Each day, sometimes hour,
there’s a new realization, a deeper understanding of this most egregious disease.
Alzheimer’s is a slow and unpredictable demise of the afflicted and simply the
most despicable type of torture ever devised by nature. No man could think up
any method more emotionally or physically debilitating.
Each
day is a new good bye. And yet there he is, dad, sitting there, starring back
at me. Sometimes he stares at me with a smile, Sometimes it’s as blank as
night. I never know if there will be a dawn. Sometimes he speaks fluently, if
only for a short sentence. Then it’s back to mumbling, fidgeting with is hands.
He attempts to stand, only to wonder why. A customer needs help, a meeting
needs to be attended, a car needs to be washed and readied for the customer to
pick-up. But that was fifteen years ago.
Time no longer matters.
There’s no longer a difference between dawn or dusk, between Sunday or any day.
It’s just today, it’s just right now, and it’s just never going to be the same.
As his personality slowly vanishes, the reality of his mortality increasingly
develops. After all. He is my hero, my mentor, that bigger than life guy I
still remember from when I was a kid.
And then there’s the
dilemma of the end. I know what that means, for there’s only one end to
Alzheimer’s. Except with Alzheimer’s there’s more than one death. I want so
much for my father’s suffering to end. But that would mean a new suffering
would begin, but this time it would be my mother who suffers. The suffering of
grief.
Grief, that despicable
yet emotionally necessary process of healing. There’s no time limit on grief,
and Alzheimer’s, that thousand different ways and days of saying goodbye grinds
out every drop of emotional fortitude. This is grieving in advance, preparing
for grieving post. It’s going to happen, my father’s death, I’ll miss dad, and
I’ll be happy for dad, while hurting for mom.
I thank God for his grace
that allows me the strength to deal with the ever changing and challenging
emotional and psychological drain this disease affects. I am thankful for my
training in chaplaincy and religious study to help me, and hopefully my family,
through this most difficult time. And to help us through the difficult time
that is most certainly yet to come.
I’ll never be sure when
dad will leave us for good, I do know that he will leave us before he dies. There’s
so much to say, ………. That will never be said.
by David E. Gonzales
“In his great love,
the God of all consolation gave us the gift of
life.
May he bless you with faith,
in the resurrection of his Son,
and with the hope of rising to new life.”
Amen-
From the “Shorter Book of Blessings”
