Today is the 8th anniversary of my father’s death. It’s a hard day for me but as the years have passed it has gotten slightly easier. I have so many memories of him but for some reason one is resonating with me the most today. This is for him.
I sit across from him
Watching him struggle to find words
That are hiding from him.
It’s painful seeing him struggle to
search for something that was once so easy to find.
Mastery of words was his strength and now
The disease has robbed him of that.
This loss has weakened him in a way that
Makes it hard for me to recognize him.
And that’s what hurts the most.
My father sits across from me
But my dad is gone.
Losing my dad was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. But because of his Alzheimer’s I truly feel like I lost him the summer before he passed. When I think of my dad, I see a man who loved words and could use them so eloquently and express himself so well. In the late stages of the disease, he lost his ability to think of the words he wanted to say. He would just sit there with this determined look on his face, wanting to think of the word so badly. I never knew if I should tell him the word or let him try to think of it himself. Perhaps that’s why this memory is so strong this year. As I’ve mentioned before I’m having a tough time with my stuttering right now. I’m having as much trouble saying words as he did trying to think of them. Man, this feels so awkward to post this on my dad’s anniversary but I think it’s because I’m laying my soul out there for all the blogosphere to see. And it’s absolutely terrifying and I think my dad would be really proud of me for taking this step.