This book is dedicated to Maurice Wheeler, his wife Rainie, his children Patricia, Mark, and Maurice and all the families dealing with Alzheimer’s.
Maurice is gone. He is buried in my USAF Uniform. I hope this story brings him and his family some much deserved peace.
Eulogy
“We should have had this funeral six months ago. We should have had my father’s funeral on Valentine’s Day. It was the last time he was here. It was a simple thing. A simple piece of chocolate from a box I brought for him to give to me since he always gave me a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Back when he could. Back when he was still my Daddy.”
“He started that tradition when I was ten. It might have been nine. He said it was when I was nine. I said it was when I was ten. I knew I was right as sure as he knew he was right. We argued that point for years. Like it mattered. Knowing it didn’t. It was something we did.”
“He brought me a heart shaped box of chocolates. He watched as I opened it. Then I offered him the first piece. The chocolate covered cherry. It was his favorite. It was my favorite, too. I was glad there were two of them in the box. Quite frankly, if there was only one, he was getting a caramel. It was my box of chocolates after all.”
“Since Dad came down with Fuggeddaboudit,…we both hated even hearing the word Alzheimer’s after a while….Fuggeddaboudit it was much easier…and more to the point anyway. Since he came down with Fuggeddaboudit over six years ago, I brought the box of chocolates. At first, he came with me to the store. The last few years, he rarely left the house. It was too much of a production. So I went alone and just brought the box as if he was there with me. Like he “woudda if he coudda” as he would say. I handed him the box. He handed it back to me. I acted surprised. He acted…well, sometimes he wasn’t there much to act or anything else. This last time though it was a bit different. I handed him the box, he handed it to me, and I acted surprised. Just like always. I opened the box and handed him the chocolate covered cherry. Just like we always did.”
“He ate it. THAT part he seemed to magically remember. Maybe the sweet tooth is invulnerable to Fuggeddaboudit. This year he ate the cherry and then he reached and touched my hand. It kinda surprised me.”
“Not that he touched my hand. He did that a lot. When we sat and watched TV or just sat on the porch in his favorite spot. He held my hand when we walked his ten or twenty steps in the garden every so often. He held my hand a lot. This time, it felt different. It felt right. It felt like he was there. I looked at him and I saw him. Him. Right there. Looking back at me. “
“This part chokes me up a bit. It reminds me how long it had been since I saw him there in his own eyes. He was there that day. He smiled. The “I just ate a really good chocolate covered cherry and all is right with the world” smile. I did not say anything. I couldn’t say anything. My eyes filled with tears and I just looked at him.”
“He spoke. My Daddy spoke. It wasn’t gibberish. It wasn’t nonsense. It wasn’t questions asked thousands of times already. It was my Daddy and he spoke to me. He said, “That was really good. Like really good!” Then he smiled and held my hand a bit tighter. ”Thanks for all you did for me, Pal. I feel it and I love you.””
“His last words to me as the father that raised me. “I feel it and I love you”. I will always treasure that. What I felt the most though was one of the words. Did. “Thanks for all you DID for me.” Past tense. My father knew he would be gone soon. He knew his essence would be gone soon.”
“I thought he was preparing me for his death. He actually died that day. He went away. There was no more glimmer of him after that. His body, that thing in that box over there, pumped blood, ate food, and existed for six more months. As my father would likely say, on Valentine’s Day, just like Elvis, my father left the building.”
“I love you, Daddy. You can have my chocolate covered cherries anytime you want. Thank you for being a wonderful father and I am glad you are at peace now. You deserve it.”
Intro
I began with the end because it was so damn long in coming that I didn’t want to wait for it all over again. That might sound bitter. That’s only because it is. My father is gone and I had to watch him go one piece of his soul at a time and I would not wish that on anyone.
There are hundreds of others just like me out there. Grown-ups that have to be parent to parent that is no longer the parent they loved. Children turned adult tending adults turning to children between bouts of vegetation and panic. Yes, there are good parts. Quite frankly, not enough to make it all worthwhile. Not enough to make up for the heartbreak and anger at what Alzheimer’s does to people. Not enough to make it all feel right even when it does end…at least for them. The victims. Our parents. Our loved ones.
I am a positive person. I believe in the Law of Attraction, a Higher Power, that everything is connected, and all things happen for a reason. I tell you that here because it will be easy to forget that as you read the truth of my bitterness. Yet it is true. Being positive is the only thing that kept me from blowing my brains out. It also kept me from blowing his brains out. Barely. Thank goodness, I am a positive person. If not, I might be writing this from jail and it still would have been worth it. Of that, I am positive.
Simple Beginnings
Turns out that I was not the only one that ignored the signs at the beginning. Dad began forgetting a few things. It happens. He was over 70 years old and people begin to forget things when they get older. I saw the evidence and convinced myself I was wrong. Turns out I was wrong. About denying the evidence that is.
Heard a lot of folks did that. My friend Judy did the same thing when her Mom first showed signs of Fuggeddaboudit. “Me, too, Mal. I did the same thing.” She stirred her coffee while she spoke to me.
Perkins was still kinda busy, considering it was a weekday and closer to lunch than breakfast. She and I met for lunch a lot. A lot less that we should have and a lot more than most childhood friends do when they are in their forties. It helped that we both still lived in the houses we were raised in. Judy moved away for a while. She lived in Florida but ended up back here when her father died. She and her mother lived together for almost twenty years. Her mother was a pain in the ass but I never said that to Judy. I guess she will know it now though.
“I saw the signs and pretended it would pass. Not my Mom. Not the woman who watched Jeopardy and got most of the questions right. Even Final Jeopardy. Not her. She couldn’t have Alzheimer’s”
Judy shared more as her omelet arrived skillfully balanced on our Waitress’ arm right under my own order of French Toast. Kathy, our waitress, was good at her job. She was happy although you had to know it rather than see it. She smiled less often than she screwed up the orders. I liked her a lot. She knew our names, ensured our coffee cups stayed full, and didn’t suck up for tips. She was a pro.
Turned out that most folks deny the evidence at first. Judy did. I did. Everyone I talked to about the disease since it invaded my life forever said they denied the truth until it could not be denied any longer. We fooled ourselves.
It helped to know I was not alone. I guess misery really does love company. I knew my Dad had Alzheimer’s long before I admitted it to myself. It began with the Orange Juice.
It was June and I popped over to Dad’s to have a cup of coffee with him. It was almost a daily thing whenever I was off work. The kids were in school. I headed to the house for what was to be a routine visit on a routine day.
r /> I guess I got my creature of habit stuff from Dad. We both liked routines. There was something comfortable about sameness. He liked his coffee the same way each day just like I did. He walked every morning he could and wrote for a while after his walk. After he had his morning glass of orange juice that is. Then he wrote until I arrived. He used my arrival as an excuse to take a break and have a cup of coffee, maybe even a bagel and egg sandwich, with me. We would sit and talk and then I would go back to my day and he would go back to his writing.
It was just another morning. We sat on the porch, he in his chair and me in what used to be Mom’s, and talked. How the kids were doing in school. What adventures they had been up to lately. How the car was running. Had he seen the latest blah-blah-blah. Life talk. Porch talk. Father-Daughter talk. Friend talk.
I went to refill my cup of coffee, and his, he drank his coffee even faster than I did, and he asked if I would pick up some Orange Juice for him when I was out later. A simple thing. I filled the cups and said of course I would. Me picking up stuff for Dad was part of our routine. I asked him if he wanted to come over for dinner and he thanked me but said he had salad made and would just putz around the house.
He did not usually accept the dinner offers. He just liked his time