Right before my daddy died, he looked like he was playing the electric guitar. I know he wouldn’t mind me saying this, cause he had Alzheimer’s and he would not like to have had it…had he known that's what he had.
Dad had Alzheimer’s for twelve years and more often than not, we had a great time -- like the time he jumped out the double-paned window of the secured facility where he was living, (luckily he lived on the first floor) . He ran across the street into the gas station, and smiled all out of breath. “Great day in the morning, gentlemen,” he said, and they replied, “He must be from across the street.” When I arrived to see Dad in the back of the ambulance, he was all smiley and out of breath. “I really did something tonight,” he said, with the innocence of a child who thought he had just won something big. I put my arm around him and said, “You’re gonna be okay, Dad. You really are.” How many times does a child have the privilege of soothing their parent like that?
People used to ask me, “Does he know who you are?” And I would say, “No, but that’s okay ‘cause he likes me even better not knowing who I am.”
So when Dad was dying, I was right by his side cause I loved him and delighted in his hard work ethic, even as an Alzheimer’s patient, pacing floors and moving furniture. I loved the fight he still had in him, and the strength. It takes a lot of strength and determination to jump out of a double-paned window.
So, I held Dad and looked in his eyes and thought about the war of life he had fought, all the way up to the bitter end, and how hard he had worked -- dropping out of school in the eighth grade, then running away at age fifteen, marrying Mom, having nine children, and yet always finding fun in whatever he did … even as an Alzheimer’s patient. “You bet your sweet bippy,” he’d say to the caregivers while smiling with three hats piled on his head, wearing plaid shorts that were two sizes too small, a golf shirt buttoned to the collar, red suspenders that were pulled too tight and sunglasses.
Were we wrong to give him that oxygen he seemed to beg for as he reached for us while gasping for air? This artificial air seemed to help him, yet it seemed to also help his lungs begin to outlive his body, as his muscles started to twitch uncontrollably, as if in rebellion and a necessity to give up the ghost. We didn’t know what to do, so we waited, and held him and watched, as his right arm started twitching, then shaking up and down the length of his body while his left arm became outstretched. We were concerned, wondering what he was doing, and then I said, “He looks like he’s playing the electric guitar.” And we hoped he was, in a brand new place he could call his own. Go, Dad, go. We were excited for him. To watch him become freed from his mental imprisonment. To end this confusing, awful journey, and begin a life we knew he would love so much better. When he died a few minutes later, we cried in relief…for him. Dad was an outdoorsmen. locked in a room for four years. Now he was outdoors again.
Its weird being on earth without your parents, like being a child again on family vacation with the fear that's sometimes carried that your parents might leave without you. And they have. They’ve driven off, leaving me at curbside, to now figure out this world on my own.
And boy, do I have a lot to figure out….married 25 years, seven kids, and then my husband leaves…without me. Wow, it’s a good thing I still know how to have fun.