Is Knowledge Power?

I suppose every little girl occasionally thinks her Daddy is superman. My father reinforced this idea by his exceptional strength, along with over-the-top bravado. I look at an old picture of him striking a weight lifter’s pose, showing off the muscles honed by years of physical labor, and I wonder how he can be so different now.

Time and illness have sapped the strength both from Dad’s body and also from his once-agile mind. His memories of the far distant past remain somewhat clear. More recent events have dimmed and blurred. Anything that occurs here and now disappears immediately. Dad’s logic has receded even more than his memory. He is reduced to the selfish whining of an infant, determined to have whatever he wants, regardless of the impact on others or his own well-being. The two-hundred-pound baby tells the ER nurse he needs to go home because he’s feeling sick. When that doesn’t work, he insists he never felt better in his life and threatens to arise from the hospital bed and drive home. That he hasn’t driven in years, no longer owns an automobile, and could not walk the few feet to the exit—none of this factors into his demands.

Dad struck his head when he fell, the reason for our most recent trip to the Emergency Room. Did that blow bring on this period of lucidity--an interlude I always thought would be welcome? He becomes only mildly befuddled, as if awakening from a deep sleep. The questions begin, but for once he almost seems to understand and process the responses. “Where am I? What am I doing here? What time is it? How long have I been here?” At the end of the routine questions, new ones appear. “What’s wrong with me? Am I losing my mind?” When our answers do not satisfy, he labors to communicate. “You don’t understand what’s going on with me,” he says. “I’m all right sometimes and then a darkness comes over me. It’s hard to explain.” He shuts his eyes. “I think I’m going crazy.” Eyes opened again, he adds words we never expected to hear, even if they were true, “I’m scared.”

For a while longer, it’s obvious he is struggling to organize his thoughts. He asks the name of the hospital. As much as fifteen minutes later, he repeats it. In the context of his usual short-term memory struggles, this retention is remarkable, perhaps even miraculous. Still, it’s a fight he cannot win. Like a boat drifting away from the pier, he begins to ask questions and make statements that would make sense only if he were twenty or thirty, not 87. “Where’s the baby?” he asks my mother. “We’ve got to get home. The boys will be getting in from school.” He talks impossibly of driving to another city this morning, along with his father, who has been dead for more than six decades.

Finally, there is a diagnosis, treatment, and release for Daddy to return to the memory care home. He refuses food, even though it is now late evening and he has had no dinner. The internal fog clears just enough for him to recognize, once again, that things are not as they should be with his mental abilities. My mother spends the night sleeping in a chair, holding Daddy’s hand to keep him from being afraid.

I will never again attempt to summon my father to the doorway of the cave where he lives, the dark dungeon known as Alzheimer’s dementia. The illusion that he does not understand his sorry state has been shattered permanently. I’ve heard it said that knowledge is power. Today it’s nothing more than pain.


Carlene Havel,
Author of "A Hero's Homecoming" co-author “Daughter of the King”
http://goo.gl/s6EQS