Dad, these days: Part Five

   I had a bit of a watershed moment with my Dad in his hospital room this evening. We have been through much together over the last 4 years or so; many games of golf, the death of his wife, Jean, many stories from the 30's, 40's and 50's and all that has been involved in his slow decline with Alzheimer's Disease. This is not to mention the almost 59 years he has been my father and all that went on over those many years, all the games of catch, the summers in Gibson's B.C., the camping trips, the death of my mother and the "baching" that followed it, the table tennis games, and the trips through the mountains.
                                                                                                       Tonight, he forgot who I was. 

                                                                                                                      I am no stranger to his bouts of confusion. I have listened patiently to his many stories told many times. We have worked through forgotten appointments and lost forms. I have answered the same questions, over and over. Through all of this, though, there was a constant. The one easily retrievable memory through all of this was our father-son relationship.

   Tonight, even this became tenuous.
   I had already been sitting with him for awhile when all of the sudden he asked me how long ago it was that he had made that visit to see me. I asked him which visit he was referring to. At this point, he pointed to a small photo album he's had at his bedside, almost since the beginning of the hospital stay. It is an album his brother, Keith and sister-in-law, Barb, had given him almost four years ago to commemorate his visit with them in Comox, B.C. and is full of pictures of the three of them. This was the visit with me he had just referenced.
   I had to explain to him that he had not been visiting me, he'd been visiting Keith and Barb. I went to one of the photographs and asked him to point to the one he thought was me and he pointed to a picture of Keith. He then referred to me as one of his brothers.
   A short while later we had all this straightened out but I am fearful this will come up again.

   In thinking about it, though, there are a couple of assuaging factors at play. Firstly, at least he had me mixed up with a loved one and not a total stranger. Secondly, Barb and Keith had just spent a week visiting with him and for much of that we had all been together. I remember that by the end of the visit we'd all passed into an area where there had been confusion as to our relationships with each other. This had resulted from us referring to one another occasionally by the name that others of used. As an example, after several days of hearing Barb and Keith refer to Dad as "Ken", I actually referred to him that way. A couple of times Keith referred to Dad as "Dad", likely because he'd heard me use the term so often.
   So, in retrospect, perhaps it's not strange that Dad would be more confused than usual. What worries me, though, is that it was not a momentary slip or blooper, I actually had to explain to Dad who I was.
   I have never had to do that.