Old Photographs

Since being sick a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't been to visit my dad for awhile. I stopped out for a little while on Thursday, but he wasn't feeling so well, and went back to bed shortly after I arrived. I heard from my mom, though, that he had improved over the weekend, and made plans to stop by sometime this afternoon.

It was a beautiful fall afternoon; the air smelled like brown leaves, merging into the ground. ("It's fall-like weather," my husband quipped. "It IS fall," I replied.) After a late lunch with my mother-in-law and a short nap, I drove out to the nursing home, where my mother was already visiting. My dad was up in his wheelchair, and looking pretty happy. He was wearing his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt (he's a big fan of Mickey Mouse -- they are almost the same age). He had had a hamburger for lunch.

We chatted for awhile, sang a couple of songs, talked about how much fun it would be to watch musicals on the the TV/Video player in his room. I noticed an old photograph sitting on the nightstand. It was sitting inside another photograph; a childhood friend of his had come by, and brought along this old picture.

"Your dad's in this picture," my mom said. I picked it up and looked at it carefully. The background looked vaguely familiar, as did my dad's young face. He was on the left, a tall young man in the center, and another young man with a broad smile on the right. "Is this near Augustana Church?" I asked. (That was the church where my dad grew up; we attended as well until I was about 6 years old.)

It was Augustana Church; the tall young man in the middle was a very young associate pastor at the time. The three men looked self-assured and worldly, standing all together on the sidewalk. It was probably after the Sunday morning church service.

"Was this before you got married?" I asked my mom.

"It was before we knew each other," she replied.

I turned to my dad. "You were pretty good-looking then," I said, admiring him. He took the picture in his hand and smiled at it a little.

"Where's that picture of me with my army friends?" he asked. "We were all so debonair." (I loved the word debonair, but would not have associated it with the army.)

I'm fascinated by these old black-and-white photographs, messengers from a past inaccessible to me. I'm fascinated by pictures I find of my mom, about 5 years old, with a ribbon around her hair, or my dad, wearing a white jacket at his confirmation. I even have an old snap-shot of myself that I keep in a journal. It's just a little square picture, taken when I was very little, and visiting my grandparents' farm. There's a haystack, and a ladder there, and I'm climbing the ladder up the haystack. I'm looking down as I climb, very determined to keep going.

I do not remember ever doing that. I don't remember ever being that fearless.

Instead, I remember how it took me several years to learn to ride a bicycle, because I was so afraid of falling down. I remember feeling uncoordinated when trying to play most sports. I remember subtraction flash cards.

I take out the picture of me, climbing the haystack, from a distant past when I thought I could do anything, if only I just kept climbing. I think of the picture of my debonair father, standing with his friends in their Sunday best, the whole world in front of them.

On Thursday, when I visited, my dad kept bringing up the musical "Fiddler on the Roof." They had been watching it the night before my dad first went to the hospital. He can't seem to get it out of his mind. "Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years," my dad sang.

Sunrise, sunset

sunrise, sunset

swiftly fly the years

One season following the other

Laden with happiness and tears.

I hold old photographs from a time inaccessible to me, but it's a time I want to know, to inhabit, to turn around and around until I can walk inside the photographs, until I can climb the ladder and sit at the top of the haystack, triumphant. I want to walk down the street with my dad and his friends, and see their faces as they smiled at the camera, ready to take on the world, ready to take on the future.

O God our help in ages past.....

The Tennessee Waltz

My dad is out of the hospital now, and in another nursing home. My mom was not at all happy with the first one.

Now, he is in a memory care unit.

This one is a little jaunt from home, so the stay here will probably not be permanent. However, we are adjusting to the possibility that a nursing home will be my dad's permanent residence from now on.

He moved in on Friday evening. I saw him on Sunday afternoon, and he was in pretty good spirits. He could answer most of our questions, if we could get him to concentrate.

My mom relayed to me the story of his first encounter with his physical therapist. She asked him, "How do you feel?" He answered, "With my fingers."

She said in all her years, no one has ever given her that answer before.

I paid a visit this afternoon again. It turned out that my mom was visiting as well. My dad seemed quieter than on Sunday. I couldn't tell if he was just being thoughtful, or if he was down. He didn't talk to us as much. It was a cloudy day, though, and one of the aides remarked that it seemed that everyone was a little quieter than usual.

My dad's next-door neighbor is a retired United Church of Christ minister. He seems like the right company for my dad, and he has a good sense of humor about his memory loss. He told my mom that he used to work for a governor, but he couldn't remember which one. "But he must have been a Democrat," he said, "because I'm a Democrat!"

The big event this afternoon was a young woman with a guitar. She came in to sing some of the old songs with the residents, songs like "Ain't She Sweet?" and "Has Anybody Seen My Gal?" The guitar player also handed out rhythm instruments; my dad got one of those little egg instruments. He was singing half-heartedly on some of the songs; then she started to sing "When You're Smiling/When You're Smiling/The Whole World Smiles with You." That's always been my dad's trademark: he's always the one to tell us to accentuate the positive, to look on the bright side, to consider the glass half-full. He has had a joke or a pun for every occasion (though we heard some of the same ones several times).

It was good to see him smile and hear him sing that song.

Then they started singing one of my dad's favorite songs, The Tennesee Waltz. He told me once that it was popular around the time that he was in the Army, stationed in the South. The guitar player attributed it to Roy Rogers (turns out that it was written and recorded by Roy Acuff), but the version my mom and dad both remembered was recorded by Patti Page in 1951.

I remember the night and the Tennesee Waltz
Now I know just how much I have lost
Yes I lost my little darlin' the night they were playing
The Beautiful Tennesee Waltz

A Good Story from "Funky Grandpa"

Recently I discovered this blog by a retired pastor. He tells stories about his family, his grandchildren, etc. He's new to blogging, and I really enjoyed his last story.

Go over and read it for yourself.

And encourage him to keep it up!

His blog is called Wandering Toward My Shifting Self.

Of course, his is not the only blog I've just discovered. More on that later. Happy reading today, everyone!