Crawl and Totter

Anna has started talking to her Dad every two days. She has made it mandatory.

She just tries to get him on the phone.

Pick up, pick up, she hopes.

His voicemail is full. He doesn't empty his messages.

He does not know how to text.

Forgot how to email. He used to email her about 15 years ago.

The house phone is never charged and even when it is no one can find the receiver.

Most of the time, getting Anna's Dad on the phone means getting a hold of her Mom on her cell phone (which is another challenge) and getting her to hand the phone over to him.

And then they try to talk.

The first few words are painful. Pulling teeth. Anna can't tell if it's harder for her to find things to talk about or harder for him to give her more than one word answers.

She rambles on about her life and tries to get a reaction from him.

His favorite words are "I don't know," and "No."

Sometimes he throws in "I'm fine," or "Oh well."

And Anna wants to cry.

Because she just want to talk to her Dad. Her Dad. Her awesome Dad who used to talk non-stop and sing and laugh and tell stories about life. Her Dad who used to have no problem striking up conversations with strangers, her Dad who loved adventure. Her Dad who was like a little kid.

And now he is more like an old weak man. One who has aged about 25 years overnight. Overnight, meaning the past several years.

She worries his mind is wasting away.
She worries he's fading away.
She worries he'll forget important memories.
She worries she'll forget what his laugh sounds like.
She worries she'll only see him smile on rare occasions.

While Anna is on the phone with her Dad one night, he randomly says, 'You have to crawl before you can walk." The words strike her. "Totter," he corrects himself. "What was that?" she asks. "Did you say something about an otter?"

"Totter. You have to totter before you can walk."

She isn't sure if he is just getting confused or being inventive but for a moment she can hear her old Dad, the Dad of the past. "That's true of most things," she tells him.

Anna considers the demise of so many things in her life right now and it suddenly resonates with her that she can't just pretend she can walk again without tottering around for awhile.

Life is full of quite a lot of tottering and crawling.

"What do you remember about the Boston Tea Party?" she asks her Dad.

"I wasn't there."

"I know you weren't there, what do you remember about it though from reading about it?" she encourages him to start talking. She had realized a week or two ago when she was at her wits end trying to find her father's voice again, that if she asked him open-ended questions he would start talking more. And then she randomly asked him about the Cold War and he started talking more than she had heard him talk in months. It was like his brain lit up and he could remember historical facts and dates and Anna kept asking questions in between her tears just so she could hear his voice.

There he was, there was her Dad. If only for a moment.

He remembers old things, but not a lot of new things. It is scary. His forgetfulness, his change in mood and behavior. The weight he has lost. The joy that seems to have been sapped from his soul.

The doctors are still looking for all the answers.

But Anna and her family are pretty sure they know what is happening.

And it frightens all of them.

And every two days, Anna tries to get her Dad on the phone, even though, recently, he's missed several of their mandatory phone dates.

And she crawls and totters and hopes.

The phone rings.

Pick up, pick up.