Visiting Dad, Coda

I left Pennsylvania this morning after seeing Dad one more time. He surprised me by waiting for me  at the end of the hallway furthest from his room. He was concerned, he said, about my traveling in the snow (it had snowed a few inches in the night and morning) and he wanted me to get an early start. So I told him I loved him, kissed him goodbye, and took off after gassing up and getting a large coffee for the road.

It used to be that I would go a year or more between visits to my parents, months between phone calls. Before she died, I used to call my mother a couple times a week. Now I call Dad once a week and drive out to visit him at least twice a year. I can't say this change in visitation is in response to a greater realization of their mortality, because I've always been aware of mortality, theirs, others, and my own. I have a relationship with death and dying that is visceral and I am, in most cases, comfortable with it. I didn't cry when my mother died, not because I didn't love her, because I certainly did, but because I always knew she would die. This doesn't, of course, stop my tears in the case of some others.

When my father dies, I'll feel, as with my mom, a sense of loss, but not a sense of missed opportunity. I'm glad to have the chance to see him, and glad that my relationship with him has changed for the better. I'm unsure what to ascribe this change to, maybe it's a change brought about by change itself. But I'm thankful for the change.

Visiting Dad, Day 7

This was my last day on this trip visiting Dad. It was a good day, although we didn't do much talking. Like the last couple days, he dropped off and on asleep for the length of my time there, which is an average of four hours each day. I read my book, I do my crosswords, sometimes I fall asleep myself for a little while. What stood out today was that he didn't have a sun-downing episode at three or at any time I was there. He woke the longest about four until I took him to dinner, and during it he knew who I was. And while he didn't seem to know how long I'd been visiting him, he knew I was returning home soon.

This is a photo I took today while he was alternately sleeping and watching out the window. He is relaxed and meditative. This is a relatively recent situation. I'm a child of the late 60s and 70s, a generation that focused on its feelings and ethics, looking at ways we should get in touch with what and who we are. I fear, however, that the epithet that we were the Me Generation is accurate, because it was our own feelings, and sometimes those of our peers, that we were interested in. Had someone asked me then what feelings he was in touch with, "relaxation" and "meditation" are not words I would have used. I know that in my own case I have become more relaxed, at least most of the time, than I was when younger and learning meditative techniques. My dad of course would not know asana from prana (and would skew up his face at the words, saying "What's that?"), and yet here, in his 80s, I would say he's more poised and relaxed than I can pretend to be.