This week, I went to Western Pennsylvania to visit my parents. As I like to do when I'm there, I went for a run through the forest every morning. The May green was exuberant, and I acknowledged the pull of non-urban life. In the city, I have to negotiate so many cars before I reach a path or a trail. The city is a dangerous obstacle course. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a place where I could run through the forest all the time, I think, until I remember the other problems I associate with the suburbs, with the need to drive everywhere at the top of the list. But the forest was beautiful. My only regret was to have missed the trillium, which I believe will be in bloom in a few weeks.
I also spent time with my father, who has moved into the dementia unit of the senior facility where he lives with my mother.
It turns out that dementia, at least in my father's case, is very different than what I expected. In some ways, it's clear he has dementia. He still recognizes me, but his short-term memory is almost completely gone. On the second day I saw him, he didn't realize I had arrived a day earlier and again asked about my flight. Physically, he's very frail and tentative. He tends to view the world around him -- and the problems he has with it (such as bad food from the dining hall) -- with a conspiratorial lens. (Is that a symptom of dementia or from years of watching Fox News? I'm not sure.) But he has an awareness of his condition that I found surprising and at times heartbreaking. He understands that he's losing his mind -- he will refer to it in those terms -- and he approaches his living situation with a kind of stoic resignation that's very much in keeping with his character. Other patients in his facility, by contrast, display very different symptoms: some are angry and easily agitated, some like to play with dolls, some spend their time staring into space. Some are not capable of speaking in logical sentences. My father, by contrast, is still able to hold a conversation, and he even played cards. He still likes to tell jokes, although there's often a child-like quality to his humor, like he's making fun of the adults in the room.
There's a part of me that hopes that his body gives out before his mind. It would be hard to see him without any capacity to talk or wise-crack the way he's always done.
The only certainty is that we're all on a path that leads us into the trees.
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