Caring for an Elderly Loved One

Even after Alzheimer’s descended like a cloud over my father, he used to tease everyone around him. He loved making people laugh—especially at him. As his disease progressed, the tease dissipated. He became cantankerous, trapped in a world he did not recognize and could not escape. He was doing what, as a Kansas farm kid during dust-bowl days and an infantryman dodging shells among French hedgerows, he always did, fight for life. Ten years, later, he has given up. Now Dad is silent. Vacant.

I wonder, where does the human spirit go when Alzheimer's arrives on the scene?

Tomorrow I will travel across two states to be with Dad. He won’t know me. He won’t talk. Bewilderment will be our common ground. My greatest challenge may be in changing the way I perceive the changes in the man who is my father—and the way I name those changes. “Devastating?” “Dark?”

Or might they be “profound?” “Purposeful?”As Dad fades away, does he hear something I can’t hear? Though he doesn’t recognize me, does he recognize some things I cannot?

I’ll never forget not too long ago when I heard him singing late one night from his darkened bedroom at the top of the stairs, “home, home on the range…" over and over again.

I wondered, is he singing himself a lullaby? Is he singing himself out of this world?

Perhaps there is a reason Dad is taking his leave s-l-o-w-l-y. If I sit beside him and listen to the silence instead of trying to fill it, perhaps I will hear something he already knows.