Farewell My Father: Walking the Trail of Beauty in Old Age

In his last few years, he sat the entire day in his chair by the big picture window. From this vantage point, dad could survey most of the comings and goings of the ranch. He could watch the majestic Arabian stallion, Axum gallop through the pine trees, his tail, and mane flying.

He could enjoy Axum prancing and neighing to the mares and then watch the four mares come running down the opposite hill in response. Occasionally dad would alert us that a certain dog had escaped or that a storm was coming in. He was looking out. He was keeping track.

He needed assistance to get in and out of the chair. He used a walker and shuffled the few yards back to the bed and bathroom. At night my husband or I cleaned him up, put on his pajamas, and tucked him into bed. Many years before, he stopped walking well. The neurologist was baffled, and dad would not do his physical therapy exercises. He was stubborn. He wouldn’t eat what he didn’t like, and he wouldn’t do want he didn’t want to do. “I’m living on borrowed time” was his favorite refrain since his father had a heart attack in his late fifties. Dad was indeed living long on a statin drug for his high cholesterol.

Before we moved to the ranch, and before his Alzheimer’s set in, dad was active in his retirement from the National Weather Service as the Meteorologist-in-Charge of the State of Colorado. Dad won awards in stamp shows; he traveled to nearby states for train watching and museum openings, he puttered in the yard and was always adding to his model train layout.

Then a few years into dad’s memory failings, mom broke her ankle, and everything changed. By this time both were using walkers, and they lived in a tri-level house — the same house they had for 36 years. To get them into a safer situation, with their consent, we sold their house and ours and bought a ranch together on 70-acres on the Eastern Colorado plains. They had an entire house on their side, and we had our side of the house connected all on one level. My almost-grown kids had their rooms in the walk-out basement.

This living together arrangement worked well for a while, but mom was getting worn out helping dad dress and cooking meals for him — something she did their entire 64 years of marriage. They increasingly fought as dad lost his temper, yelled, and threw things. With more memory loss, he became progressively paranoid that we were all keeping things from him. For him, he perceived that he no longer had control of any situation. But more than this, we were all physically and emotionally exhausted from taking care of his bodily needs. Mom was in tears most days, and my lower back was equally unhappy with the situation.

Due to a severe intestinal blockage, dad ended up in the ER, had surgery, and then was in rehab. We soon discovered that the rehabilitation caregivers were not trained to deal with dementia patients. They would do things like ask dad if he was hungry, or in pain, or other things to which Dad always replied, “no.” The caregiver would then shrug and leave. When visiting dad, we often found him unfed, his teeth not in, not changed, nor had he been gotten out of his bed the entire day. The caregivers expected patients to speak up for themselves or to otherwise make their needs known. In other words, they were only used to patients with normal cognitive functioning. After a short search, we did find an excellent memory-care facility where dad received better care.

Dad did quite well at the memory care place for a few months. But after a while, he didn’t want to get out of bed, and then he didn’t want to eat. He lost quite a bit of weight. He wasn’t in any pain and didn’t have a disease, but he was “failing to thrive.” I engaged hospice care, and we got a wonderful new team of extra support. Hospice includes daily visits and each day a specially trained palliative care worker would check-in with dad. This might be a CNA, nurse, social worker, or chaplain. I was impressed with all of them, but I was especially taken with the chaplain. Mark was a Native American, a Hopi, which was a great spiritual fit for dad. Dad grew up a Methodist, was a church-going Presbyterian for a while, but for the second half of his life, he seemed to have lost interest in organized religion.

He did appreciate Native American ways of looking at the world though and was particularly obsessed with all things New Mexico. Many days Mark would just sit with dad, or they would watch dad’s train videos together. He did not pressure dad about the after-life or anything other than what dad might want to talk about. They did talk about weather and trains. Dad was happy with someone just being with him. I can’t recall him ever speaking of death, and he seemed to have no fear of it. I cannot say whether this was due to his Alzheimer’s or if it was due to his accepting nature that death was part of the larger scheme.

Put your feet down with pollen.

Put your hands down with pollen.

Put your head down with pollen.

Then your feet are pollen;

Your hands are pollen;

Your body is pollen;

Your mind is pollen;

Your voice is pollen;

The trail is beautiful.

Be still.

— Navajo, excerpt from a Blessing Way prayer

At this time, dad still recognized all of us, but he was confused about what state he was in. He forgot that we had a ranch in Eastern Colorado. He forgot that he lived for nearly 40 years in Aurora, Colorado. He forgot that we had lived for ten years in Maryland. He forgot about his time in the Air Force or his college years in Chicago. He talked only about his childhood home in Sabetha, Kansas. Sometimes when I came to see him, he would ask, “did it take you long to get here from Sabetha?”

“No, dad, I came from the ranch. We live in Colorado now.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, that’s right,” he’d say with a self-deprecating laugh.

After another few months, dad, still eating very little, had a harder time remembering who we were. Mom and I came to visit, and he introduced mom, his wife saying, “this is my mother” to the caregiver in his room. My brother, who had not seen dad for ten years, came from Florida to spend time with him in his final days. Dad enjoyed the company of this interesting stranger, but many times he was confused as to who my brother, his son, was.

Watching train videos with dad in his last weeks, we talked about Kansas, and we talked about the weather. I reminded him how, as a girl watching storms together, he had taught me how to listen and how to watch…

Courting the storm, he paces, accumulating sky signs.

“You get what you pay for,” he nods to me.

Under the porch overhang, an electric current coats my tongue.

Ozone clings to the worn blanket closed around me.

Everywhere lightning is different.

Humidity lays a wooly cushion and thunder reports in deep layers.

It rumbles, rolling along the hills, insistent through dense trees.

“One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand,” we count.

Rain comes with a compression crack, carrying the salt of the Chesapeake.

Summer’s heat is washed clean.

— Carla Paton

The world before me is restored in beauty.

The world behind me is restored in beauty.

The world below me is restored in beauty.

The world above me is restored in beauty.

All things around me are restored in beauty.

My voice is restored in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

— Navajo Prayer of Liberation