Hello.
I'm reposting this from alt.support.stop-smoking where I've been a regular
for some time.
I recently learned that my father's forgetfulness and odd communications
were not simply...forgetfulness and odd communications.
Alzheimer's has been creeping up on him for a while, and has snowballed
within the last month or so. We just got him into a nursing home near the
hospital where he was taken after his landlady found him in bed, fully
dressed, wearing the same clothes she saw him in last week. He hadn't eaten
for maybe a week, and wasn't making much sense. The hospital stabilized him,
and then released him with the caveat that he shouldn't be by himself.

I don't have to tell anyone here who's going thru this how hard it is to
fathom these changes; how difficult it is to live with the knowledge that a
loved one is being stolen away.
I wrote this to express what I experienced on a particular day, a mixture of
bitterness and sweetness that just overwhelmed me.

I wish us all strength.

Jef.
-----------------------------------------

Today Was

...a day to go visit my father at the nursing home he's been in since
Monday.
...a day to count my blessings.
...a day to cry and smile and sit down and just...write something.
Why? Well,  because it's suddenly just all too goddam much.

It was also a day to celebrate.

Marsha (my wife) got up at 6:30 AM and was baking these special cookies for
my father
by 7:00AM.
She remembered he's very partial to these bar-type cookies she makes with
corn flake crumbs, chopped pecans, coconut, butter, chocolate chips and
sweetened, condensed milk.
They are *killer* snacks-- sweet, a little bit salty, crunchy, chewy,
chocolaty and buttery all at once.
(Insert Homer Simpson drooling sound effects here...)
Man-- I can't eat 'em any more.
Just looking at the pan makes me gain a fast 7 pounds or so.
She baked 'em, cooled 'em, cut 'em up into bite-size squares and stacked
them ever so efficiently on a tray.
Then she went off to her Yoga class.
When I awoke I saw them there and smiled because she's just so damn
thoughtful.
She's a kind-hearted woman; a caring soul; a giver.
She's a... nourisher.
I had my breakfast and coffee, checked my email, and surfed the net to check
on assisted living facilities in our area.

Pop hasn't been eating.
It's like a wrestling match to get food into him.
He's apathetic, claims he has no appetite.
He's said-- in so many words-- that he just doesn't care.
"I don't give a good goddam about anything at all any more."
All he wants to do is sleep or doze in his bed.
He doesn't read with any comprehension any more.
I brought him a book when he was in the hospital--
a thriller by Dan Brown, whom he likes.
Every time I visit, I see it open with his glasses on it.
Always open to a different page.
He can't tell me a thing about the story, but he seems to still enjoy the
act of reading.
He weighs around 107 pounds or so-- he's emaciated.
Every bite or sip of any kind of sustenance is like a major goddam victory.

So, Marsha comes home, we feed the cats, she boxes up the cookies, we turn
on the dishwasher, take out the trash and pile into the car. We hit the road
and head out for Frederick, Maryland-- 45 minutes away from our home here in
Alexandria, Virginia. It's a nice, sunny day. We're relaxed, cruising along,
listening to NPR on the car radio, and it feels like it's officially the
weekend.

We get about a mile out from Frederick, and I'm looking for the sign
indicating the exit we need, and I glance into the back seat. "Where'd you
put the cookies?" I ask.

"OH, sh.t!
sh.t, sh.t, sh.t!!!
I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT THE COOKIES!
OH, FOR GOD'S SAKE!
THE COOKIES ARE SITTING ON THE DINING ROOM TABLE IN THOSE LITTLE PLASTIC
BOXES!
I BOUGHT THE DAMN BOXES SPECIFICALLY TO PUT THE COOKIES IN AFTER THEY COOLED
AND I CUT THEM ALL UP SO NEATLY!
DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT!
I'M A COMPLETE IDIOT!!"
...and so forth and so on for several minutes until we pull up to the
entrance of the Beverly Health Care Center.
She can't effectively nourish someone without the food she spent so long
preparing with such love.
I mean, the love exists, still, but the cookies she'd poured so much of it
into are absent.
'Tis a quandary.
She tells me to go inside while she parks.

