My daddy called me sweetheart

My house is quiet this morning. Too quiet, really. No one is ringing the doorbell to bring by flowers or food. No one is calling to offer their condolences. My sister and her family are back at their home in South Carolina. My children are in school, and my husband's at work. So it's just me, sitting at home, trying to heal my exhausted body and spirit, not to mention a broken heart. But my mind is never too far away from my dear daddy, who died Friday morning after a hard battle with Alzheimer's. Although he struggled in his last days, he died quietly in his own bedroom.
I miss Daddy more than words can describe. I was most certainly a daddy's girl. Actually, I don't want to use past tense for that. Not yet. I AM most certainly a daddy's girl.
I loved everything about my daddy, from the smell of his Speed Stick deodorant to the gentle way he treated my beloved mother, who was showing signs of Alzheimer's seven or eight years before he was.
I grieve for him on so many levels. He was my safety net; he was the constant in my life. He was the person I called for advice. The person I respected and worked hard to emulate. He was, I guess, my idol. My hero. My daddy.
Up until the the day before he died, my daddy called me sweetheart. Every time I walked in his bedroom Thursday and stood by his side at the austere, yet practical, hospital bed that had been moved in earlier in the week, I took his right hand and said, "Hi Daddy." Every time, he mumbled back in a voice I really did understand because I had heard it so many times before: "Hi sweetheart." I will miss that strong, familiar voice, but I will not miss the slurred speech that garbled his words in the week before his death.
I will miss the way my daddy sat down to the family table and enjoyed a meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and field peas from the garden he tended at Rock Ridge. He'd compliment my mama on a fine meal and push away from the table saying, "I've had my sufficiency." Mama hated when he said that! But I will not miss the struggles at the dinner table in recent years and the way my daddy criticized the way I cooked for him. I know it was the disease talking, but it still hurt my feelings when he told me the steak was too tough or the chicken was too dry or when he said, "What's this mess?" "Do you really want me to eat this mess?"
I will grieve for the father who took my mama on a drive around the county every day for years. They'd ride down to the Gardners community where Mama grew up and swing by my aunt and uncle's in Saratoga. The next day, they'd take a drive to Rock Ridge, where he grew up. They'd ride by the school and Marsh Swamp Church and then head by the garden before going home. But I will never miss the absolute horror I felt the times they got lost while driving and didn't return for hours after a quick trip. On more than one occasion, I drove on back roads throughout the county looking for the red Taurus he drove, crying and praying that they were safe. I don't want to remember that or when my sister and I had to take away his car keys almost three years ago. He said it would kill him if we did. And you know what, his decline started that very day, I believe.
I will most certainly miss the drives I took my parents on after Daddy was no longer driving. We'd take the same routes he always took. Early on, Daddy would tell me where to turn and would point out where this aunt or that cousin lived. But as the months went by, he stopped doing that. I will not grieve the first day he asked me where we were when we made the familiar turn onto Rock Ridge School Road or the first time I said, "There's Marsh Swamp Church," and he said, "Where? Is that Marsh Swamp Church?"
I will miss my daddy's wonderful expressions from "Daddim" to "Lordy Mercy." But I will not miss the rather colorful language he picked up as Alzheimer's progressed. He cursed every other sentence it seemed and used words for bodily functions that none of us figured he even knew! Sometimes his colorful language provided comic relief, which we all desperately needed. Around Tuesday or Wednesday of last week, when he was growing weaker by the hour, he told me he wanted a damn biscuit. "Get me a damn biscuit!" he repeated a number of times. Well, I didn't have a damn biscuit in the house. I considered driving to Bojangle's but remembered he had called all breads biscuits in the last few years, so I got him a banana nut muffin from the kitchen, and he ate it.
I will miss sitting by my daddy's side when I dropped by at lunch or after work or to take supper. There were days when he was lucid and would tell me stories about growing up on the farm or being in the Army. Some days we would play checkers or sing hymns. I will not miss the days he hallucinated and got scared with the images he saw or reached out for objects that were not there.
One of the things I'll miss most of all is sitting on the porch with both my daddy and mama. We did that often, even before he got sick. My house is just six houses from theirs, so many afternoons or evenings, my husband, children and I would walk down the street and enjoy the nice weather on the porch. The kids would often take down a ball or badminton set and play with their dad while the rest of us watched. When my sister and her family visited, we'd do the same thing. We'd talk about everything and nothing. We'd watch the birds in the yard, wave to the people who passed by and simply enjoy each other's company. I will miss that. Daddy didn't enjoy the porch too much in the last year or so. He was never satisfied out there. He was either too hot or too cold or it was too windy for him. I will not grieve for the times I got upset with him for complaining and would wish he could just cooperate and pretend that we were a normal family again. But he couldn't do that
My Daddy modeled so many things for his children, but the most important thing, perhaps, was his love and devotion to Mama. He loved her and looked after her and protected her as long as he could. He told me one day, years back, that he hoped she died before he did. He'd rather be the one who grieved for her than have it the other way around. He didn't think she would handle it well. He was right. My mother is broken-hearted and lost. She understands just enough to know that L.H. is dead and that she loved him very much and misses him with all her heart. He's no longer beside her when she wakes in the morning and no longer there to hold her hand through the long afternoons. I'm going to need the love and wisdom my daddy taught me to get Mama through the hardest thing in her life.
My husband tells me he's already forgetting the struggles we went through with Daddy and is remembering the good times: the trip we took together to Williamsburg, the Saturday mornings Daddy picked him up to work in the garden, the Saturday night dinners we shared. I'm going to remember Daddy's positive attitude and the love so many people had for him, and I'm going to work very hard to forget the sadness Alzheimer's disease has brought to my family. Thank God my parents gave me the tools and the faith to do that.

