Category Archives: Memories

April 20, 2012 · 1:56 pm

Dad’s smoker’s cough

I’ve written plenty about Dad’s longtime smoking habit. But this morning on the subway I heard an older gentleman with a smoker’s cough that sounded so much like my dad’s. It was eerie. One might think that all smoker’s coughs are the same, but they are not. Dad’s raspy, hoarse cough was as much a part of him as his five-o’-clock shadow and his green eyes which could spark with humor or anger.

As a child, I don’t remember having an opinion on Dad’s smoking habit. It was just something he did on a regular basis and still quite common in the 1970’s. (Even my mom was known to take a puff or two on an Eve or Carlton cigarette from time to time!) As I got older, and the smoking habit fell out of public favor, I began to despise Dad’s habit as dirty and disgusting. Sometimes, hating your parents’ actions can be a good thing; I’ve never had an interest in smoking. I’m sure my lungs love me for that.

But it’s funny that I could probably pick out my dad’s distinctive smoker’s cough from a crowd before I could pick out his voice. It also makes me think about the last months of his life, long after he smoked his last cigarette, when he would try to cough up the phlegm that was strangling him but he was too weak to do so. It seems like such a simple thing, coughing. Yet there was nothing we could do to help him be more comfortable. My mom kept asking the doctors if there was some type of machine that could just remove all of that junk from his mouth, throat and lungs. The doctors and nurses would just smile sadly and shake their heads.

There were no quick-and-easy fixes for my dad by that point. Just that cough that lingered, haunting him and us to his death.

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April 19, 2012 · 11:42 am

Dementia a robber

The news that coach Pat Summitt was stepping down as head coach of the Lady Volunteers was not surprising news, but it is a sobering reminder of how dementia can rob the most vital people of their precious gifts.

My dad was not a high-profile college basketball coach, but the impact of Alzheimer’s was still devastating. I can’t imagine what would have happened if Dad had still been working when his dementia symptoms started. Fortunately, he was retired. He often mused on getting a part-time job in Ruidoso, but he never did. Then it became too late.

Tennessee Lady Volunteers coach Pat Summitt. File photo.

But even for those that are retired, there are chores, those daily jobs that we execute with barely a thought. But once my dad’s dementia progressed, completing the smallest jobs, like going to the post office to mail letters, or paying for an item at a store became difficult, then impossible. It was painful to watch my dad be robbed of performing the simplest of adult tasks. He was being forced back into childhood, with no hope of growing up again.

Summitt is such a strong woman and she already is a great advocate in the fight against Alzheimer’s. Maybe when people see vibrant, ultra-successful people like Pat Summitt battle this disease, they will take notice that this is an epidemic that we must focus on as a nation and world. The disease is claiming too many minds, too many lives, both known and unknown, but all loved by someone.

Learn more about the Pat Summitt Foundation.

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April 18, 2012 · 6:33 am

Dad losing the meaning of ‘home’

One thing that my mom still talks about almost every time I have a conversation with her is that in the last year of his life, when Dad was far from home, he never asked to leave the care center or hospital he was in and return home.

It’s not uncommon for Alzheimer’s patients to forget what and where home is, and to accept, at least outwardly, their current location. There are some with Alzheimer’s that do beg and plead their families to return home, and I think this puts an even heavier burden on the family. It was almost a relief to me that Dad accepted the care center that he was in without a fight, but it also made me realize how far the disease had progressed.

Dad was a homebody. Oh, he had his “hitting the bar after work” days when I was youung, but for the most part, he worked, came home and enjoyed the comforts of domestic life. He mainly read books and newspapers, watched TV news or documentaries or could be found on our patio taking a cigarette break. Simple pleasures but he was always easy to please.

I’m much the same way. I feel like I would be devastated if I had to give up my creature comforts from home and go live with a bunch of strangers. But Alzheimer’s tricks the mind into believing you are a stranger in your own home, an imposter in your own skin.

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April 17, 2012 · 6:41 am

Dad and the ladybug umbrella

My new job is located in a ritzy office tower that offers complimentary white umbrellas to borrow when it rains. I stepped outside for a brief walk on my lunch break, not realizing it was about to rain, and everyone emerged with white umbrellas. It was an odd vision.

It made me think about Dad and his dislike of umbrellas. We had those big ugly plastic umbrellas, the kind that really cover you but take up a ton of space and make a lot of noise when you open them. They would always stick on Dad, so he’d be fiddling and cursing under his breath as he tried to operate it, getting drenched in the process. Still, he was always a gentleman, and he knew better than to let Mom get her newly-styled hair wet!

I had a ladybug umbrella, with a red and black design printed on the clear plastic. There were a few times Dad had to hold my umbrella as I was coming from school or had my hands full for another reason, and of course he looked silly, a grown man holding cartoonish ladybugs high over his head. But he managed to keep me dry and do his duty as a father.

