Father's Day

Dad and me (circa early 1990s) 

I keep this picture on my kitchen window sill right above my sink; not a day goes by that I don't look at it.  I love this picture of Dad and me for several reasons.  Number one, Dad has such an ornery look on his face.  Based on the smile on my face (it's a smile only from laughter), he was most likely making some wise-crack about Mom's picture taking ability as she snapped this shot.  It's such a candid pose as he is talking when he was supposed to be holding still and smiling---classic Dad antics!  Also, check out the background:  it appears to be at a gas station or more accurately a rest stop...we were probably en route to Tennessee!  And that I can assume because of the object in Dad's hand.  See the dark spots on the white cloth?  That's oil.  Dad was wiping his hands on the same rag he used to check the oil in the car!!  He was famous for keeping a paper towel (from drying his hands in the rest room) tucked safely in his back pocket for whenever a need would arise, you know, cleaning the bugs off the windshield, wiping a grandkid's nose, drying his eyes after a hearty laugh and of course: checking the oil.

From behind the window--by all appearances

Dad was in my dream again. This time, I could see him through the window as I approached my house. He was wearing the blue puffy winter coat and "old man" cap that he wore so often in the early stages of the illness. He also wore a faint but pleasant smile on his lips. I had been looking for him--he wasn't where he was supposed to be, so I walked back to the house to look for him. He had been trying to open the door to come outside to follow us, but his feeble hands and disabled mind couldn't quite work the doorknob.

So even though it didn't appear like it at first glance, he was trapped. He couldn't get out and he couldn't communicate his need for assistance. He just had to wait for someone to return to help him. He could only observe the outside world from behind the window.

While there were many real life incidences similar to this one (even though we're long past that now), this snippet pictures this wretched disease as a whole. It serves a reminder to me to love the helpless, as Jesus did. And not just those with Alzheimer's; helplessness comes in many different forms, sometimes appearing from the outside that all is well.

Worth the silence of waiting

Calculating all the hours of sitting in silence with Dad would be too big a job. His responses are rarely more than a few words, limited mostly to a delayed reaction of nodding his head. Conversation (if one could call it that) is almost never initiated by him.

Mostly, I'm OK with that.

It's a privilege to sit by his bed or wheelchair and simply watch him sleep. (There are occasions of desperation, less frequent now, when I silently implore him to remember---teetering between sadness, the "giving-up" kind, and anger of wanting to shake him to remember---to say anything, to string a few words together, even if they don't make sense.)

Today was one of those common "sleep in the wheelchair" days. Sometimes I can tell his sleep is more peaceful than others. Out of the blue, his left eye peeked open and he spied me. I was clearly in his line of vision. Recognition crossed his face. "Hi there!" he said. ".....beautiful...."

I came closer to put my hands on both of the arm-rests of his wheelchair, so I was right in front of him. "I'm glad to see you, Dad, I love you."

"I love you, too." He held my gaze a moment longer.

Then, like somebody flipped a switch, it was gone. He was back into oblivion, out of my reach. He slept soundly again.

I can visit Dad for "a month of Sundays" and not have as much lucid "conversation" as I did today. Those 15 seconds were worth countless hours of his silence. The sunshine streaming through the window seemed to shine a little brighter.

On Our Morning Jog

I can't even remember why I was offended, but it caused me to quicken my steps in an attempt to get ahead of him so I didn't have to subject myself to his teasing.

I could never outrun my husband, even if I tried, but he allowed me to gain the lead, if only for a few yards. He laughed at my feeble, yet sincere, attempt to race ahead like a stubborn child, "You run just like your dad; short little legs and all! Remember the time he surprised us all by jumping over the creek? That's what you remind me of just now."

It slowed me almost to a stop. I smiled at that memory, too. But I was not prepared for the wave of sadness that appeared out of no-where and washed over me. "Oh, how I miss him," was my only response.

Wraps

Dad was always worried about us being warm enough. (Evidenced by the thermostat in the house set at 70* or higher!) "Dress warmly," he'd say. Which always confused me--and I was always trying to correct him--since I was already dressed for the day. He meant outer garments, or "wraps."

I chuckled at my husband when he called the sweatshirt a "wrap." It sounded foreign coming from him, but coming from my dad, I wouldn't even think twice.

Now Mom is left to chase after her warm-blooded grandkids trying to get them to wear "warmer wraps."

"Look it up on the map"

"Hand me the map," I said to my daughter who was sprawled out on the floor of our office examining the over-sized World Atlas picture book. "I want to look at it."

