BRATTLEBORO — My Dad spoke six languages, traveled the world, fl flew planes, manned battleships, hobnobbed with dignitaries, and played a mean game of tennis.
To me, he was a big and powerful person, despite his 5' 7” stature. I remember him as quick to criticize and uneasy, even disdainful, around emotional displays.
He was not around much when I was growing up, and I spent most of my youth hoping to elicit from him some show of “fatherly affection.” I was almost always disappointed.
Those are my memories of him before he reached his mid-eighties. Then he began to change, quickly and dramatically.
Not many daughters get the chance to have two fathers in one. I did.
When Dad began to forget things and his brain, always so reliable, began to falter as a result of Alzheimer's Disease, his heart took the lead. When logic and analytical thought were no longer available as tools of communication, intuition and body wisdom kicked in.
There was a depth of connection between us that I had never remembered experiencing before. My Dad became whole in my eyes, and even the past seemed to reshape itself as I found instances of unconditional love that had been lost in the shadows of my angry memories.
Much of my life and most of my relationships had been based on these memories. At the end of his life, my father taught me to let go of that story.
I don't want to minimize the shock and loss of that on which my Dad, and all of us, so depended: his intellectual capacity. For Dad, as for many in these modern times, the voice of reason guided him, told him who he was, and where he was. In this way, he could remain, secured firmly f, in a predictable world of known facts, places, and faces. All of our family vicariously depended on his security.
When that world began to crumble and the voice of reason began to fade, it was both sad and frightening. For a long time, I resisted acknowledging this new father. It wasn't until much later that I was able to welcome him.
* * *
I remember: Dad is sitting in the dining room of his assisted care facility. It is January, and a thick layer of snow covers the ground.
Dad says, “Look at the butterflies!”
“Where?” I ask.
“Outside the window,” he replies.
“Dad! It's winter, and it's freezing out. There aren't any butterflies.”
He is smiling and pointing.
“There they are, little white butterflies. They are so beautiful.”
I try to talk him into birds, or treetops, but it is butterflies he sees. Since I know, logically, there can be no such thing, it disturbs me to see him so enthralled.
I try to analyze away his delight but can't. He holds firmly to his butterflies.
Finally, I get up and stand behind him and, bending down to look from his perspective, I see what he sees - sure enough, butterflies. The ceiling fan is spinning and catching the light in such a way that from his seat, reflected on the glass window across the room, there are many little fluttering wings of light, just like white butterflies.
In the old days, he would have momentarily noticed the flickering reflection and then spent time figuring out where it had come from until he made sense of it, much as I did. But on this afternoon, he is just allowing the experience to unfold. He never questions the butterflies.
When I am able to join him, we sit quietly together, marveling at the magic of this moment.
Teachers don't always arrive in long white robes or carry heavy leatherbound tomes. Some, like my father, come wearing mismatched pajamas, walking on the shaky legs of an old man, and seeing with the eyes of a child.
* * *
I remember: I come into Dad's room, and he is looking at me with an innocence free from past knowledge. He is seeing me for the first time.
He senses now, using some instinctual gauge. He knows a lie. He knows an open heart. He can reflect one's urgency or impatience. He senses what is going on inside another person, and disguises and cover-ups are transparent to him.
Names and histories are irrelevant. He sees what is really there. He can react in quick, startling ways, like a wild animal who smells an enemy or feels an impending storm.
I must move slowly and listen, always listen, and accept what comes. Sometimes, I am blessed with a deeper connection than I have ever known. Today is such a day.
As he stares into my eyes, I am gone. I feel myself relax and expand. I am free to be whatever the moment inspires. I am careful today to allow no words, no activities, and no movement to interrupt our connection until he invites me in on a deeper level.
I don't have to entertain him, please him, or fix him - I simply sit with him in this moment.
At some point, he smiles at me, and I can see him shining. I tell him what a beautiful man he is. He shines even more. Now I start shining, too.
I chuckle inside at the irony. For years, I have been devising exercises to lead my drawing students into a state of mind that could allow them to experience a deeper connection with the aliveness of the moment, to be in a place of “not knowing.”
We draw into the light and into the dark. We draw without materials. We let go of product and draw with our eyes closed. We draw from the energy of our bodies.
And here is my father, who I always felt didn't understand what I did. Here is my father, a master at being in the not knowing!
* * *
I remember: Today I am taking Dad to acupuncture. The acupuncturist is a woman of about 45, who, I later find out, had lost her father some years ago and has lingering pain around the relationship. She is working with the needles very gently and cautiously, as Dad has become quite frail. She respects his system, which is trying to gradually wind down.
