dad is the party

dad at the party
Originally uploaded by Daily Assumption.

Found this photo on Mom's computer from the Family Fun Day at the facility where dad is staying now. I have to pick him up again for ThanksGiving this year. Not looking forward to the drive, but I know it will be good for him to get out of there for a few days.
That family day was a shocking experience, I noticed myself acting a bit like my brother Shawn, watchful, with arms at my side, looking about smiling, and speeking firmly but with a respectful calm. Sometimes I hear his voice in me and it is frightening because I understand where it is coming from. NOt for him, his reasons are his, and I love him regardless of his ability to deal with situations. For me the feeling is much more like running backwards in a forest. Being chased by something that I must watch yet I know to get away I have to run backwards hiting limbs and tripping. But in front, I smile, and try to handle the situation.

I never ment to develop this as a strategy for dealing with problems. A coping mechanism if you will to relate to situations that people sometimes spend their entire lives avoiding. But the phot says it all. Look at my face. I wasn't there for Dad at the moment. I was scared out of my mind that he was going to wet his pants, or start screaming. That some man with tubes out of his mouth in a motorized wheelchair was going to start calling us all devils. This building on the outside looks remarkably like a Home. A real home where real people live in suburbs. There are thre of these houses with garages and basketball hoops. If you pulled off of the interstate you would have no clue you were within 50 feet of a group of mentally challenge people most due to head trauma. You wouldn't know that in the house where my Dad sleeps there are 4 other men who have been in Car Accidents. One of them is walking. But this place, Learning Services, is so much better than anywhere Dad has been in the last two years.

I think some nights about the first house, and the Downtown hotel that I packed him a hotplate and cans of soup to eat while he slept in a HOtel. I put them in a blue plastic bag and couldn't bring myself to see where he was sleeping. Shawn and Chris told me I needed to see where he would be living but I couldn't handle it at the time.

The next place was a halfway house. My father, being a good christian, was trying desperately to convert everyone in the home. Six people and he was the only one who never drank or smoked. He would sit outside with them and try to be a good example by reading his bible while they were hanging out after working 8-12 hour days. He would walk to work at that time, or just ride his bike. No one in the office suspected anything. He could never cook and started to learn that very quickly while he lived on his own. His diet became Brownies and sandwiches. Dad is a choco-freak and seems to understand the science of brownies more than other deserts. This is still a mystery to me but I know for a fact that in one week at this house he baked 9 different brownie recipies. He picked up the cook book at Walmart and placed it along with that weeks groceries in his bicycle's front Rack. YOu couldn't miss him on the road. Yellow, almost hazard orange bike, wire rack on the front, streamers on the handlebars, and a bald head for a headlight. Somedays even after he moved out he would come by the Snow-Shack when I was still working for our family bussiness and he would ask if he could empty the trash or take the used waste water over to the dumping station. The shack was on his way home from Walmart. He shopped every day. One item at a time shopping. Most likely his complex functions were getting stressed and he needed to simplify. His associations with the Shack seemed to pull him there. Some days he would come to the window like a customer. Just to talk, he would ask for some water, he would even try to pay. I think once he moved in with Mr. Drezzer (the halfway house got too sick of his preaching) he would stop by the shack 3 or four times a week.
SO I let him take out the trash, throw it into the dumpster by the side of the Chinese Resturaunt, thinking it would degrade him, but he just wanted to help. Part of me thinks his brain was truely capable of blocking the memory that he didn't live in our house anymore for just such a time when he needed to still hold onto that idea of a family. It was like I found out I could love him by making fun of him and he could be near us by forgetting he ever left.