My husband snorted a laugh as he looked up from his work. "OK....Poppy!"

So I come by it naturally, what can I say? Dad loved to read maps (hey, at least it's not as dull as reading the phone book---although he did like to scrutinize the Bledsoe County phone book whenever he could get his hands on one!) Geography interests me as well. He had a very keen sense of direction, despite some of his infamous "short-cuts." (Which is why it was so alarming at the beginning stages of his illness when Dad got lost driving to church and looked up from the newspaper one day to ask "Where's Gordonville?"--a town only a few miles from his house) On more than one occasion, a brand-new, up-to-date, Rand McNally Road Atlas was among the brightly-wrapped packages on Christmas morning or among birthday gifts, regardless of his retorts of "I'm not opening any gifts this year."

Dad and I had a box of the 50 different United States flashcards. Designed to help school children learn the geographic location of each state (the featured state was highlighted in red while the rest of the map was tinted blue), Dad and I would make a game out of this resource. No words on the front, but of course, on the back of each card, the state's vital information was listed--name, capital, "nickname" (i.e. Pennsylvania is the Keystone State), population, etc. So we'd put them into a pile face-up and shout out the state's name as soon as new card was revealed. Correct answers allowed the winner to take possession of the card and the player with the most cards at the end won. Naturally, Dad cheated (sometimes instead of counting our cards at the end of the game, Dad would suggest we just compare piles. He would stack his cards with spaces in between so it appeared his pile was bigger than it actually was)--we'd have to call in Mom as the judge--to which Dad would laugh uproariously! (We had a box of U.S. Presidents flashcards, too, and these "flashcard games" aren't the only card games where Dad cheated!! I have fond memories of playing SNAP in the living room, with me perched on a little chair, the piano bench doubling as our "game table" positioned between my seat and Dad's recliner. And it wouldn't be a complete, authentic game of SNAP unless Dad cheated!!)

I'm anxious for my children to learn about other places in the world---I am always thrilled to see them trying to find some distant location on the map. It helps, too, that this week is Missions Conference at our church. It's exciting to hear firsthand about how God is at work around the world. We did break out those old "State" flashcards last year as we were preparing to embark on our cross-country family road trip, hoping to instill in them some sense of locale/ distance/ geography, but there's nothing quite like experiencing it in person. That was one thing I thought about a lot as we traveled, not being able to tell Dad, "Hey, you know route 80? We drove it all the way across Wyoming today Dad!" I can guarantee Dad would have had out good ol' Rand McNally, following right along with our itinerary! How do I know? Because he did that very thing when my brother took his family on their own cross-country tour more than 10 years ago (Something like 44 nights in a pop-up camper!! Oy!!). That was at the beginning of the cell-phone age and Dad thought it was the neatest thing to hang up the phone after a conversation with his son to report to us, "They were sitting by the campground's pool in Reno, Nevada.... (or wherever they might have been)....drove 600 miles today...." or "Wonder where they are now, they should be in Kansas by now." I wonder what Dad would think now if he could appreciate satellite maps!?

Typhoon

My children would never tire of hearing Dad tell about living through a typhoon.

Dad was a music major at Tennessee Temple when the draft notice came. He made one last trip North to bid good-bye to his intended (Mom!), leaving her to watch him disappear down the lane into a snow storm as he hitch-hiked to his call of duty for his country. (She recalls it was snowing so hard that the flakes stuck to his eyelashes!) He flew to Seattle to catch the boat to his assigned station in Japan.

The storm began to brew in the Pacific, building to a terrible crescendo. All were ordered below deck. Being the adventurous (or foolish?) type, Dad sneaked back up to catch a glimpse, despite the danger warnings. The enormous waves as high as he could see, were like hideous walls of water dwarfing the boat, crashing furiously and thunderously over the deck, like arms sweeping to steal anything on board to the depths of the turbulent sea, threatening to tear the ship into pieces. All was dark, even if during daylight hours. Men were terribly sea-sick. The boat reeked with the stench of their sea-sickness mingled with the smell of oranges given by the commanders to aid their ailing stomachs. The boat lurched and rocked for days while the storm raged.

And then tragedy hit. Two men at the hull near the engines. Wrestling? Fighting? Playing? The reason mattered little as suddenly voices screamed in terror, "Man overboard! Man overboard!" Confusion ensued as the search and rescue began. But sadly to no avail. The boat turned around and scoured the water for hours, looking for any sign of life.

"The man was from Norristown, PA, " Dad would always conclude, "they kept his tags to send home, but slid the rest of his belongings out to sea."