Day Tripper, Part 2

And now am heading into Wilmington, DE on the southbound leg...

He really was better during the day.  More energetic, speech more coherent, sense of humor in evidence.  We were even able to do a memory exercise.  I took a photograph off the wall - a candid shot that showed the Coast Guard headquarters PR office at work in '44 or '45.  My father is standing in the background in his Petty Officer Second Class uniform, penciling copy.  I had to do most of the prompting about what he was seeing and who people were, but once I did, he was able to recover chunks of information about his wartime experiences and other parts of his career.  For example, about a PR firm he worked for briefly: "They were miserable people, weren't they?"  Yes, they were.  It's something.  I haven't been able to get him to respond like that for about a year - since the last surgery.

Of course, "better" doesn't mean "good."  His responses were still way off target.  At one point we were talking about family history and he said, "You got married before me, didn't you?"  Yes, I said.  I'll leave it to cosmologists or Star Trek buffs to work out the dynamics of that particular time-travel paradox...

He deteriorated later in the day - not into his drowsy state but into a vigorous paranoia.  I think that when he's energetic, that's where the energy goes, eventually.  Earlier, he'd been getting along well with E (she does handle him well) but by the fourth hour, he was taking me aside and muttering about how she thinks she runs the place and all she does is sit there...  At the end there was the usual urgency about my staying over, at least until it got light again (this was at 6 p.m.) and I had to get firm - and move quickly - to get to my train.

His speech wasn't as distorted as usual but distortions were still there.  One of them gave me an insight.  E was talking to him about a possible trip to Riverside Park, which is just down the block.  He liked the idea but was concerned.  "We'll have to find a bone lench," he said.  Ah.  I suddenly realized that what he meant was "bench."  He'd taken the two main component sounds - "b" and "ench" - and separated them and created a word for each of them.  That left me wondering if maybe, with a lot of effort, it might be possible to take some of his other invented words and see if they're linked to letters or sounds, and reverse-engineer them to rebuild the intended words.  It's a little like code-breaking.  I'll have to see if I can do it. 

I'm thinking also that there's another window here into the failure of a key cognitive function - the ability to synthesize components into a coherent whole.  This cuts across several different processes.  For a long while he's been unable to process identity - as noted here many times before, he'll take attributes of someone's personality and history and distribute them across several different people, remembering, say, aspects of my mother but assigning them to his mother or his sister.  Or he recombines them - he knows I'm significant but thinks of me as a wartime friend or a friend of Alan, who on a given day might or might not be his son.  Now it seems as though he's doing the same thing with language - taking a common unit, a word, and breaking it down into smaller parts.  Or, more accurately, he's got the parts but he's unable to build up the whole unit. 

If this is true, then there's also an interesting philosophical lesson -  It seems - as I think Kant and the Buddha may have mentioned - that many of the things we think of as whole and complete (identities, memories, words) are really constructs that we build up out of smaller pieces.  Which means that the world that we see and experience is built up in our heads, and can be unbuilt and rebuilt in different ways.  Interesting, and when I've got the brainpower I'll have to spend more time on it.

Meanwhile, back on earth - it was a good day, on balance.  I should take it as such and quit while I'm ahead.  Of course, with surgery hanging over us, I can't entirely do that - I'm wondering what shape he'll be in this time next week, and whether this was the last memory conversation.  I have a nagging suspicion that they're going to get him into surgery, decide that he can't follow instructions while under local, and ask to put him under general.  And I'll agree because at that point there won't be any options.  And, same as last year, he'll come out damaged - more damaged, I should say. 

And if that happens, then it happens.  I'll make the case for local as long as I can, and then deal next week with whatever they do and whatever shape he's in.  In the meantime, I've got a few interesting things to think about - and can also say that the day trips work pretty well.  I'll hope to do more.

Comments

[Dick Falk]

Alan, while surfing the web, I accidently, but luckily, came across Dementia Nights.

In 1965, immediately after graduating college, I went to work for Reese Publishing (a relative knew Maurice) as managing editor for its two sports magazines, Sports World and Pro Sports.

I worked closely with your father for four years before I received "Greetings!" from Uncle Sam and traded in my old Underwood typewriter for an M-14 and went to work for the U.S. Army.

Your father taught me many valuable lessons which have helped me immensely in my life-long publishing career. I also remember very clearly the great cast of characters that I worked with, and who also worked with your father - Maurice Rosenfeld, Jay Rosenfeld (during summer months), Art Crockett, Dick Schwartzberg, Dave Miller, Lou Queralt, Ben Harvey and Dick Hagerman.

I hope you'll have time to contact me directly; I'd love to share with you my additional thoughts of Bud, Art, the rest of that unforgettable crew and my four years at Reese.

Dick Falk

[Alan G. Ampolsk]

Dick -

It's really good to hear from you. Thanks very much for posting.

I'll send you an e-mail but the short version is - yes, I remember you well, since my father used to refer to you (and the rest of the crew) often.

You have no idea how timely it is that you found the site. It's been on my mind that I need to fill out the portrait of my father and start accounting for who he was. I've been getting ready to do that but obviously I'm limited to childhood memories and some documents I've got on hand. Finding a colleague is invaluable, so I hope I can enlist you in the project.

I'm also long overdue to send a biographical note about my father to Juri Nummelin for his Pulpetti blog (www.pulpetti.blogspot.com). I hope I can rope you into that project as well.

I'm going to be a bit tied up with the surgery this week but after that, I'm looking forward to comparing notes.

Thanks again - and welcome (back) to the neighborhood.

Best,
Alan