Second time around

There are many days I ask, “Why me?” “Why us?”
Why do both of my parents have Alzheimer’s? Are we being punished for something? Did their environment cause this wicked disease? Will my sister and I get it too?
Life would be so much simpler if only one of my parents were sick. So much simpler.
For instance, we wouldn’t have to go through the same things twice. It was awful, truly awful, when Mama started Sundowners, hating for twilight to come, becoming edgy and scared when the sun started to set, panicking to get to the ever-elusive “home.” It was a relief when all of that ended, although it was replaced with staring into space, garbled speech and loss of even more memory and cognitive function.
Now it’s Daddy who starts to get panicky in the late afternoon. Asking if it’s getting dark, wondering where he’ll sleep tonight, not believing us when we tell him he will sleep with Mama in his own bed in his own bedroom, just as he’s done for 50 years. “Are you sure?” he asks, in a loud panicked tone. “Positive,” I say.
“Show me.”
So I offer my hand to help him up, so I can show him his bedroom, just as I did with Mama a year or two ago. By the time he takes my hand, he’s fussing. “Where are you taking me? I can’t get up.” He’s already forgotten the bedroom fear and moved on to something else.
It would be nice if one of my parents could help me make decisions _ big decisions. Should we change Daddy’s medicine to help him with the anxiety? Is it worth the risk of the side effects that usually send him reeling? Should we cash in the life insurance policy? Is it time to move to a nursing home? Should we go ahead and do some repair work on the house while there’s a little money left?
Before Daddy got worse less than two years back, he was able to look after Mama, whose symptoms started more than 10 years ago. We didn’t need 24-hour care and the crippling cost of round-the-clock sitters. But we do now. Someone has to be with them every minute. Oh how I wish they could live by themselves and do for themselves and make their daily treks around the county. I wish they could help me pay the bills, do the grocery shopping, pick up prescriptions. Those days are over, and I feel very much on my own in the day-to-day decision-making.
But at least they have each other. These two soul mates and sweethearts still hold hands while they’re sitting on the sofa. Mama is constantly asking me if L.H is OK and doesn’t want to leave him. And just last week, when it came time to take her to her weekly hair appointment, we had to coax Daddy into agreeing to let her go with me. I thought he was going to cry when we put on her jacket and started to walk from the room. I offered to cancel the appointment, but Mama got his “permission” and we headed out for her weekly outing.
But for all their love, they still aggravate each other. While Daddy tries to nap on the couch after yet another sleepless night, Mama constantly nudges him to ask him questions in garbled sentences that no one understands, especially my groggy Daddy. So when he doesn’t answer her, Mama gets mad and stomps her foot and stares straight ahead until Daddy falls asleep again, then she nudges him and wakes him again. “Are you alright?” she asks.
And when Daddy starts his evening hollering and crying for “Help!” in a voice that can raise the dead, Mama cringes. You can see the fright and the frustration and the total exhaustion in her eyes. After an hour or two of his yelling, Mama often starts to cry.
Saturday night, she told me she just can’t stand it any longer.
I know the feeling.

