Young Love

I've been caring for my elderly father for several years now.  This last year I've noticed a significant decline - not so much physically, but certainly mentally. He's still sweet and caring, but he isn't in the present as often as he used to be.  He asked me the other day how long we've known each other and then five minutes later he introduced me to someone as his daughter (to someone that he's introduced me to numerous times - he forgets).  He also made the comment that he didn't realize I was British.  That seemed to come out of the blue but he's connected it in his mind to a trip we made together 20+ years ago to England.  He gets obsessed with an idea and that's all he can talk about - over and over again; he doesn't remember that's he's already told you, even 3 minutes ago.

Daddy has a girlfriend, Helen.  They are wonderful companions for each other and have been for the last year and a half or so.  But Helen's moving.  I'm not sure how this is going to impact my dad.  He knows she is moving and says, in his flippant/trying to be funny-way that he's unhappy about it, but I don't think it's really sunk in yet that she's not going to be there much longer.  I think he'll primarily be lonely again, like he was after my mother died.  But - I'm not sure. Alzheimer's is not predictable - either in its progression or its minute by minute impact on the behavior of those afflicted with it.  So - we're stepping into another area of uncertainty with my dad.

Before I learned Helen was moving, I had the opportunity to take pictures of them together.  It was at the time for a photography class I was taking.  I didn't end up using the pictures for my class, but I still think I got some good ones.  And they show my dad today - not how he thinks he is, but how he is.

Now you have to understand by dad is a HORRIBLE model - this isn't new. When he poses he is so unnatural and not himself.  So when you point a camera at him he assumes that military mode of stiffness and no expression.  Here's an example of my "posed" dad (with his unkempt hair - he forgets to comb it) and Helen.

I tried and tried to get him to smile, to be natural, to do something to get a glimpse of who I see everyday.  So, I told him not to look at me; look at Helen. Here's what happened.

He saw Helen, returned to the present and remembered he loves her (even though he can't remember her name half the time.  When he searches his brain for her name he calls her "my lo-o-ove" in a long drawn out, Gregorian chant kind of way).  And when you love someone you kiss them.  So he did.  She liked it; he did too.

So my dad continues to live in his world - a world we sometimes share, but more and more these days a world he knows only in his past and in his mind. But occasionally he's here, in the present - and he loves Helen.