“Whatcha doing today, Dad?” I say in my car, speaking from a
winding black road in Connecticut to what I imagine to be a messy South
Carolina desk covered with partially read books.
“Writing a poem.”
“Oh really? What about? Can you read it?” Ironically, I’m driving to my
second writing class of the week.
His finely tuned, philosophical words float, swim, and dip all
the way to me, all the way into my stubborn mind. Somehow they make their way through
the same thick skull that used to be too hard for his idealistic thoughts, his creative
language. “You’re so weird,” I used to say. Now my heart opens for the messages, now
I see the wisdom, now I grow through the listening.
My dad has Alzheimer’s. And he wears it well. He wears it
like a finely pressed suit that has a super jazzy tie. A purple tie that everyone
thought was the worst one to have, until they saw it on my dad.
Don’t get me wrong. He doesn’t dress fancy. In fact, sometimes
he might need a tad bit of fashion advice. But he wears the Alzheimer’s humbly,
sharing details with me at times, laughing about them, but moving onward
always, seeking more than the simplicity of a disease.
Another day comes. “What’d ya do today dad?” The list is silly. It is long. It
is rich. He swims, walks, reads, writes, creates pottery, sells pottery, calls
his daughters, throws footballs with his grandchildren, gets cool dislocated
thumbs, kayaks, attends church, makes new friends, and still gives his daughters
homemade fish roasters for Christmas.
Sure, he forgets stuff, but so do I. So I sigh with relief
when we chat, knowing neither of us needs to pretend we remember what we talked
about last week. Neither of us has to worry about the future. We can just talk
about now. “How are you doing Amy?” he asks, and I know he really wants to
know. My dad cares.
Yes, he disengages. But just like how that purple tie might
work well in the right place, disengagement also is a great skill to have at
times. Like when you’ve had a stressful life losing your mom early from alcoholism, serving as a naval officer in the Vietnam war, recovering from your own alcoholism,
running an ad agency, managing your own furniture company, authoring and
selling countless books, raising three daughters (one who is a drama
queen—that’s me,) and maintaining a marriage for over fifty years.
Ya just might need to disengage sometimes. And that's OK.
Finally, my dad is a hopeless dreamer, and when I talk to him
it seems that Alzheimer’s, and that rude plaque that is supposedly descending
on his brain, uninvited, has only heightened his ability to dream. I used to
think dreams were annoying. Now I know they are the stuff that has made up my
life. Dreams have made my mind able to travel to new places when the pain comes, and to find hope in a tube of paint or a handful of words during a stormy season of life.
I can recall him smiling on the top of a ski slope as he swerved from side-to-side just a few years ago. “This is the best slope I have ever
skied,” he called out. I can picture him clutching the tiller of a sailboat as
he discussed his idea of sailing around the world. I can remember him
traveling to China and Dubai, becoming consumed with cultures and ideas
relating to foreign countries. I can see him hunched over a wheel, spinning his tenth gorgeous beige
mug for a set someone might be blessed to drink from.
I remember him saying,
“Learn to write, Amy, if you learn nothing else in college, learn to
write well.” I was on my way to college. It was 1988. “The ability to communicate is
the greatest skill you can ever hope to have,” he said. "If you can communicate, you can do anything."
So today I want to thank my dad.
Thank you for encouraging
me to dream. Thank you for inspiring me to talk, talk, talk with words, with paint,
with language, with love. Thank you for being the precious soul whom you are, deep
inside a body that will age, will not be perfect— but will be my dad. My dad who will never, ever
stop soaring. I know you, Dad. Your soul has no borders, and no disease can stop it. Your soul will continue flying, in its own unique way, into eternity.