Tender hearts

Sometimes all it takes is a simple look from my parents to either break my heart or melt my heart.
Daddy can break my heart in an instant. Sometimes when I'm leaving their house, he'll look at me in disgust, kind of wrinkling his upper lip. His eyes look straight at me, then he picks up his hand, waves it in a dismissive way in my direction and turns his head away from me. Often he'll add, "Just go then." Of course, I have to walk back to his side and repeat that it's time for me to leave — to go back to work, to my family, to make supper for him, to do our grocery shopping, whatever the rest of the day holds. Guilt makes me hug him one more time and assure him I'll be back. "When?" he wants to know.
But it was Mama who grabbed my heart last night. I was sitting at the dinner table with them. Like most nights, I had taken down their supper. I had eaten quickly at my house so I could linger over mealtime with them. Daddy had shredded barbecue chicken on his plate with a bowl of mixed vegetables, two deviled eggs and a biscuit. A slice of marble pound cake waited for him on the counter.
I knew Mama wouldn't eat the barbecue chicken; it would be unrecognizable to her and too hard for her to manage on her fork or to eat with her fingers. Instead she had a chicken biscuit cup I had taken out of the freezer the night before, two deviled eggs her sister had made for her, a sweet potato biscuit and a bowl of vegetables.
Everything but the vegetables was arranged in separate quadrants on Mama's bright red plate. The plate is a relatively new addition to the kitchen. The contrast of the light-colored food on a dark plate makes it easier for Alzheimer's patients, like my parents, to see the food.
I was sitting across the table from Mama, just watching her. Mama needs a lot of encouragement and direction to get through a meal. She has to be reminded to eat almost each bite. She loses her concentration and just stares. Last night, I didn't say anything to her at first. But I'm glad I was watching her, otherwise I would have missed the look.
Mama tilted her head to the right, looked at everything on her plate and smiled. It was a pleasant smile, a smile of anticipation. She actually looked happy to be sitting at the table and pleased with her options. She touched everything on her plate, like she was taking inventory, and then chose what to eat first: the chicken biscuit cup. Her hands, which usually shake when she eats, were unsteady once again as she took the food to her mouth and started eating.
Since last night, I've thought often about that happy look on her face. It brings me joy to remember it. I actually did something right! I took her a meal she wanted.
But it was a very different emotion that rocked me to the core Saturday. I was sitting with them for a few hours while the sitter was at another obligation. I was in charge of lunch and was encouraging Mama to eat a bite of the wiener I had cut into bite-size pieces. I wasn't patient enough, I'm sure, but I kept saying, "Mama, please eat." Instead, she would pick up her cup of tea and take a swallow. She did this maybe three times, and I grew more and more impatient. I put a piece of the hot dog on her fork and said, "Eat this. You have to eat or you'll get sick." She hates it when we feed her, but I tried anyway, and guided the fork to her mouth. "Take a bite."
My voice was too firm for my tender-hearted mama, I'm sure, and she started to cry. Her sitters had told me she had cried for an hour or so at the time most days that week, now it was my turn to listen and try to make her stop. I wasn't very successful. She ate very little at lunch that day, but she cried and blew her nose for at least an hour. There were wet tissues and napkins everywhere from where she was wiping her eyes and her nose. I had made her miserable because I encouraged her to eat and grew weary when she wouldn't. And all she could say was how mean I was. Broken heart again. Hers and mine.
After days like Saturday I feel like a big jerk. I wish I could be more patient. I wish I could always be happy and upbeat. I wish I could be something other than human, I guess.