Published: September 18, 2009 12:23 am      

HAMILTON: Silently walking with dad

With a halo of hair nearly as white as the pillow upon which he laid his head, dad would have looked almost saintly, except for the new bristles of beard growth that sparkled in the September sun there the upon his darkening skin. He lay all alone in that hospital room, his only company being the chrome pole that once held the emptying bags of intravenous drugs that kept him strong. His bed was covered with white linen sheets, whose long and gentle peaks and ridges sparkled under the soft rays of yet another morning’s light. Those warm, silver droplets poured through the hospital windows and collected into cool, blue pools of shadows behind the folds of the sheets. It all looked as if he was in the waning shade of a willow tree that had already dropped all but the last of its browning leaves. Dad rested there in the autumn of his life, seemingly fishing for ‘the meaning of it all’ in the drying pond of his last days.

I was there, again, to give him a haircut and shave, and to brush his teeth. He had been there far for too long awaiting proper placement in a nursing home. I paused at the door, as I often did, and watched him for a few moments before entering. While I could see the clouded sheets that covered his body, what I could not see, between his face and all of his yesteryears, was the invisible veil of noise, as white as those sheets, that covered his mind, separating us from him, and him from the ‘who and what’ that he once was.

Perhaps he got Alzheimer’s disease from the ore that he had shoveled long ago at the old Vanadium plant or perhaps it was just his fate to die that way. No matter, the disease had already muffled his ears to the drumbeats of time that were both the parade of his life and the music that made him my dad. From time to time, as I would watch him from that door, I would see him reaching out grabbing at the bits of empty, but sanitary air; as if he was trying to capture an escaping memory that had swept by with the wind in his parade of thoughts. From time to time he would catch one and smile. I’d smile, too. There were not too many of those times.

At first, dad dwelled more in the past than he did in the present. But later, the only moment that he seemed to have visited was the exact moment in which he occupied. He was never really much of a talker and when he had to work something out in his mind he usually sat by the dining room window, stared out at the weeping willow tree that he had planted in the backyard and softly whistled tunes that I had never heard anyone else except him whistle. We had to take him first from that window, and then eventually from his own bed to the hospital bed where he now lay: It was impossible to give him proper care at home. It had seemed several months since I had heard him even utter a word, but he always smiled when I cut his hair and shaved his face and he was grateful when I brushed his teeth.

We all visited him, my sisters Jacqueline, Linda, Toni and my brother Gerald, and we all held in our hopes that there would soon be a cure to save his life and to free him from the prison in which his mind had him entrapped. But in our hearts, we all somehow knew that the jailer that would set him free would be the shadowy, but welcomed, angel of death. We took solace in the understanding that it would usher him through pastures far greener and past waters more still and cool than those of his Alabama youth.  

Two days before he died, even without reaching his hand out into the empty air, he grabbed onto one of those memories. In seven short words, he shared that memory with me. 

I always talked with him when I cared for him, but I never expected him to speak, or even to know me. It hurt at first, but it was more important for me to know that I was doing those things than it was for him to know who was doing them, or that the things were even being done at all.

As I collected my clippers and shaving gear and I placed his toothpaste and brush back into his drawer, I kissed him on his forehead and in the residual moisture there I signed a cross, then I walked toward the door. But, for no particular reason, I turned back to him and smiled. He was looking directly at me. Suddenly, like a distant thunder, he spoke to me and his words fell down and drenched my soul like a summer’s rain. It was refreshing that he had spoke but it was chilling like a hailstorm in what he said. He had remembered the Virginia Avenue house that he built for mom and asked me, “When are y’all gonna take me home?”

By the grace of God and the warmth of caretaker Doug at Oakwood Cemetery, in a sense, dad did go home. Even though they died some 34 years apart, we were able to bury my dad directly alongside my mom. Under that same tree that I cried for my mom at her funeral, I cried for my dad. I cried like he did when he signed my enlistment papers so that I could go to fight in Vietnam, and like he cried again at my brother Frankie’s funeral.

I still cry sometimes. I think of him when I see a weeping willow tree or when I pass the old house or drive past the old Vanadium factory or even stand at the shores of Lake Ontario at Olcott, where he would take us as children. I think of him often. I think of the fishing trips, the gardens that we planted, the struggles that we had and the lessons that taught me in his silence.

This Saturday at 9 a.m. at Artpark in Lewiston, I’ll think of him as I walk under the white clouds, with their silvery peaks and bluish shadows, and join with others who may have lost someone to Alzheimer’s disease. We’ll walk to remember. We’ll walk for the caregivers of loved ones with Alzheimer’s. And we will walk for a cure.

Why don’t you join us on our Memory Walk? Call us at 626-0600, or e-mail Lisa.LaValley@alz.org.

Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. Contact him at kenhamilton930@aol.com.