I’ve written before about how there was a ladybug that visited me at my last job and stuck around with me for awhile. So far no ladybugs have managed to enter my new office, but I was reminded yesterday of my sweet little ladybug umbrella and my dad protecting me from the rain.

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April 16, 2012 · 6:17 am

Dementia and the ER don’t mix

I started a new job this past week and one of my managers had a terrible bicycle accident after work, and suffered serious facial injuries. He’s going to be okay, thanks to some fine work at the local trauma center hospital. However, he’s also diabetic, and despite telling the staff multiple times, they didn’t even bother checking his blood sugar until the second day he was in the hospital. Luckily, his wife, a registered nurse, arrived at the hospital and was present to be his medical advocate.

This incident made me think about my dad’s final ER visits. He had a bit of a revolving-door relationship with the local hospital during the final two months of his life. When Dad came back to Ruidoso to move to a local assisted living facility that finally had an opening, he was quite ill with what was most likely pneumonia. When the nurse did the intake process at the local care facility, I was told the red flag went off in their computer system when they entered the drugs that Dad had been prescribed by the other facility. I took a look at all of the medications he was on, and Risperidone was on the list. This is not FDA approved for use in elderly patients with dementia and essentially is used by care centers to “gork” out the residents so they are less trouble. Studies suggest the drug may have contributed to an increased risk of stroke in elderly patients.

When Dad was taken to the ER because he was so ill, he was also very lethargic. I asked the medical staff there about the Risperidone, and perhaps they could start weaning him off that, since it is known to make people groggy and clearly Dad was not a “problem” patient at the moment, due to his medical issues.

The doctor just shrugged his shoulders and said their policy was just to keep them on whatever drugs they are currently prescribed. While this might make sense in most cases, wonder if the assisted living facility had been giving him a combination of drugs that was making him ill? Shouldn’t the hospital take that into consideration, instead of blindly feeding my dad pills just because they were on a list?

I’m not usually a fan of being a bitch, but when it comes to hospital care, often, the nice and meek finish last. You have to speak up for yourself and the loved ones you are caring for, even if the staff roll their eyes and get frustrated with you. When someone’s life and well-being are at stake, you have to fight back against an often indifferent healthcare system.

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April 15, 2012 · 11:36 am

My dad’s hometown in a ‘Titanic’ spotlight today

As the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is marked around the world, much attention is being placed on Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the doomed ship was built. I wish Dad could have lived long enough (in his right mind) to see this day because I know he would have been glued to the TV set, watching all of the news coverage of this historic event. As I’ve written before, Dad had a lifelong fascination with the Titanic, due to its larger-than-life presence in his hometown.

The Titanic leaves Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City, April 10, 1912. File photo.

Belfast as a city has struggled with the Titanic legacy. It must be difficult from a moral and ethical standpoint to balance a local pride in a feat of shipbuilding along with the tragic sinking and enormous loss of life that occurred on the ship’s maiden voyage. Una Reilly, chair of the Belfast Titanic Society spoke eloquently on this point: “We are all proud of this ship. What happened was a disaster; she was not.”

There’s an analogy that came to mind as I’ve been reading various Titanic-related articles. One such piece debated the reason why the Titanic sank, and proposed that if the captain had just struck the iceberg head-on, the ship could have handled it, but it was his decision to try to skirt around the iceberg that caused the ship to suffer damage that led to its sinking. Whether this theory is right or wrong we may never know for certain. But there is a life lesson to be learned here. When it comes to life’s troubles, it we meet them head-on and deal with them directly instead of trying to skirt around the issue and be in denial, we have a better chance of overcoming such obstacles.

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April 14, 2012 · 11:02 am

Uncle Marty

Uncle Marty was not really my uncle. He was a family friend, someone that my mom used to work with when she was a proofreader. He died when I was still fairly young. I remember him as a big, friendly man with a jiggling gut. He would sometimes come visit us, but often we would go visit him at his home. It was a bit of a drive, and I’m sure it did Mom good to get away from babyland for awhile. There are some audio recordings that have survived of one of our visits there. It’s interesting to hear a casual conversation from back then with mentions of new movies at the time, circa 1975-76. (There’s also sounds of a baby starting to get fussy on the tapes, gee, I wonder who that could be.)

Dad and Uncle Marty hit it off well. In just about every photo I have at Uncle Marty’s, a nice tall glass of beer can be seen, so I think that’s one of the ways they bonded. We also had the chance to enjoy the backyard on our visits, and the photo of the three of us was taken in Uncle Marty’s backyard on one such visit. We always lived in apartments and had to go to the park for some green space. (Just skip the picnic if Dad was along.)

Uncle Marty holds a special place in my memory because my parents didn’t have a lot of family friends, and their relatives were thousands of miles away. I’m sure they both missed their families, but especially Dad, who was separated by an ocean from his siblings and mainly kept in touch via letters. I’m sure Dad enjoyed having a chance to relax, sip a beer and shoot the breeze with good-natured Marty.

