This isn't going to be a very long post. Not sure why I'm writing it actually. Just feeling very emotional this morning. I didn't start off feeling this way. My day started off with joyful expectations of seeing my granddaughters and all my children. What could be better? A party.
I kissed my husband goodbye as he left for work and off I went into the kitchen to start the preparations for the St. Patrick's Day party.
Corned beef in the crocked pot. check... Eggs in the water to boil for the potato salad and my CD in the Bows and away we go. That's when it hit.
My sisters and I grew up in a home filled with music. All kinds of music. Loud and often. Today, for me, it was a day for Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. As the orchestra started to play and my hands started to peel the potatoes without warning the tears started to flow.
I was immediately taken back so many years. Music blasting, aromas from the kitchen filling the house and my dad enthusiastically explaining to me what the story of that particular piece of music was about. Who each character was, what part they played. He would point out certain parts of each piece, parts that were his favorite. He would get so into it. I loved it and learned to love so many kinds of music because of it.
And as I was peeling those potatoes, crying and listening to this beautiful overture my heart hurt because I knew when I went to see him in the nursing home where he now has to live he won't even know who I am.
I will greet him with a big smile and a "Hi daddy" kiss him and hold his hand. Most of the time I'll get a big smile and a hello back. That is if he isn't having a sleepy day, which are more and more these days it seems. But I'll remind him who I am and he'll smile back. On a good day we might even have little conversations. Not much but something to hold on to.
But today I'm going to tell him how grateful I am for all those musical memories he shared with us, and how much I appreciate so much those days of a music filled home with opera, musicals, classical and even Janis Joplin.
On my dad's bad days I pray that he will drift off and go to our mom. Horrible thoughts? I don't know. I feel guilty feeling them but then again, when my dad has bad days it's very hard to hear about them and worse yet, witness. The indignities that dementia patients have to go through every day just to survive and get through. As a daughter it's painful to imagine your once brilliant father having to go through this.
But on his good days, when you get that big smile, with his missing tooth that he lost when he fell a few months back it makes your heart happy. And as I take his face in my hands and kiss his little bald head and tell him I love him...... and my dad looks up at me and says thank you.....
It's then that I so much want my dad back.