I go inside and immediately inside the lobby entrance I see Breezy, the fat,
old, Golden Retriever therapy dog who lives at the place and wanders the
halls, greeting anyone who moves, breathes, or acknowledges her in any way
whatsoever. Her a.s end is waggling back and forth in a 90-mile-an-hour
frenzy of doggy friendship and sheer bliss.
I could be wearing bloody clothes, a mask, carrying a lit stick of dynamite,
an axe and several handguns into the place, intent on engaging in some
serious carnage, and I'd *still* get this same, royal welcome from old
Breezy.
Her role is to greet and be friendly to everyone and just make them happy.
A guard dog she ain't.
Kinda restores your basic faith in... caninity...or something.

Pop is wearing brown pants, mismatched socks, a yellow shirt and his green
silk pajama top over the shirt. The shirt and pajama top are sort of...
buttoned to one another in a fashion that's hard to explain. Both of these
are tucked into his pants. His hair looks like Professor Irwin Corey's
(check Google for his photo...) barber has had a go at him, and he smiles
very broadly when I walk into the room.

The effect is dramatic; both alarming, unexpected and comical--like he's
clowning for me.
Then I realize he has absolutely no idea how silly he appears.
Indeed, not so long ago he'd have been mortified to be seen in any condition
other than carefully dressed, clean-shaven and neatly barbered. This is a
guy who routinely shined his damn shoes every night before he went to bed--
an ex-paratrooper in whom rigorously learned old habits and disciplines were
deeply ingrained.

I go to adjust his clothing for him and when I sit him on the bed I discover
that his pants are wet.
Ricky, the enormous, pro-wrestler-looking male nursing assistant comes in
and lifts Pop off the bed with one arm while he changes his sheets.
We get him washed, dressed in clean pajamas, and re-install him in the
clean, dry bed again.

My cell phone rings.
It's Marsha, calling from my father's apartment.
Did I mention she's a giver?
She has decided to go to the grocery store and get the ingredients to make
another batch of cookies--including a baking pan, a spatula and some plastic
storage containers, as my father has nothing even *remotely* resembling
cookware or food storage containers at his apartment.

His refrigerator looks like a frugal hooker has been living there in his
apartment.
An opened, half bottle of club soda; a few old soy sauce packets from
Chinese carry-out; something that might once have been a bit of cheese (? No
guarantee on this...) and a petrified tomato slice take up what little room
isn't occupied by the unopened, packaged meals brought over by the Meals on
Wheels volunteers (a service that provides food for the elderly and
shut-ins).
They'd been piling up for days because he just stashed them away and forgot
to eat them.

I chat with Pop about the Army, his days as a 17th Airborne paratrooper and
his combat jumps into Holland and Belgium with Patton's 3rd Army. He
reminisces about the days he spent freezing his a.s off in the Ardennes
forest during the single most ferocious engagement of the Battle of the
Bulge.

For you history buffs: The action was known, appropriately, as "Dead Man's
Ridge". General George Patton's intelligence information was extremely
faulty, and Pop's company (I Company, 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment) was
sent blindly ahead through foul weather under the mistaken assumption that
there was nothing in front of them. They advanced through the woods to take
the high ground at the Belgian town of Flammierge. As they churned thru
waist-high snow, in heavy fog (with zero visibility and no chance for air
support...), they encountered fierce resistance from German heavy infantry,
Panzer tank divisions and artillery, massed in force against them.

The 513th was nearly annihilated (approx. 70% casualties) but they fixed
bayonets and charged through, eventually securing the town. It was literally
a run back and forth through flames, shrapnel and lead as they charged, were
battered, regrouped and repulsed a massive German counterattack.
Losses were appalling, estimated at about a thousand men a day.
Many died outright in the attack; hundreds of wounded died as a result of
exposure to the zero-degree weather.

It was so hard to picture my father being there-- doing this frenzied and
deadly broken-field running.
How had he somehow, against incredible odds, survived this hellish
encounter-- only to wind up in a nursing home in Maryland with wet pants?
God's little jokes make no sense to me.
They are surreal and baffling.
I await an epiphany that--maddeningly-- fails to come.

