Some Thoughts Following Father's Day

            My Dad has dementia.  He only barely recognizes me now.  I spent a few precious moments with him on Father’s Day this year.  They reminded me how much I miss him.  Those moments reminded me, though, of what it means to be a human being.

            Dad has good days and bad days.  A good day is when he only asks the same question about 100 times instead of non-stop; he actually sleeps through the night without waking up and asking my mom a gazillion questions; he actually eats his food with only minimal coaxing; he actually allows a little personal grooming with very little fuss.

            A bad day is when he won’t do anything without a fuss.  Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t violent and he isn’t angry.  He just says no or, a longtime favorite, “I don’t think so.”  Often he will eventually capitulate, saying something like “oh, okay.” 

            He claims he’ll be quiet and even sings a little song about it: I’ll just beeee, Q-U-I-E-T.  The problem, as my sister Becky (more on this saint in a moment) points out to Dad, is that even though he sings the song, he really never is Q-U-I-E-T.  Yet, he remains remarkably polite, often thanking you for the smallest of favors (bringing him some cookies or tea).  Whenever you walk into the room and he isn’t sure who you are he says that it is so good to see you.  It almost makes you want to come back and forth into the room just to have him beam at you for a minute and invite you in.

            Yet, once in a while, you get small moments where the old Dad is there.  Before we left on Father’s Day, I was giving my mom a hug.  Dad is sitting in his usual chair a few feet away and says “hey” which usually means he’s going to tell you to get him some tea or cookies.  This time, though, he says “come here.”  He asks me for a hug.  I almost burst out crying.  I went and hugged him and kissed him on his bald head, as I have hundreds of times in the past, when he was aware of what was going on more fully.  I asked him if he was going to stay out of trouble and he laughed a bit and sheepishly said, yeah.  This was how Dad and I often parted company in the past, so there was just a small glimmer of the past there.

            My sister Becky has taken on the role of primary care giver to Dad.  My mom has become so frail the past several years that she just can’t do it.  Mom can generally take care of her own basic needs, but she just isn’t in shape to keep up with Dad.  So Becky has taken up the slack.  What she is doing is thankless, because Dad simply doesn’t understand all she does for him.  It’s amazing.  I won’t get too detailed but let’s just say it is less than glorious.  She’s his personal nurse, chauffeur, cook, and general girl-Friday.  He has no idea how much she does for him.  Our family owes her an enormous debt of gratitude.

            Somewhere in his dementia-laden brain, there are, I guess, memories which he can no longer access, thoughts he can no longer arrange, and songs he can no longer sing (sometimes I’m okay with that one, given that he often wandered into old Hank Williams’ tunes and songs like “Drop Kick Me Jesus through the Goal Posts of Life”).  It’s a strange thing, this disease, which robs him of the essence of who he is, but left his body in mostly good working order, although even that has been failing him a bit lately.  Of course, he is 82 and from a family where most of the men die before reaching 80, so he has beaten the odds.

            So am I going to tell people that we can “fix” dementia if we just do enough research, or give enough money to some organization?  No.  This is part of living life.  My Dad is only something of a shell of himself, but deep in the dim recesses of his mind, he’s still there, and he pops out in small ways every so often, reminding us this is so.  Would Dad want us whining and complaining about his situation?  Not a chance. 

            While it saddens me because of things that haven’t really registered with him the past few years – a new granddaughter, two grandsons who have graduated from college and gotten married – there is a sense in which it doesn’t matter.  Suppose my Dad had died five years ago, and the worst of his dementia had never happened?  Who can say he, or we, would have been better off?  Is there not a sense that his life continues to have value?  Isn’t he still a human being, worthy of love, and respect?

            Too often these days, we evaluate human life as if it’s a commodity.  We want to calculate somehow whether this person or that person deserves to live.  We have so-called civilized countries which permit euthanasia and abortion on demand as part of this calculus and call it compassion to end human lives.  I sure don’t want to live in a society that claims it would be best for my Dad to be put to death because his life somehow doesn’t measure up sufficiently to some subjective societal determination.  I know the rationale people would use: he’s suffering, why not put him out of his misery?  To them I ask: how do you know he’s suffering?  And isn’t suffering part of what it means to be a human being?  And don’t we constantly tell ourselves that how we treat the least in society defines what kind of a society we are?

            Some might claim that my Dad’s situation proves there is no God – the old argument about pain surfaces: how could a good God allow pain?  I might ask, what would prompt us to seek to know God in a world without pain?  There is a strange sense in which our difficulties demand we seek answers.  The leper at the end of chapter one of Mark’s gospel comes to Jesus, kneeling and beseeching that Jesus heal him.   Dad’s dementia reminds me of my own frailties, my own weaknesses, my own leprosy, if you will, and my need for healing.  And isn’t my sister’s self-sacrifice a wonderful representation of the Gospel – one who is strong standing in for one who is weak?  God is at work in all things and Dad’s dementia is one of them.  Perhaps I will never fully comprehend why God allows pain, but I know for certain God is the only sure thing for relieving pain.

            While Gladys Knight doesn’t qualify as a religious philosopher, I think the line from “Midnight Train to Georgia” sums up how I feel about both my Dad and God: I’d rather live with him in his world than live without him in mine.