An April Visit With TB The Elder

 This weekend I got to visit with my father.

This was first opportunity to visit with him in a month, since his second time in the hospital with what was a confirmed stroke.  As you might recall, we had made the decision to relocate him into a 24 hour care facility.

The facility is quite nice, and the day was rather pleasant - sunny and warm but with a bit of a breeze.  One of the staff walked him out, as they are concerned about him falling (reasonable given our recent history).

Physically he looked fine - a little on the frail side, but perhaps that was my imagination a bit.  He seemed to recognize all of us, and began to talk.

My sister had already advised me of what to expect.

My father, unlike a month ago, seems much more able to carry a conversation by himself - in fact, we were there about 30 minutes and he did most of the talking.  The difficulty was, we had no idea what we was talking about.

What seemed to be occurring was that he was using words to mean other things.  He was quite clear that he was telling a story and relaying information about something - but today, the information was about turtles:  finding turtles, changing turtles, even fixing turtles.  

The only turtle we ever had or saw were the small ones here at The Ranch.

It makes the conversation hard to follow of course, but at the same time he did not really seem to be expecting a response overall.  We would nod sometimes, say "Um hmm", and he would talk on.

And names.  He would sometime use names.  My sister had also told me that he seemed to be confused about the time frame were in (at one point last week, he did not think I was old enough to have gone to college.  No Dad, my sister reminded him, he is over 50).  So I listened to the names, trying to place them with people that I might have known (no luck there).

But he was aware as well. He commented on the trees (they have some lovely tall cedars), and the roses that were blooming in the front.  So he does see the world around him.

But we do not really know where he is in time, or what he thinking or trying to express to us.

That said, he seems much less stressed than he was before, almost relaxed.  From what my sister has mentioned, the staff think he very sweet.  He is still enough of himself to joke with them to a certain extent.  So it certainly seems like it was the right move to make.

We have an appointment later this week, both for my father and mother.  It is a follow up for each of them, but it is also a time of filling out paperwork and getting an updated form 602 (It is a form concerning their mental state of mind:  if you at all have relatives that have any sort of cognitive decline, you will come to know this form better than you would care to).   In a way, I fear, it will be a sort of final coda on what has been the last 4 months.

It will simply re-emphasize what I saw today: the father I knew has gone somewhere that none of us can reach him, in a way beyond the time and space that we inhabit right now.  I am hopeful that wherever he finds himself, it is a place that brings him greater peace than the last year.