He wept at the memory of the friends he'd lost; guys who ran at his side one
moment and disintegrated with the burst of an artillery round or a 75mm tank
shell at the next. He fondly recalled his friend Izzy Jachman who won the
Congressional Medal of Honor. He described the intense cold, how he and his
buddies were burning anything flammable to stay warm. He said he'd never
forget being dressed in woolen underwear, a woolen uniform, overalls, a
sweater, a field jacket, a muffler, a heavily lined trenchcoat, 2 pair of
woolen socks, combat boots with galoshes over them, a wool cap and a steel
helmet --"...and I was never, ever *anywhere* near to being f.cking warm!"

He talked about his days with the OSS, and his time spent hunting Nazis
after the war.
We talked about the 9 years he spent much later on in Viet Nam, both with
the CIA and USIA/Voice of America Radio. We talk about my mother, the Army
nurse who was the first person to shampoo his hair for him after he'd been
wounded so badly he was evacuated from the combat zone.
He was scouting the interior of a church, and he climbed a stairway and
surprised (and eventually killed) a German soldier who fired a long burst
from a machine pistol which shattered his leg, tore up his hip and so
severely wounded him that he spent the next 29 months being operated on and
rehabilitated in various Army hospitals.

Through the afternoon he wakes and naps and wakes and dozes and apologizes
to me for sleeping when he should be talking to me.
I tell him he doesn't need to entertain me; it's all right if he's tired.
No, he doesn't want to go for a walk in the hallway.
No, he doesn't want me to get a wheelchair and push him outside into the
courtyard to get some fresh air and sunshine. No, I can't get him a candy
bar from the machine in the hall.
No, he doesn't want a glass of water.
WILL I PLEASE STOP TALKING TO HIM LIKE HE'S A GODDAM BABY!?

He nods off.
He wakes up.
He asks me how Debbie is doing.
"Who's Debbie?" I ask.
"Your wife." he says.
"That's Marsha, Pop." I say. "My wife is named Marsha."
"Oh, for Christ's sake! Of course she is! I'm falling apart! I am one goddam
falling apart old man!" he says.
"It's O.K." I say.
"I'm...I'm getting...uh...I'm getting...sort of... wispy!" he says.
I think that is a fine description of the process he's undergoing.
Wispiness overtakes him and he sort of fades away as I watch him.
He nods off.

I wander down to the Activities room, and amidst a truly obscene number of
crappy romance novels in the bookcase, I spy a paperback copy of Norman
Mailer's TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE.
I snag it, return to Pop's room and sit quietly in a chair next to the bed
and read for a while.
Mailer rambles on about his wife leaving him, about tourists in
Provincetown, about how hard it is to quit smoking.
I wish he'd get to the point and just move the f.cking story along.
Where are the tough guys?
Why the hell *aren't* they dancing?
I'm 9 pages into this thing and he's boring the sh.t out of me.
I know it's tough to quit smoking. DUH!
Come on, Norman.
I want to punch Norman Mailer in the face for no good reason except that
he's failing to amuse me today.

Pop wakes up.
He says he misses the Army, and the food they served him.
Can I get him anything to eat now?
No; he doesn't want anything to eat, doesn't give a damn.
He's just tired.
Tired and cranky and having trouble staying focused on what we're talking
about.
He laughs at a memory of devouring an entire lemon meringue pie my mother
baked, along with his pal Nick Clooney (George's dad-- a true story), and
blaming it on our
old beagle when she discovered it missing.

Marsha (did I mention she's a caring soul?) returns to the room.
She has brought him a huge pan of freshly baked cookies, a few pieces of
fresh fruit, some dried apricots and dates (favorites of his), some
store-bought cookies and a box of chocolate donuts, a fresh newspaper, a
crossword puzzle book and his radio from home.
We get everything set up, distributed on his night table and his bedside
tray, and I hug him.
We both kiss him goodbye.
He asks Marsha for another kiss, and kisses her on both cheeks.
His eyes are closed before we can step out of the room.

We drive into downtown Frederick, saying very little to one another.
We find a Spanish Tapas restaurant and have some dinner.
We toast one another with a couple of glasses of Malbec.

It is our 22nd wedding anniversary today.
We celebrate quietly.
I am thankful for my blessings.
I am healthy enough; I can communicate appropriately.
I love my wife.
She is a giver.
Did I mention that already?
I'm so glad she found me.

I miss my father terribly, already.
This is hard.

Jef.