The visit Wednesday from cousin Harriet - very much like the last one. My father was much less coherent, of course - he spoke in random syllables more than last time, and went off into random flights more often (out of nowhere, he started talking about how the living room mirror was crooked, and the government needed to do something about it. Mirrors are important to him these days. Last week he looked in the one in the dining room and didn't see himself. He saw his surgeon instead).
But structurally it was about the same. Harriet talked about the things that acute, educated Jewish ladies of a certain age (93) like to talk about (Trollope, Little Dorrit, the Iranian elections, whether Obama really agrees with the Reverend Wright). Cousin Arthur got past his hearing problems and threw in his own conversational elements ("explain to me - what's the difference between Hinduism and Islam?") His girlfriend, Edith (90) was mostly quiet and slightly ironic. My father did his improvisation - words and sounds and random elements - over and above and beyond and around all this. I gave up on trying to manage things and just responded as best I could, which involved trying to keep track of all the lines of conversation at once. It was a little like three-dimensional chess - it was exhausting, and it still is. I haven't totally recovered.
There was only one bad moment. My father tried to explain about some of the family photographs and couldn't begin to make out who my mother was - which shouldn't be surprising even to newcomers because a couple of minutes earlier he hadn't been able to recognize himself in another fairly recent picture. But his not recognizing my mother brought them up short. Edith looked at him and said, "How could you forget something like that?" She sounded indignant, which is a decent way of covering up how frightened she must have been. I decided I'd better derail that particular line of questioning and hissed something about "because he has Alzheimer's Disease, that's why." She nodded - yes, I get it - and that was that and we were back to the regular word salad already in progress.
With it all, he was better during the visit than before or after. When I tried to tell him that Harriet was coming to visit, he had no idea who I was talking about - but once he saw her, he recognized her, and some memories came into focus. Not a lot, but he was able to talk about the 1930's and her visiting him in Atlantic Beach, which in fact she did. Afterward he wasn't entirely clear about who she was but he knew he liked her - described her as the woman with the white hat (hair), and insisted that I arrange to visit her myself since I live so close (she's in New Jersey, which he understands a little, and I'm in Washington, which isn't a place to him anymore). He remembered Arthur less well ("the big guy - husky - with a lurch" - Arthur is in fact big, and stoops and limps a little) and Edith not at all. He didn't know her when he was young, and new memories don't form anymore.
For what it's worth - a lot, in fact - Harriet and Arthur and Edith seemed less upset about my father than they did during the last visit. It's only been eight months, so he hasn't changed all that dramatically. And they've had more time to get used to the idea that he's really far gone.
Harriet isn't doing well. She just had her pacemaker replaced and said she doesn't feel worse, but doesn't feel better, either. She seemed a little more frail. As you know, every time we have one of these visits I speculate about whether it's going to be the last one. Of course, one of them will be, either because I move my father or because something happens to one of the cousins. Harriet's frailty got me thinking about how the whole era is vanishing - the '20s and the Depression and the war. At the first reunion, four years ago, I had a strong sense that I'd fallen through a trap door and wound up at a 1930's social night. It was at Harriet's house, which has 30's decor, and of course all these people who'd known each other then were back together, and the atmosphere was 1937 revived, not 2005. It was rich. I grew up on the stories and I felt a real connection with it. Now all at once it's going by the boards - which is only natural, everything does, but you can still take note of it and know you're going to miss it. Chunks of history aren't replaceable - which is a truism but that doesn't make it less surprising when you actually experience it.
Next week I start the nursing home site visit tour. Got to do my part to pull down the old house. Updates about that soon.
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