Bingo is one of the events that helps me see the changes. Wednesday is Bingo day where he lives, right after mid-day coffee. I knew that Dad hadn't been staying in the dining hall much after having his coffee, so last week I was prepared for him wanting to leave the hall when Bingo got started. But he wasn't anxious, so I put a card in front of him to watch what he would do. Instead of leaving it on the table, he picked it up and held it in his slightly shaking hand as he looked it over when the numbers were called. He held it so close to his body that I couldn't watch what he was doing without standing up to look over his shoulder. I knew from having helped him at a noon meal earlier last week that his hand-eye coordination is much worse. As he tried to pick up food with his fork, he kept aiming for a spot on the table in front of his plate. So I didn't expect that he would be able to pull those red sliders down over the numbers this time. And there were no surprises.
After the first game, I picked up a card for myself. I didn't really care about winning a game; I just wanted to be doing something to keep from hanging over Dad's shoulder. I thought about passing my card to Dad if I ended up winning a game, but I wasn't sure that he would even realize what winning meant. So I decided I would just play, without announcing "Bingo." With a card in my hand, I could watch Dad's reactions without appearing to.
Dad looked over his card consistently, but I am not sure it was intentional. He found one number among those called and he tried to pull down the tab. But most often he seemed to be looking for something. When I asked, he told me he saw a Bingo card on the floor and he was trying to pick it up. Then he reached for the napkins on the table. I think he thought they were Bingo cards, too.
This week Dad didn't want to stay for Bingo at all, but we had a wonderful conversation. I told Dad how much I had to thank him for. I told him that when I was in fourth grade, I thought I was getting too expensive: I got glasses that year, I was in the middle of corrective dental extraction intended for me to avoid having to wear braces, and I started taking violin lessons. I thanked Dad for keeping me after all of that. He laughed and held out his arms to give me a hug.
Last Thursday I found that Dad wasn't in his room when I got there. I went to the dining room to look for him and learned that he had gone to church. One Thursday each month, Trinity Lutheran Church pastors hold a service at Eventide and volunteers make sure they get all the Trinity members out of their rooms for the service. The same man, Jerry, has been picking up Dad for those services since last fall. Thursday Dad and Jerry talked about fishing and baseball and Jerry said Dad told him about his new Ford.
Over the course of these two weeks, Dad told me that he had his appendix removed the day before (that was two days after my sister-in-law visited Dad for the first time after she had had her appendix and a portion of her large intestine removed), that he had just returned from a train trip to the East Coast with a story so filled with details that kept him laughing at himself throughout, and that he thought something sounded strange when I called him Dad. He talked often about his car again, but I noticed that the word car seems more generic for him. He pointed to one of his loungers and referred to it as a car. And then he pointed to his wheelchair and asked me if it was his rental car. When I leave each day, I tell him I'll be back the next day, and about every other day he tells me he isn't sure where he will be the next day. I give him a kiss and reassure him that I'll find him, wherever he is.
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