Full Reversal, Part 1

My dad and I share a common bond, one that has, inexplicably, run through my family for the last 100 years. My father, his half brother, his father and I all lost our first wives at an early age. Some may call it a curse, but I consider it a source of strength in times of trouble. Certainly, it has drawn my father and I closer through the knowledge of a journey into the fires of mourning and grief.

He hugged me tight 13 years ago as my wife lay dying at Duke University Medical Center and said, choking back tears, “I sure wish I could take this blow for you.” I gazed at him and said, “Sorry, Dad. It just doesn’t work that way.”

Since that time, there has been an unshakable link between us. We know the depths of each other’s heart, realizing that a monumental loss can be followed by cataclysmic personal change which leads to a new, fulfilling chapter of life. While that link is strong, our roles were always familiar: He was the father, I was the son.

But now, that has changed. It’s changed for my sisters and brother, too, as we watch Dad, 84, begin to slip into the wisps of old age and fog of infirmity.

This came to a head in the past two weeks as Dad was hospitalized with severe nausea and vertigo. He began to hallucinate and dream, the walls crumbling between imagination and reality. It appears as if he had been taking his medicines only sporadically, if at all, and this probably had caused his spiral downward.

As I walked in to visit him in the assisted living/nursing home facility last week, I was greeted not by the strong, somewhat emotionally distant figure I had grown up with, but by a man who had been stripped of his emotional armor. From his bed, he burst into tears as he greeted me. “Well, hey big guy.” Dad said. “I’ve really had a big fall.”

It was as if my son had scraped his knee and had come running to me in tears. “I know you’ve had, Dad,” I said as I hugged him and gently kissed him on the forehead. “It’s OK. Everything will be OK.”