the return

I wanted to write this blog so that I could put down many of my personal feelings that don't necessarily relate to my job as director of the theatre. I've journaled for many years and the act of writing things down helps me to sort through things when I'm not sure. My personal journals are never meant to be read by anyone but me. This however is meant to be shared. I don't know why I feel the need to share but there you have it.



Coming back home is always an adventure after a week away. This week has been especially tough. My father fell last Saturday. He is 77 and is still very active. He is a pack rat at heart and can't walk by anything that someone else has thrown away that might still have value. If it is a piece of wood or a tool that might have a use he collects it. My mother goes for walks with him and has told him more than once as he picked up a piece of something from someones trash pile that she won't walk him with him carrying that piece.



This past week as he was trying to get one of his pieces of wood out of the attic of their garage he fell off a ladder attached to the studs on the garage wall. We don't know all the details but somehow he broke his elbow, the bone under his eye and fractured his skull which caused bleeding that collected inside his scalp on the other side of his head. He remembers very little of the whole thing. My mother was gone to the grocery store and returned to find blood on the kitchen floor. She found my father in a chair in the living room curled up on one side with a bloody sweatshirt on. He said he didn't feel good and had taken an aspirin. His trip to the hospital, then the drive up to the trauma center and a stay in the intensive care unit and finally his return home has all happened within the past week. It will take him several weeks to recover.



The thing I will remember most was Monday night. I arrived at the hospital about 9:00 am Monday morning. They moved my father to a private room about noon and I and my mother and sister stayed with him until 6 pm when my sister took my mother back home (about an hour and a half drive away). I prepared for a long night sitting by my fathers bed side and reminding him in the moments when he was awake where he was and what had happened to him. I also stood guard so that he wouldn't get out of bed for any reason. During the night he woke up for about an hour and we talked about his childhood. He got confused as to where we were and what had happened. He confused me with his recently deceased brother and we talked about "our" adventures as kids. It was really tough to sit by the side of his bed and watch my father struggle with his pain and his memory and yet this was probably the most time I've spent with him without distractions in the past several years. My father has been diagnosed with early Alzheimer's and while he is still very high functioning I can clearly see the disease is taking its toll each visit I have with him.

I feel helpless at times being so far away. It is a 7 hour drive to visit my parents and my job doesn't allow a lot of time for trips. My daughter Jade is also 7 hours away from her grandparents and she won't get to know them other than the short trips we take twice a year to see them. As I grew up my grandparents lived in different states as well. I'm envious of those who have parents and grandparents nearby and a regular part of their lives. At the same time my parents by living at a distance from their families were often spared the jealousies and dramas that affected both of my parents families. Who wasn't speaking to who and who had taken something from someone else. I'm fortunate that my siblings and I don't have those issues. Families always seem to have that paradox- a source of comfort and conflict all rolled into one.

Still I was reminded about my distance on that snowy Monday night sitting in a hospital room in Milwaukee as my father spoke of his childhood.