It has been good to spend time with Dad, to watch him, to see his face while I talk to him. I still answered the same questions again and again. But over the course of the week, occasionally he seemed to know the answers before told him. For instance, instead of asking me how old he is, he would ask me if he was 88. A very specific age, not just a guess. And yesterday he didn't ask my brother and me if he still had a car; he asked Wayne who he gave his car to. This morning, my brother Roger told him that I had been in town this week and Dad responded that he knew that. I had been to see him the day before.
So it has been good to see those glimpses of his memory functioning.
But there have always been tough times, too. One late afternoon, three of us - Wayne, his wife Julie, and I - had left him alone for an hour while we took care of some business and when we returned to his room about an hour before he was scheduled to have supper, Dad responded to Wayne's knock on the door with a loud shout that it was about time we came in. He had been sleeping when we left him and when he woke up, he was confused about where he was and why he was there. It was easy to empathize with his confusion because I am also confused about where I am when I wake up from a nap in the middle of the day, but the vehemence in his voice was a surprise to us all. He was not happy about being all alone, about not knowing who was going to take care of him, about not knowing why he wasn't at home in his house.
Today, Dad had lots of visitors. Wayne and Julie were in town again. Roger was also in town. My sister-in-law Lori and her daughter Megan came in with Max, the 12-year-old Maltese poodle. And Dad's sister Myrt and her son Randy and his wife Lisa also came in. So the room was a bit crowded for part of the day. Dad dozed off now and then during the afternoon. So when most of the crowd had left and there were just three of us in his room, he started getting more agitated again. He seemed to think he was outside, or that he was going to be put outside, and that wasn't right. He wasn't happy about the situation at all. It just wasn't right, he kept repeating.
When we left, I gave him a hug and told him that I would be back again in a few weeks. He smiled. I told him I loved him and kissed him on his forehead. He said he loved me, too.
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