Page 118 - November 2020

118
Litterateur
November 2020

ME, DAD AND ALZHEIMER

promised to visit me again tomorrow”. I take raisin cake out of my bag. “Here is the
one I made, do you want to try? It is delicious,” I ask. “No, no. I am good, better take
it to your children”. I would love to if I had any children. Many times I tried so hard to
make him recognise me and kept my hope that he would eventually remember me.
Nothing worked. Then I accepted it. Most importantly, he feels safe and sound.

I return home in poor spirits to empty rooms as if the walls are about to swallow me.
All I do in this home is to seek a comfort and solace through the books lying on a
bookshelf in the corner. I start reading one by one, in hopes that it will take me away

from my current desperate world into a better one, where I live along with fictional
characters. Sometimes with Anna Karenina, sometimes with Onegin. It gives me
short and little relief. Nevertheless, Alzheimer’s is always with me and doesn’t allow
anyone to get close to me.

I leave for work early in the morning. After work, I have my usual visit to my dad. As
usual, he rejects the food I bring, instead, he boasts about his wife. He talks about
how she is great at cooking, and another delicious meal she made for him. Strangely
enough, he never forgets my mom. Once, he even told me how they met each other
for the first time. As his tears burst from his eyes, I quietly embrace him. Never has
my heart broken so much.

My mom. It has been one year since she passed away.

I never tell him of her death, although he was living at home back then. One day I
returned from work late. She was lying on the floor, unconscious and muted, and my
dad was calmly reading the newspaper, unaware of the incident. She was declared
dead by doctors, while dad stood still, watching all these actions silently. Then, he
was taken away. I remembered that, in recent times, he started talking with himself,
catching sight of shadows, which resulted in him become more stressed, even
causing little aggressiveness. I always believed that he would never forget my mom,
but there were visible signs of strangling left in her neck.

I visit him every day nevertheless. There aren’t many people like him in the facility. It
is only him and Alzheimer’s that welcome me. Only my dad doesn’t know about his
“strange” and “common” partner, it is only me that always has to face it and feel its
presence. He doesn’t care about me at all, so sometimes I think that my visits look
very meaningless, that maybe I should stop this. But today…