All of the visits I can remember with Uncle Marty were happy times, simple memories that mean more as the days get darker.

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April 13, 2012 · 6:31 am

Panic at the picnic

Dad was not the outdoors type, so there were no camping trips during my childhood. My mom, having been raised on a farm, had fond memories of family picnics in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “Even in the summer, you would need a sweater,” my mom would relate excitedly while rattling off the variety of dishes they brought along. It sounded like a great time.

So mom insisted the three of us go on picnics. We didn’t have anything as spectacular as the Smoky Mountains in our neighborhood, so a local park would have to suffice. The food spread wasn’t quite as delectable as what Mom had as a kid, but I think it included chicken and potato salad and some kind of dessert.

The trouble started with the uninvited guests. The flies. Dad was not fond of bugs of any kind, and would swat at the flies with erratic sweeping gestures that made him look like he was overacting in a 1950’s sci-fi B-movie. I’m sure they had flies in Ireland (aren’t they kind of like roaches, you can find them almost anywhere?) but a warm spring or summer day in Southern California brought forth the flies, the bees and the ants. It was too much for my Dad to handle.

He ate hurriedly, trying to avoid another encounter with a fly. While I liked certain bugs (the roly-poly or bus bug was a favorite of mine) I also was annoyed by flies and terrified of bees or any creature that could sting or bite. So I would mimic Dad’s behavior, which would annoy my mom, who just wanted to enjoy a nice meal outdoors with her family. A simple request, right? Not for our family.

To this day, if a fly gets into the house, I must hunt it down and destroy it because the buzzing and flying around drives me crazy. Hopefully, Dad was not reincarnated as a fly!

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April 12, 2012 · 6:07 am

My 100th memory of Dad

I can’t believe I’ve already reached the 100th post milestone but today is the day! This project is truly a labor of love, and I’ve met (virtually, anyways) so many great people in the blogosphere, many who are caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. My deepest thanks to all of the advocates out there and my deepest admiration for all of the tireless caregivers around the world.

An image has been on my mind this week, and it is of my dad’s hands in the last years of his life. They were bony, with veins poking out just beneath the thinly stretched skin. There were age spots mottling the flesh and his fingers were cool and clammy to the touch. I doubt that I had held my dad’s hands, or even taken notice of them, since I was a little girl who needed help crossing the street.

Dad holding on to my hand, trying to hold on to his sanity.

When dementia began to creep into our family, there’s a photo of us on the couch at my parent’s house, and my dad is gripping my hand so tightly, as if he’s afraid of letting go in more than just a physical sense.

In that final year of my dad’s life that was spent in the nursing home, my dad couldn’t say much, so holding his hand was one of the only ways I could still connect to him. I remember watching his hands, twitching with a bit of a tremor, lift a cup of hot coffee to his lips and sip tentatively. Then he reached out the cup to me.

“Do you want some,” he asked, with a polite innocence that was heartbreaking.

Of course, being me, my mind raced with the thoughts of germs and how I would be able to get out of this awkward moment. I thanked him and held on to the cup, until he was ready for his next sip. It took him so much effort to do something he once received great enjoyment out of. Alzheimer’s strikes again.

There’s a tenderness that many caregivers offer those with Alzheimer’s and it can greatly improve quality of life. I just wish that I had shown a little more tenderness while my dad was still aware enough to appreciate it.

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April 11, 2012 · 6:22 am

Blaming Dad for my crooked teeth

Recently, I came across the dreaded school photos of myself. The photos below are from ages six, eight, nine and ten. (Not sure what happened to my second grade photo.) In them, my poor teeth, crooked and with big gaps, are clearly on display. I wasn’t really self-conscious about my teeth until some little bully in my fifth grade math class started calling me, “Bucky.” I remember my face glowing a crimson red and fighting back the tears that threatened to overflow.

When you are a little kid, it’s easy to redirect your anger. (Well, some people never grow out of that phase.) One only had to take a glance at a photo of Dad and I to see that we had been blessed (cursed?) with the same kind of teeth. It’s the reason Dad looks like he’s at a funeral for many of our family photos. Back when he was young, cosmetic dentistry was essentially non-existant. His family was too busy just trying to survive World War II in Belfast. So poor dental care, combined with poor genetics and a lifelong cigarette and coffee habit meant my dad’s teeth were not going to win any beauty contests.

I didn’t have to endure being called “Bucky” for long. I was fitted for braces that same year and wore them throughout middle school. While some kids got picked on for wearing braces (“metal face,” etc.) I don’t remember having to deal with that. It was pretty common in my class to have braces.

Over time (and the fact that I stopped wearing my retainer before it was advisable) my front teeth have moved forward a bit. Sometimes when I smile for photos, my front teeth get “stuck” over my lips slightly. It makes me cringe a bit, but in the grander scheme of things, I know it’s not a big deal. And it reminds me of Dad, which is important.

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