I haven’t been writing as much lately because I’ve been trying to cope with watching my Dad decline further into the grips of dementia.

I keep trying to write about other stuff and it just falls flat. Because I’m thinking about this.

There are a lot of different ways people cope with grief and illness. My Dad is not dead, but I grieve the man he was because that man is already gone.

Grief is a fickle bitch I’ve decided.

I have a few family members who face death and grief and illness head on. I walked into one of my aunts houses several years ago, and she was baking bread. I asked what it was for and she said for one of my Great Aunt’s funerals. I said, “She died?” She hadn’t died. My aunt was just preparing.

I am not the face head on type; more of the avoidant and detach variety.

I find it incredibly painful to see my dad now, but I do every week at least and I bring the boys too because it’s important that they have this time with him. But the rest of the week I try and turn it off. Focus on my wife, the boys, and work. Don’t think about it. But then I have the song in a playlist of Tangled Up Puppet by Harry Chapin. My Dad and I danced to it at my wedding.

That is one of the my best memories with my Dad. I feel incredibly blessed that he was in good health that day, that he was so happy and proud, and that we got to rock it out on the dance floor together. We are both corny and crazy and we both had so much fun dancing. So that song will come on while I’m driving in the car to daycare to pick up the boys and I get there and I sit in the car and I remember that guy, my Dad, and my eyes well up as I think my boys will never know that guy. They will miss out.

Something will happen and I’ll think, I bet I can fix that, at my house, and I think, I should call Dad…and then I remember. He can’t help me fix anything anymore, or lend me his tools, or bitch that he loaned me his tools and I haven’t returned them. I miss it all. The good and the bad. I miss fighting with him. Because that man and I could argue. It was ugly sometimes. It takes us both a long time to reach our fuse. But when we do. Watch out. I definitely got his Irish temper.

I’ve also been called a redhead twice recently. I think that’s weird as I have brown hair.

That’s an aside though.

He and I clashed over just about everything at one point or another, but we were also incredibly close and I can and likely did say just about anything to him over the years. It also just hurts me and makes me angry that I saw him today for St. Patrick’s Day, and it wasn’t the normal jovial celebration. I’m not sure he knew it was today. St. Patrick’s Day was always his day. The Irish dude who married into a family of Swedes. He didn’t own any other time or day but this holiday.

I was talking about it with my family and some one said they wish for more time, and I said I would give anything to have one more moment with him lucid and the man he was pre-dementia. But this man with Dementia is suffering, and it breaks my heart to watch.

To reconcile those feelings is insane. Because I don’t want him to die, but I don’t want him to suffer.

So fuck dementia. As you slowly take my Dad I flip you the bird. Because honestly that’s what my hot tempered Irish Dad would want me to do.

p.s. The pic is because I am confused by the redhead comments, and I knit my first hat! Yes I made the hat! I also realized I knit more when I am stressed. So I’m sure this is only my first of several hats.