Under One Roof by Barry Martin

Author:Barry Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

10

People ask me if I felt guilty about spending so much time with Edith, after my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I really didn’t. For one, I knew he could still take care of himself, and he had my mom there. Edith needed me a lot more. For another, I know that he and my mom were really proud of me for what I was doing. Especially my mom, since she’d done it herself so many times. It was a stand-up thing to do, they told me, and I guess you never get too old to feel pleased when your parents tell you you’re a good boy.

I was only seeing my dad every couple of months, but I was talking to him a lot more often now. I just felt the need to. I had talked to Dad after the doctor told him that he couldn’t drive anymore. That was hard for him to take. He went along with the idea—he understood and all—but it was really kind of sad because he was always one for wanting to go for a drive.

When we were kids, you always knew when we were headed somewhere, because he’d pace around the house, acting all antsy, and jingling the car keys in his pocket. And you just knew he was figuring out where we were going to go. It’s not that he wanted to go anyplace in particular, he just didn’t want to be right where he was anymore. And then all of a sudden, he’d say, “Pack up, we’re going,” and we’d all bolt for the car. We didn’t ask him where we were going, because we knew he wouldn’t tell us; looking back, I bet half the time he didn’t know where we were going himself. Sometimes he’d take the most circuitous route to get someplace, whether it was some friend’s house or down to the doughnut shop, and you didn’t know if he was trying to throw you off the scent, or if he just hadn’t settled on his destination until after he’d backed out of the driveway. That was just a force in his life, and none of us gave it a second thought. It was who he was, and you accepted it, and took a kind of secret delight in it.

But now, as we grappled with the Alzheimer’s and all that went with it, so much had changed. One morning my mother was sleeping upstairs and he was sleeping on the couch. Even before the Alzheimer’s, he had been suffering from some pretty bad migraines, and had started huddling up alone on the couch, with a blanket over his head so the light couldn’t get in; it was about the only way either of them could get any sleep. When he quit working, the migraines went away, but he had gotten into the habit of falling asleep on the couch, watching TV, and a lot of times he’d just stay there for the night.

When my mom woke up that morning and didn’t see hide nor hair of him, she just assumed he was sleeping down on the couch.

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