It started with a phone call from my mother a few nights ago while my wife and I were falling asleep. She told me that Dad hadn't been making sense all day and said that he'd been pointing to the ceiling at something that "flew". Words maybe, or random thoughts. It was enough for her to call an ambulance and ask another favor of her EMT neighbor to come over and see what's up.
I called my Mom back and things weren't good with my father. He couldn't focus and wasn't able to answer the most basic questions. On the phone I heard, "Bill, look at me. Look at me." Then the seizure started. The phone went silent as my mother and her neighbor lowered him to the floor where he stayed until the shaking stopped.
My Dad has been suffering with dementia for four years now, and it has finally gotten to the point that the destruction of his brain is beginning to knock on vital areas, causing him to blur and twitch.
I went to the hospital after work to be with him. He wasn't the man I knew. He was helpless. The man that I have worshiped all my life was having trouble understanding where he was and what had happened. "You've had a seizure, Dad." "What's a seizure?" he'd say each time I told him.
I held his hand as he slipped in and out of sleep. The lorazapam that the doctor gave him to calm him down was still hanging on in his system and he was having trouble shaking it, so he was asleep more than he was awake. I prayed as I looked at him, and the more I looked at him, the more the memories flooded my mind.
I remembered when he used to take me to his office in Boston for the day. I'd get dressed up in my nice shirt and khakis. Dad would be in his business suit. We'd walk down the street and he would say hi to all of his friends. I'd be trotting beside him trying to keep up. I'd get so frustrated because I felt that I could never be as big as he was. I could never be as strong.
But now I held his old hand, bruised from the IV, and cradled it like I was holding a little tiny child. How could time have done this? What would I do without him?
The hospital released Dad the next day - yesterday - because he didn't have anything physically wrong with him. CT scans and heart monitors showed nothing unexpected, so he was discharged. He insisted on sleeping in his own bed last night on the second floor. My Mom and my brother barricaded the top of the stairs with a table to keep him there, but in the morning he stepped over the table and fell down the stairs. He's back in the hospital now for at least three days with cuts, bruises and a hematoma on his brain from when he hit the wall.
One time when I was in my early teens I went for a walk with him. His business had fallen apart and the debt was piling up. He put his arm around me and told me that he was having a hard time, and asked that I try to understand if he seemed a little lost. I did everything I could to be with him and help him. I knew that it was now my time to help him, after all the years that he had guided me.
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