ustxtxb_obs_2003_11_21_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

He says, “Sure,” and then goes back to cleaning the sink. I lean into him, my shoulder pressing into his arm and I tell him I love him. He says, “Of course!” in a nearly merry way that makes me laugh while I weep. I ask if he will set the table, and again he says, “Sure.” He will not remember how to set the table. Some of us have two knives and a large spoon, several napkins, no forks, and no glasses. Mine is the setting with all the napkins, and for a second I remember what he used to say when I was a childthat I was very generous because I shared my meals with my clothes, something that was said with much affection and sweetness. That was then. Today we don’t have names; sometimes we are all his sons. He knows us by what we do. Our boy at the bank. Our boy at the ranch. Our boy who works up the road. Our boy who lives next door. The one that’s married to Clyde. Grandchildren are strangers who occasion Thanksgiving dinners. My youngest sister and I no longer correct him. We’ve learned to change the subject quickly when things start going south. We’ve learned to ask for help, and we’ve learned from others and from some of the valuable resources we have discovered in literature and film. This is textbook Alzheimer’s. This is our life. Though he doesn’t remember the names of the children he loved all his lifechildren whose minds and hearts he formed and cultivated with loyalty and faith and books and exuberant stories and songshe does remember that empty plastic milk jugs go to the blue recycling bag in the garage. He remembers that he flew 35 missions over Germany in World War II, that he came home on the Queen Mary, which docked in New York, that he took a train back to Laredo and walked at midnight from the train depot not to the home of his family but to my mother’s house on Laredo Street to ask her to marry him. It is my mother who is his anchor to this life. He is certain only of her. The rest of us are strangers on the periphery of a life he himself no longer recognizes. At first we did not speak of the disease to others, believing that might rob him of dignity. The diagnosis didn’t surprise us, but almost everything else has, including the swift degeneration of his beautiful, complex mind, the mind that with my mother’s built all our lives, built enterprise, sent children to college, ran a ranch, fueled imagination, grew gardens, and put love before all else. Why am I writing this, that which should be so private? I am writing this to understand on some very elemental level where my father has gone. Driving his own vehicle was one of the last vestiges of Dad’s independence, one of the last exercises of his own will. We’d come up with ways to disable it. On many occasions we tried to tell him that his driving days were over, which always led to increasingly futile arguments. My sister Amanda told us that the Texas Department of Public Safety might be an ally in revoking my father’s license. In the end, it was true, but the agency wasn’t as helpful as you might think it would have been to help us get someone off the Today we don’t have names; sometimes we are all his sons. He knows us by what we do. Our boy at the bank. Our boy at the ranch. Our boy who works up the road. Our boy who lives next door. The one that’s mar ried to Clyde. Grandchildren are strangers who occasion Thanksgiving dinners… This is textbook Alzheimer’s. This is our life. road who presented a danger not only to himself but to others. The local DPS office said that my father would have to give up his license voluntarily. If he didn’t have any accidents on his record, there was nothing they could do. \(He did have three I explained the situation for the umpteenth time, they finally gave me an address in Austin. I quickly sent off a letter. The Austin office responded not to me but to my father, saying that someone had reported a problem with his driving. They specified that a package from the Texas Department of Health to fill out some forms. I intercepted the package, and exercising power of attorney, gave my father’s doctor permission to fill out these forms and forward them to TDH. Unfortunately, TDH sent yet another letter addressed to my father explaining that if he didn’t fill out the forms they would have no recourse but to recommend to the DPS to revoke his license. \(Had I known that not answering the first letter was going to speed months DPS wrote to say that since my father had not complied with the forms, his license would be revoked in 30 days. Now came the really tough part. Someone had to tell him about the letter. Since there were no other takers, the task fell to my sister Meg and me. We approached him, and I started to explain the substance of the letter, pointing only to the word 11/21/03 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5