Every week, I visit my father, who has Alzheimer’s and lives alone. When I tell people this they say, “Is that safe?”
“Probably not,” I say, and think, Is life?
“He doesn’t want to leave his house,” I’ll explain. “We’re trying to help him stay there as long as possible.” They’ll say, “I’m sorry.” I’ll say, “Thank you.” But here is the truth: I am enjoying Dad’s Alzheimer’s.
This wasn’t always the case. When he first started having symptoms, before my mother died, it was hard, of course. He was angry — a lot — at his computer, telemarketers, himself, me because we were both taking care of Mom, and there were days when they both resented my help.
I am not making light of a terrible disease, and I’m aware that at any time my dad’s symptoms could take a turn. But here’s what I like about Alzheimer’s in this moment:
A) He’s forgotten that he was mad at me before and now he likes me a lot because I can find things like keys, bank statements, glasses and the bow saw he left out in the woods.
B) While he remembers that I wrote books, he doesn’t remember that he didn’t much care for them. He is also happily surprised, each time I remind him, that I taught college and that I teach a writing workshop at the library.
All of this feels pretty good.
C) He repeats stories, but on the flip side, I get to tell stories over and over, and he appreciates them each time as if they’re brand-new. For someone like me, who loves storytelling, this is heaven! It’s also a great way to work on pacing and comedic timing.
D) He says funny things.
“I think I’m about 60,” I heard him say on the phone. (He is 87.) “No, that can’t be right, because I have a daughter in her 70s who is here now.” (I am 56.)
“Some woman sent me a cake for no possible reason I could think of,” he said, when his sister sent him a box of chocolates for Christmas. “It was very nice!”
Also, amazing things show up on his grocery list. Among them: Tooth thread, Purple, Netanyahu, Chain saw.
E) Because he lives in a world that isn’t governed by time, entering the house is like moving into a sacred realm where anything can happen and all that matters is the person in front of you. I love this place. Nothing has to be factually true. The past can be erased or reinvented at any time. There is a beautiful flow when you let go of caring about what he remembers or arguing about what’s real. When someone is traveling to a different land, why not join him?
I also love the freedom in talking to someone knowing he’ll forget most of what you say. There are endless second chances.
In this world, I find myself saying things I never would have known how to share before. Each time, Dad responds completely from the heart.
This is probably my favorite thing about Alzheimer’s, or at least the way it’s affected my father. When the brain isn’t working as hard, it doesn’t block the heart connection. I cannot get over the gift of this. When Dad first started forgetting things, I thought I’d lost him. I didn’t imagine I’d have more of him than I did before.
Recently I brought him a record player and a vintage album of Veracruz huapangos. He lived in Mexico in the early ‘60s while doing his service as a conscientious objector, and it was one of the happiest times of his life. He met my mother, chased steam engines and fell in love with that country, especially its music.
I put the record on. An explosion of wild harp playing filled the house. It sounded like joy singing to itself.
Dad was quiet. Tears were streaming down his face.
“You can’t know what this means to me,” he said.
Actually, I did know, or at least I had an idea. I knew this album, a copy of one he and my mother often played, would flood him with happy memories.
But as the night went on, and we replayed the record, he said this over and over. You can’t know what this means to me. You can’t know what this means to me.
By the sixth time I thought, Maybe I don’t know what this means to him. Maybe I don’t even know what it means to me, to be able to offer this gift: a record player, to my father, who lost his wife of 59 years and has been living in the house they bought in 1973, sleeping in the bed they shared, never complaining about being alone.
Later I thought, “Do we ever know what the things we do really mean to others? Did I ever tell my mother how much I loved the records she brought home? Did I tell my father how happy it made me that he liked this gift?” No. I was shy. And sometimes I wonder, what is my memory keeping from me? If I didn’t remember past hurts and grudges, how much lighter and more forgiving would I be? Would we all be nicer to one another if we remembered less? Love people we otherwise don’t? Love people we do even better?
“Thank you,” Dad said as I was leaving. “You have helped me so much this weekend.”
You can’t know what it means to me to have this time with you, I thought but didn’t say. I don’t have Alzheimer’s yet, and my brain is still blocking my heart from speaking fully.
But maybe I will the next time I go out to the house. And he might forget.
And I will get to say it over and over until the words become a song we both know by heart.
Rebecca Barry is the author of “Later, at the Bar” and “Recipes for a Beautiful Life.” She writes “Out of My Mind” on Substack. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
