Memory Walk

I've pasted below an email I sent out yesterday. I think it speaks for itself.

Five years ago today, my father died from complications related to Alzheimer's disease. Before that day, it had been around 2-3 years since he'd recognized me. It was only a matter of time before my sisters and eventually our mother were also washed from his memory by this horrible, devastating disease.

Related to his Alzheimer's condition, Dad also had developed Parkinson syndrome, a disease scientists think may be fundamentally related to Alzheimer's as often people diagnosed with one will develop signs of the other. I cannot begin to describe the emotions that rose in me as my father's health deteriorated, as his mind which he'd taken such pride in and his body began to fail him. However, I can say that his death at the age of 71 was actually a relief, both for him and for the rest of the family. We knew he would not get better, and watching him literally lose his mind was torture every day.

So, I write to you today, not for sympathy but to ask that you join me at 1 p.m. Oct. 5 at Stephens Lake Park in Columbia (Broadway and Old Hwy 63) for Memory Walk, a fundraising and attention raising event sponsored by the Alzheimer's Association. This organization provided information and support to my family as we grappled with Dad's illness, and now I'd like to give back. Please help me do so. Please follow the link listed in the message below and join my team, The Literate Ones (https://www.kintera.org/faf/search/searchTeamPart.asp?ievent=275436&team=3174799). Or create a team of your own and walk in honor or memory of someone you love.

One final thing to consider: since my grandmother died with Alzheimer's and my father died with Alzheimer's and unless I die in a car accident or some other unforseen cause, I have greater chances of dying with, if not from, Alzheimer's disease. So, if you won't walk for my dad, my grandmother, or someone else you know, would you please walk for me? The research that the Alzheimer's Association supports may be the very studies that will enable me not to develop the disease that took my father from me way too soon. Thanks for your support. I appreciate your friendship and understand if you are unable to attend the walk. Your thoughts on that day will also sustain those of us who are able to attend.

Rebecca

The Slow Dissolve

I created the following movie about my dad for one of my doctoral classes. The course discusses critical literacy, basically how does one teach those who might be more concerned about survival (food, shelter, etc). We looked closely at Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire as well as a few other texts (Bomer & Bomer, Christiansen, Baol). When it came time for my project, I wanted to do something different--not a lesson plan or an in-service or stuff like that (those they are all good topics)--something creative. So, I put audio recordings of my father singing behind pictures of him and poetry that I wrote within the last two years of his life, the time that his Alzheimer's was at its worst.

Writing has always been a way for me to understand or at least think through a problem or an emotion. This project was no different.

Too Tight

This week was just too chaotic to even think about writing. I've been gone to the Write to Learn conference at Tan-Tar-A for three days. Between preparing to present at that conference and trying to get my homework done and straining to fit in a visit with a candidate for the Endowed Literacy Chair (which never happened---long, frustrating story), I didn't write anything but school work. So, I pulled a poem from long ago. This was written in probably 2002 a year before my dad died. He had a variety of illnesses, mainly Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and congestive heart disease. I wrote this piece after he'd fallen down the stairs at home. This, if I remember correctly, was the injury that finally made us place him in a nursing home; he was just getting to be too much for Mom to take care of.

Too Tight

“Don’t squeeze so;
It hurts.”

Dusk.
A mosquito and chigger-bitten girl
Runs willy-nilly over the yard
In pursuit of elusive lightning bugs.
Just out of reach, the nighttime torch bearers
Cavort, test aerodynamics, as the girl giggles.
“I got one! I got one!”
Her shouts ring out.
Chubby legs turn;
She races back to the porch.
Open fist reveals guts & slime.
“Eew!”
overzealous pursuit brings untimely end.
Daddy’s shoulder muffles heartrending sobs
And sops tears one by one as they fall.
He knows how tight to give bear hugs.

Twenty-five years later,
The child is now grown.
Daddy, her hero, has fallen,
One rib and some soreness add to the tally of age.
She once looked up into his eyes—
Love, respect, adoration communicated freely.
Suddenly, she’s looking down into thinning hair.
Love, respect, adoration still faithful but blue.
She stands and embraces him,
Remembers bear hugs so strong which
Gave her wings, lifted her feet off ground,
Squeezed breath from both lungs,
Made her fly through the night.
Yet again, forgetful and overzealous, she squeezes too tight.
She fights back tears, looks back over his shoulder
As he, ever patient, whispers, almost wheezes,
“Don’t squeeze so;
It hurts.”