A full moon hung in the sky this morning just before dawn when I got up. How long has it been since my father saw the moon? His bed faces a window, but with every year his eyes seem to withdraw more. I don’t really know what he sees. The skies in California have been flat and blue for so long now–these rainless months leaving the terrain he loved cracked and parched. When I was a child there were days and days of rain, and thunderstorms that kept us awake all night. I wish I could talk to him about that–reminisce about something as mild and sweet as long-ago winters. Relatives of Alzheimer’s patients will recognize this, too: There are moments when you long for that person’s voice, when you imagine it in your head, play it out like a tape that has been perfectly preserved in your memory. But then you hear an actual recording of the voice that has been silent for so long and you realize how much you have forgotten. There are times when a news broadcast plays a piece of one of my father’s speeches, or an interview, and I’m brought up short by the cadence of his voice, the inflections. All these years of silence and broken-off language have chipped away at my memory of what his voice once was.
We mark birthdays because it would seem wrong not to. There is nothing to give my father except our presence, and hopefully that is a balm to whatever desolation he experiences. Alzheimer’s is, quite simply, a wasteland. The only thing that loved ones can do is try to reach into it, grasp whatever we can.
The ache of a day like this is its ordinariness. My father will sleep for many hours as he usually does. He will wake up for dinner and we will be with him; there will be a cake, and people will have sent flowers, so his room will feel festive, but it’s doubtful that he will notice. My mother and I will tell him, Happy Birthday. And, silently, we will wonder who we’re saying it for. We are marking another year of life, but not of living; no one can look at an Alzheimer’s patient without mourning the loss of a fully alive life.
When I leave my parents’ house tonight, the moon will be sailing across the night sky–white and full and calm. My father will probably have drifted off to sleep by then. The stark truth is that there will be some relief when this day is over. There is no blueprint for how to mark a birthday like this.
Celebration seems inappropriate, so does sadness, although that part can’t be denied. I wish I could offer some remedy for others who experience days like these, but I can’t. Maybe the best we can do is trust that our presence at a loved one’s side–the sound of our voice and the touch of our hand–is felt in the deep shadows of their souls. Their voices can’t answer us and their minds can’t grasp the difference between one day and the next, but there is a chamber in their hearts that hasn’t forgotten, and doesn’t want us to either.
