Gratitude on Thanksgiving

Gratitude is a state of acceptance of grace. Acceptance of the earth as it is with all its joy and suffering, its beauty and horror, its tranquility as well as its churnings. I have gratitude that I am here at all, conscious of the wonders that twirl in the earth’s dance. I did not merit this grace but I accept it with gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Dad's Great Unlearning

"It's 3 o'clock on a Saturday and Dad is puttering around the kitchen, getting in my way. He pokes at a pear in the fruit bowl and looks at me quizzically. "Pear", I say, which he seems to accept as he continues his poking of the other fruits and then moves on to the cookie jar crumbling a cookie in his hand to test it for chewiness. I pull a handful of cookies out of the jar for him and send him out on the porch. Guilt roils up in me as I close the door on him. I wouldn't be so short and motherly with him if he hadn't been growing more childlike everyday. He really is a child now and moving backward through time. Yesterday he knew what a pear was. Last week he knew how to find his shoes. Last month he remembered that jets fly over the house daily. Last year he remembered his doctor’s name. Tomorrow he’ll forget my name. Time’s arrow has pointed him in reverse. The label “dementia” is far too inadequate and ambiguous, so I call it “unlearning”.

On a holiday visit three years ago I realized Dad had started the process of unlearning when he began taking his blood pressure medications randomly. He was running out of medication early and becoming increasingly depressed. He threatened his pharmacist, she threatened to call the police. I brought him to live with me and began managing his medications. He improved dramatically, becoming cheerful and active again but the process of unlearning was continuing like the large wheel in the clockwork, turning slowly and imperceptibly, sending the hands of the clock backward.

Dad sits on the porch now singing an old Hungarian song, or is it a Russian song? I ask him and he can’t remember having sung at all. The dogs lay at his feet content from the cookies he has crumbled for them. I see more of a child before me than an elderly man. He sings frequently these days. Like a child, he sings long songs and speaks in short sentences or just in nouns. He points at the jet flying over and says "airplane". I nod as he looks to me for confirmation.

What is happening here? What is causing this unlearning, this evaporation of knowledge? Is it more than the loss of memories? How is it that an elderly man suddenly cannot find his socks and becomes as frustrated as a five-year-old? Yesterday he couldn't find his shoes, they were under his dresser. But like a child the accusation was that "someone has taken them" rather than "I have misplaced them". And, like a child he swore he had "looked everywhere" for them when he hadn’t. I could dismiss this behavior had he been this way all his life but he had not. He had been a responsible and somewhat rational adult and now he is a five-year-old needing guidance through the complexity of living while tied to this reverse arrow of time.

What makes a child accumulate knowledge to form what we know as "learning"? What takes them from asking for help to find their socks to finding their socks by looking for them? We know the brain develops in stages. Children are not able to learn that which their brains have not developed to learn. As I watch Dad unlearn I see the developmental process in reverse. Entire blocks of ability are winking out in the same sequence they wink in for a developing child.

I am helpless in the face of this. All the vitamins, orange juice, sunshine, fresh air and physical activity I can provide are not stopping the slide backward. He is 90 years old. A year ago he sat at his typewriter pounding out letters, however nonsensical, to people he barely remembered. He wrote songs in three languages, which he sang on the porch and in his room in the dark. Songs with longer stanzas than the sentences he will ever speak again.

I’ve become the adult presence that is merely the voice, the shadow and the feeling of security in a child’s life. He barely sees me as I manage his day. His adult mind leaves a five-dollar bill on the kitchen counter when he takes a banana from the fruit bowl. I put the bill in a drawer. When his child mind asks for money I hand him back the bill. He has unlearned banking and become a child with an allowance.

As Dad travels in reverse through time I catch him glancing over his shoulder at the arrow of time pointing the other way. On his desk are several framed family photos. Photos of his brothers and his parents, all of these he has turned towards the wall. The only photo smiling out at him is the one of his only grandchild.