own. How do you know? Is it when the bruising on his face from his fall makes him less self-conscious? Or now, when he can compare notes with his neighbors about their various and sundry moments of life?

And the DadCam we’ve set up in his apartment is, while helpful for sure given he fell again last week and I saw it happen and so Dennis and I could get there to help even though he was amazed at how we knew he needed help getting up since he doesn’t know about the camera, which I feel slightly guilty about altho not that guilty…but I digress. The DadCam is weird because I tune in every once in a while and see him sitting, napping, eating said pretzels out of the coffee carafe, trying to turn on the TV with the phone, things like that, and my instinct is to call and say “The remote is directly to your right on the table.” But I don’t do that because I’m rooting for him to figure it out. And if he doesn’t, he doesn’t. I can’t know what he’s thinking. I can make up that he’s sad or despairing or other dark things but I can’t know that at all. And watching him sit and stare off into space I could just as easily imagine he’s thinking about and reliving happily walking on the golf course in his cleat (or non-cleat) white shoes on the back nine. Or hanging at Monty’s bar with his pals after the game as they talk of their day. Or strolling through the bookstore aisles choosing his next book to take home and sit in his Eames chair to read. He’s sitting in his Eames chair right now (yes, I just looked). He’s holding the paper, maybe reading it. But overall none of that matters. He’s in a whole different space right now and it’s one only he knows. He’s wearing black canvas slip-ons with very grippy soles, which are resting on the black leather footrest. And in a few hours those shoes will accompany him and me on a walk around his new property where we’ll say hi to the neighbors.