I had a dream about my dad early this morning. In it, he had Alzheimer's, but not how he had it in real life. He had literary Alzheimer's. You know how characters in books and movies with dementia always have their moments of perfect clarity, just as you know that in real life, that just ain't happening.
There was the usual weirdness in the dream. We had a 2,000-year-old Roman tool for digging trenches that had belonged to a guy whose name was something like Placebo. My dad and I went to the railroad tracks near Krauser's and we were stealing bushes, digging them up with the old tool. My dad had driven there so he was in pretty good shape that day. Obviously we were in yardwork mode. I saw a person I know who does yardwork and suggested that my dad go and talk to him about working in his yard. My dad refused and then he slipped from literary AD to real AD and I couldn't understand at first why he wouldn't talk to the guy. I said "Why won't you go talk to him?" and he said, "Because sadness has seeds."
While the rest of the dream was clearly what I call "taking out the trash" (my brain defragging), that statement was so profound I remembered it when I woke up. I had to stay in bed and think about it. It's almost like he was saying that sadness is contagious, that he thought he'd become sad because the yardwork guy would plant a seed of sadness in my dad, and it would grow.
I can only hope that this blog and all my horrible experiences with AD are not planting too many seeds of sadness in my readers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
It's amazing the type of impact our dreams can have. The other day I had a dream that my friend had passed... I hadn't spoken to her in nearly 2 years. I immediately picked up the phone, gave her a call, just to make sure everything was alright.
For as long as I remember I have always written about my grandpa. My grandpa suffered from Alzheimer's Disease for many years. It was absolutely debilitating and the worst part was that I never saw it coming. He died on December 17, 2010, the day after I came home from college.
My creative writing teacher told me that sometimes you write about the same thing because you aren't finished with saying all that you want to say. I wrote pages and pages of every form or poetry, short story, essay, speech you could think of, but it never came out right. The day I wrote his eulogy, however, I felt that the need to write the perfect story about my grandpa was put to rest. So, from now on, instead of writing about my grandpa, I will write to him, detailing as much as I can about my life. I want him to be in my memory always because I wasn't always a part of his.
In his memory, I have created a blog, Dear Grandpa (www.deargrandpa1.blogspot.com). Included in this blog are advertisements that earn money through clicks, traffic of the website, etc. Every penny that I earn here will be donated to the Alzheimer's Association (www.alz.org) to fund research towards curing this terrible disease. Please help me make this dream come true.
I just started my own blog--A Life Well Stolen--and so have been looking at yours a lot recently. I keep thinking about your dream and how profound it is, as you say. I've had some dreams about my own dad, who also suffered from Alzheimer's. I always dream of him as he was before the sickness took over. About sadness--it's tough, but I'm convinced there's a reason for it like everything else. I remember when I was very young helping my dad plant seeds in our garden. He'd dig the hole, and we'd drop several seeds in. I asked him once why more than one. He said because one might not grow.
Thank you for sharing your story with all of us. What you've gone through is intense and very difficult, and we appreciate your willingness to write it all down, even after your father is gone.
Post a Comment