She is debating between two pressure points, as he lies on the table, and she is mulling both over in her mind. Dad, who knows nothing about acupuncture, sits up suddenly and names the point she should use, and lies back down.
After we help him off the table, at the end of his session, he turns to her and stares into her eyes for a long moment, and then says in a quiet, steady voice, “I know who you are.”
He turns and leaves the room.
She later tells me through tears that she felt she was staring into the face of her father and that he was really seeing her for the first time.
* * *
Because Dad had begun to see in a new way, I couldn't always understand “where he was.”
Edges of things, which were no longer labeled and had no history, could melt and reattach to other equally transformable shapes. A table, which was no longer a table, but a brand new something, could be joined by a chair and shirt, thrown casually over the top, to create, as the butterflies, a moment of wonder.
Dad could be staring about his room at the newness of things for hours. Yes, sometimes, I felt left out. But as with the butterflies, if I began to see through his eyes, the world became once more as it had been when I was a child, filled with magic.
* * *
I remember: It is night time. Dad has finished eating and is getting sleepy, nodding off in his chair. Getting ready for bed is sometimes a challenge, and I am the designated caretaker tonight.
So far so good - pajamas are on, teeth are out and soaking, and now, I must just get his shoes off and get him into bed.
Easier said than done! Because his shoe is physically surrounding his foot, it often becomes, in his mind, merged with him. Removing his shoe can be like trying to take away a piece of his body.
I am tired tonight and eager to be done with these chores. The care is gone, and the taker is all that's left. That is just what he is sensing.
I reach for his shoe a little too quickly, and he simultaneously grabs my hand. He is little, but quick and very strong. He is showing me by his grip that I have lapsed out of the moment and into my to-do list!
I have stepped out of his world into mine, and he quickly pulls me back into his. Now I, too, am attached to him, and there is no letting go.
He will not take his eyes off me, and he will not loosen his grip. I must sit down and wait for him to trust me again.
When he knows I mean him no harm, I will gently take my hand back. I am no longer in a rush, and a calm acceptance is settling in.
Depending on the day and the time, the mood, and the level of trust, it often makes more sense to let Dad go to bed with his shoes on. With this new Dad, in order to be a part of his world, I am learning a lot about letting go of my “to do” list.
I could share many other such daily events with Dad, the miraculous subtly wrapped in the ordinary.
However, what remains strongest in my memory is his singing.
Long after he stopped thinking, talking, and walking, he was still singing. His songs were all improvisations in the moment, with brand-new melodies that carried his own special sounds into space. These “songs” were more expressive than any words could be.
* * *
I remember:
I am coming to visit my Dad for the last time. His songs are wafting down the hallway, greeting me long before I turn the corner to see him.
He is in his room, sitting in his chair intently and with determination, singing his life.
I sit down quietly to bask in these sounds, feeling inexplicably swaddled and held. At some point, he notices I am there, and we face each other. Soon we are looking at each other, laughing and making sounds together, playful, open, and free. Near the end of his life, he is giving me a gift I will cherish the rest of my life. At 64, I am finally playing with my father.
* * *
As I am writing, I recall a dream image I had just a few days ago. It is one of those images I knew was important, but didn't know why.
Now I get it.
I am holding a rosebud baby. The head, with its innocent young eyes, peers out at me from pink and red petals. The layers of petals become a deeper red and turn into swaddling clothes. This rosebud baby is so tightly swaddled that the body appears to be a thick red stem, and I lay the rosebud on the ground.
All around in neat rows are millions of rosebud babies, covering miles of the earth. A headline from a newspaper drifts past, “The Sacrifice of the Rosebud Babies.”
This sea of rosebud babies reminds me of another image I had seen years before, rows and rows of Tibetan monks in their red/orange robes seen from on high, bowing and praying. They vanish into one rhythmic pattern.
Altogether like the wordless songs of my father's final days, they are free from the stories of individual suffering.
I see the sea of rosebud babies and am looking into the childlike eyes of so many Alzheimer patients, guardians of the aliveness of the moment.
I know that each one can right an imbalance somewhere on this planet. I know a sacrifice has been made by the rosebud babies, but there is no blood, no death.
These monk/babies from my dream have become part of an ocean of wisdom, an ocean that can teach us to listen, to move slowly, to let go of our “to do” lists, and to honor the aliveness of the moment, free from intellectual tyranny.