Coping by Writing: Dealing with my Dad

Life is a tricky thing. There's ups and downs throughout your years on this Earth and then one day, your time is up. For most people, the end doesn't come quickly. It comes in stops and starts, it sputters until finally there is nothing left to start.

This might be a morbid way to look at life, especially from a 26-year-old who still has, hopefully, many good years left. However, I've taken this view because of recent developments in my family. You see, my father, Lionel, is 80 years old, and he's been battling Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's disease for the past 10 years.

Over the past several years he's gone from a fit and trim senior citizen, working out several times a week, not drinking, not smoking, into a shell of his former self. It wasn't for lack of effort or of total acceptance of his eventual fate that stopped him from his routine though, it was the diseases that robbed him of his livelihood.

If you've never seen either of these diseases ravage a family member, I hope you never have to. I wouldn't wish them on anyone, not even my worst enemies.

It started with little things, a tremble in his hands (Parkinson's) or a slip of his memory here and there (Alzheimer), but it progressively got worse. He now shakes uncontrollably in his arms most of the day, he has a terrible time eating and has forgotten most of my family, including myself.

He often asks where he is or who I am, even after I've explained to him that I'm Jeff, I'm his son, and that we're sitting on the couch in our home. A home we've lived in for 20 years.

This isn't to say there aren't good days. When my dad is my dad again, laughing at his own silly jokes and talking about all the times we had together at various sporting events and vacations with our family. Those days have gotten fewer and farther between in the last six months, almost nonexistent. They aren't so much days now, just a few hours every other week, maybe.

I miss days when we would play catch or watch the Red Sox (his favorite baseball team) play on television. When he, my mom and I would all sit down with a pizza and watch our beloved North Carolina Tar Heels battle the evil Duke Blue Devils in college basketball.

Those were days I didn't appreciate then, but now I treasure like gold. Seeing him now, it's hard to picture him as the man who worked as a pharmacist into his late 60s. Who never missed one of my athletic events and always had time for his wife.

Now, as my dad lays in a hospital bed awaiting transfer to a nursing home where he can comfortably rest, I see the shell he has become, but I also see the man he once was. In my mind he will always be that great man who raised me.

In my head, anyone reading this will think, “Why is he sharing this with me, with us?” I can answer that very easily: I needed to. Writing has always been a way for me to clearly get out what I couldn't say. Dealing with this has taken a very hard toll on me and I've internalized all of it. I had to write something about my dad to deal with it, to cope in my own way.

If you've ever experienced anything like this, maybe you'll understand. If not, just know that by writing this, I've made myself feel a more at peace and accepting of the entire situation than anything else I could have done.

And if you have experienced anything like this before, please feel free to comment and let me know how you coped.