Whittled Away Bit by Bit

My dad has early stage Alzheimer’s. Until recently, I had been helping manage his care without doing a whole lot of reflection on what is going on with my father and how it’s affecting him, and by extension the members of his family — my mom, my brother, my wife, our son, and me.

That all began to change when I turned 61 earlier this month. Nothing like a birthday to cause a thinking, feeling person to stop and take stock of their life, of the world around them, of the situations arising in their daily existence, and how things are going for their loved ones.

One of those situations has been dogging my steps longer than I’d have admitted. But before I get into all that, I want to talk a bit about Nash Bridges.

I remember back in the late ‘90s, one of my guilty pleasures was watching Don Johnson’s wish fulfillment project Nash Bridges on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Johnson himself, had it all: cool job (police inspector/later captain of an elite investigative unit), cool car (an exceedingly rare late ’60s yellow Hemi ’Cuda convertible), cool partner/best friend (played by Cheech Marin — I mean, come on), cool girlfriend (portrayed by Yasmine Bleeth of Baywatch fame), cool penthouse apartment on the top floor of a skyscraper in San Francisco, cool ex-wife, cool relationship with his teenage daughter, and cool clothes.

Cool car. Cool clothes. Cool city. Cool life. The stuff of fiction.

Like I said: wish fulfillment. 

On the show one aspect of Nash’s life that was less than ideal was the fact that his father was afflicted with Alzheimer’s, and Nash had just begun to act as his guardian and main caregiver. This is the first time I can recall actively paying attention to a fictional arc about a character with Alzheimer’s. Before this I had seen news pieces about the disease, about dementia, and other aspects of aging that included memory loss, personality changes, mood swings, and confusion.

Nick Bridges was the first fictional character I ever remember watching deal with Alzheimer’s. But his condition was not in any way realistic. If anything, it served as more of a plot convenience than an actual portrayal of the progression of the disease. Nick would seem foggy when it served the plot, then get sharp when that served the plot too. Half the time he just seemed like a crotchety old man with an engaging, salty sense of humor. As portrayed by veteran character actor James Gammon, the character was an awful lot of fun. Kind of like the rest of the show.

So: not just wish fulfillment. Completely delusional wish fulfillment!

I didn’t think much about that at the time. I mean, it was entertainment. Nash Bridges is not a documentary. If you’re looking for clinical accuracy, you’re gonna need to seek it elsewhere. 

And yet for all that, these days I can hardly help but think about it. And that because nowadays I know exactly what the real thing looks like. 

As far back as I can remember, my father had always been the sharpest tack in the room. And by “sharp,” I mean clever. Articulate. Incisive. Precise with his language — and exacting with me on my employment of same.

If I was relating a story, talking about something that had happened to me earlier in the day: a strange interaction with a sales clerk, perhaps, and in the course of so doing, gave a thumbnail of what I said, rather than exactly quoting, my dad would tell me what I ought to have said and how I ought to have said it. He never once stopped to consider that I was giving a thumbnail. It seemed never to occur to him that in all likelihood I had acquitted myself just fine in the moment. He was constantly trying to improve my language, and by extension, me. 

Constantly. 

Exhaustively. 

And exhaustingly.

In a nutshell this is because my father is a textbook narcissist who has always worked hard to keep himself at the center of any conversation. This made for rocky times during my young adult and early adult years.

These days he cannot even really follow a conversation. Most of the time it’s all he can do to muster repeated volleys of the word “What?”, phrased eternally as a question while struggling to keep up.

Ironically, he and I have never gotten along better than we do now.

Unless he happens to be in the grip of a bout of sundowning syndrome. In those instances all bets are usually off.

Without getting too clinical: a person dealing with Alzheimer’s spends their entire day struggling with confusion, disorientation, and memory lapses. They start the morning relatively refreshed after a night’s sleep (good or otherwise). But as the day progresses, the effort of managing their all-encompassing confusion, their endless disorientation, tends to wear on them. They get tired. And when they get tired, the confusion gets worse. And when the confusion gets worse, they get more tired. It’s a vicious cycle. 

So by sundown — or sometime around then — you’ve got someone who has been struggling all day, has reached their limit, and is, for lack of a better term, cranky. They lash out. They can get mean.

In my dad’s case, he can also become pretty incoherent. During one of these episodes, he will invariably key on something, anything someone else says and argue with them about it — in terms that make less and less sense as the dispute progresses. The other invariably finds themself having to defuse the situation. 

My entire family deals with this. And make no mistake: this situation puts significant strain on all of us — my mom, my brother, my wife, our son, and me. I’ll leave it at that, except to say that during this difficult time we have closed ranks, are all pulling together, trying hard to support each other, and to support him.

Sometimes during all of this pulling together, I can’t help but entertain the question of whether my father’s Alzheimer’s is hereditary. I try not to spend too much time dwelling on it — on whether this might be a glimpse of my own potential future. That way lies madness.

What I find myself thinking about far more. What I find myself worrying about. What I find myself sometimes consumed with, is my mother, and the weight she carries daily.

After all, I know that I am struggling with my own emerging impressions of who my father is becoming. But I cannot even imagine what my mom is going through.

I got a glimpse of it the other day. I told her I had broken down crying over what's happening with my dad. She said, "Welcome to my world. I cry every day."

A startling admission coming from my stalwart, stoic mother. No one who knows her would ever think of her as a crier.

Watching the personality of the person she has spent her entire adult life with — sixty-plus years — be whittled away. Be carved down. Be eroded like sandstone by the wind, like granite rock on a headland worn down by the surf and the tide.

All of it a diminishing. A gradual vanishing. My father, and by extension, all of us who love and try to support him, victims of Time.