It was difficult admitting dad had Alzheimer’s. He understood what the disease meant, and made the best of it through the early stages.
We would laugh at some of the things he did and make jokes about him being forgetful.
Somehow things were always okay in those early days. He knew me. He would call me by name and always looked at me in his special way. I was his little girl.
As his Alzheimer’s progressed, I could see the distance between us growing.
The laughing stopped. The jokes stopped. I was familiar to him but when he looked at me I could see him trying to remember who I was. I wasn’t his little girl anymore. I was “that lady” who lived upstairs. “You know the one …” he would say. “… the one that makes supper and takes us out for a donut sometimes.”
I would tell him my name, and remind him I was his daughter. He would laugh and smile in his own special way. He humoured me but I could tell he really wasn’t sure of anything.
He didn’t see me as his daughter because in his mind, he had no daughter.
Alzheimer’s had stolen my father, taken away his laughter, the special way he looked at me and turned his little girl into “that lady”.
There’s not a day that goes by I don’t miss his smile or the way he used to look at me. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss my dad.
Sure, the person I visit each day looks like and sounds like dad but I know it’s only a shell. Alzheimer’s has destroyed his being and left him alone. He’s in a dark place and I’m powerless to help him, to be that little girl for him, to offer him comfort and to bring back his laughter and his smile.
On certain days dad looks alive. He walks and sings, oblivious to the dark place his disease has brought him.
It’s these days I look forward to. Those are the good days. Dad almost remembers me. I close my eyes and listen to his happy tunes, his whistling and the happiness in his voice.
Those are my good days as well and if I look hard enough, I can catch a glimpse of him staring at me and in his eyes I know he sees his little girl.
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