Notes from Maine - 2020/08/21

My father has been living with me for the past month and a half. He has grown much stronger here. It used to take two people to move him reliably from bed to chair. Now, he can stand and turn on his own. Physically, his improvement has been great. It’s easy to forget that, so I need to keep reminding myself. Physically, he couldn’t sit up in bed on his own before. Now, with a personal care assistant, we’re talking about how his life will be back at home.

The frustrating part is that it’s easy to see that he could get back to the level of mobility he had at the beginning of the year. The obstacle is his willpower. With us to help him at every turn, Dad gives in to the pain and refuses to fight through it. I’m tempted to see that as weakness, but I believe that a more enlightened view is that it’s his choice. If he chose to, he might be able to live completely independently again. Eventually though, the pain and frustration become too much for all of us I guess. Maybe that’s just where Dad is in his life.

Honestly, the more I think about it, his biggest problem might not be as simple as a willpower deficit. It might primarily be the creeping dementia that is eroding his short-term memory. He doesn’t remember yesterday clearly enough to know that he is improving. His clearest memories are from forty-plus years ago. So, to him, his current condition came on unexpectedly and he can’t imagine that there’s a solution. It’s tough to endure pain when you don’t understand that there’s a point to the pain. He can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.