On a Personal Note: Dad, George and The Queen

“There was some stuff,” my dad tells me, as he looks out the car towards the park. “They did some work. George came, and said ‘let’s go, boys, let’s get it done.’” I ask for the smallest of details: “were they raking leaves?” He isn’t sure, and it doesn’t matter. We’re in a new and slower place, these days. Dad’s words have slowed down, along with his gait. I feel some days like everything is teetering on some invisible edge, but no one has fallen yet.

We’re lucky. The personality that has emerged in my dad’s dementia, as challenging as it is—my mom is a trooper–is a fairly generous one. He came for lunch last week, and we had soup and sandwiches. He liked the sandwiches: they were crunchy, which I think means I put pickles in the tuna, or toasted the bread, but I’m not sure. He likes the soft part on top, which is cheese. He is kind to me. I ask how the soup temperature is. “It is perfect. Just perfect,” he says. I’m no cook. Not even close. But he appreciates a good bowl of soup, and I am happy to heat one up for him.

We played dominoes, and he talked to me about playing dominoes with his dad, and “boy oh boy, yes indeed, he knew what he was doing with that,” he tells me. He goes on: “he’d say, ‘boys, you can’t do it this way, you do it that way.’” He gestures to the rows of tiles running up or down and at right angles. It’s a good game, because he can make choices, to put his blue two onto the other blue two running east or south or west, whichever he prefers. After the game is done, rows dominate his thoughts, and he talks about what might be gardening in rows, or a construction project with rows, or maybe just domino rows. 

That guy named George shows up quite often. I have an Uncle George, but he’s on my mom’s and not my dad’s side. I think maybe George is the stand in name for someone who gives advice, as this George is often reported to do. Dad had a boss named George ages ago and I wonder if this might be the George who shows up. It is always George: never Tom, Dick or Harry. Dad often says that George came to inspect things and give advice. He adds that it was “Not in a bad way, just to give an opinion. He wasn’t trying to be mean.” “That’s a good thing,” I say, “that he wasn’t being mean.” We agree.

Dad recognizes everyone. Everyone. Every person who comes into the Tim Horton’s, any Tim Horton’s, is someone he knows. He knows that guy, but can’t remember his name. He knows that lady, too. He says he’s seen them before. This is also true for any person we pass on the path in the park. I guess I see this as comforting, that the world is full of familiar faces, although he can’t recognize me as daughter. He’ll take note of someone’s purple hair, or work boots, or the Hutterite women’s colourful dresses, all in admiration and not judgment. There is a chap who sings to Youtube videos in the corner of the restaurant. Patrons complain, want him ordered to leave. My dad notes just that he isn’t hurting anyone.

Along with George, much to my surprise, we spend more time discussing the Queen than I would have expected. But let’s be clear: nothing here is expected. I dare say my dad is newly obsessed with the Queen. This is odd to me, because I can’t recall him mentioning any opinion about the Queen at any time, ever before. But pretty much each time I see him, he asks if the Queen is coming for lunch or dinner, maybe we have a place setting for her, maybe she’ll fit in the dishwasher, maybe put her hat on the hatstand, maybe she’ll have dessert.  “Have you seen the Queen?” I ask him. He hasn’t. But he does tell me she is a wonderful, grand lady. I think of the pictures I have that were my grandmother’s, of a young Queen and Prince, waving from the back of a train during the Royal Visit to Saskatchewan in 1939. 

I ask my sister about it, about the Queen. “Don’t you remember?” she asks, and says Dad used to always ask if the Queen was coming when Mom cleaned the house. I’d forgotten that. So maybe Dad has a better memory than me, after all.

Spending time with my dad had me focusing on loss many days. I wonder about how oxymoronic that is, to obsess about what isn’t there. There are definitely glints of the father I’m used to, though. He was forever joking with wait staff or cashiers when it came time to pay the bill. “Not approved in 10 seconds or free,” he’d say, when he’d enter his credit card PIN. Every time. Every single time. I’d roll my eyes at this banter. The wait staff and the cashiers to a one were all indulgent. Dad now jokes about whether someone accepts “cash or money,” and he continues to appreciate the joke. He offers me cash or money to hang up his hat; he’ll charge me cash or money when I ask if I can use their bathroom. I joked along recently that we either have more time than money, or maybe more money than time, and I could feel my heart break, to realize that time is short and that it was maybe cruel of me to tease this way.

The similes I have conjured for what my time with Dad is like are grounded in loss and searching: I mine my time with him to unearth glints of his “old self,” his sense of humour, or his ability to calculate or anticipate. I’ve thought about him like a Where’s Waldo game, scrutinizing the picture for the dad I recognize. Truth be told, I’ve been hurt by my own absence from his memories, baffled by a disease that sees him remembering going to school in Guelph, but not that I was the toddler there with him. How does a disease keep you from knowing your child?  He hasn’t said my name to me since I moved back, and I wish he would. He still gives me good advice, though. My cello is propped in the corner and he asks me what it is. “It’s my cello,” I tell him. “I’m not very good at it,” I add, “because I don’t practise it enough.” “Well,” he says. “The way I see it, you can say ‘hey boys get at it,’ and that’s fine, or say to heck with them.”

When I parsed out my relationship with my dad, it hit me horribly, like a ton of bricks. In being so focused on what I miss, I’d been deeply ableist. I compared my dad to an earlier self, to my “usual” dad, my dad as he was and not as he is, to a better, more authentic, more capable dad. I wonder about the role of pity. I’ve felt such pity for him. It is a fine balance, I suppose. In experiencing pity, there is an acknowledgment of his suffering, and compassion for it. I can see that he suffers: he speaks with frustration about his stupid brain, his inability to comprehend what’s going on around him, to keep track of plans. I’m thankful those moments are decreasing.

I’m ashamed of myself, of my longing for someone who was easier, more familiar, less dependent. I’m ashamed of how dominating it became, for a time, to make comparisons between my memory of someone who isn’t here, and the person who is.

Dad has not asked me to pity him. There must be room to celebrate everything he accomplished over his 80+ years, but if that celebration is tempered with pity and regret, it is a twisted monument to build and it condemns him to diminishment. I don’t want to ignore that he suffers, and that he is tired, but I’m learning to make room both for compassion for how he experiences loss, but also love and presence for who is here now, on his terms, and not as a puzzle or a mystery or a ghost. A slower man, who enjoys trees and dogs, sunsets and soup.

I meet Dad now as he is, all of him, not a shadow of someone else. We walk in the yellow trees, and maybe the Queen will join us, or maybe she’s too busy. He willingly walks with me, slowly, at least today, and that’s what matters.