Confused by Numbers

This is probably the toughest post I've written. My father has dementia. This may be a trigger for my family members and anyone who has a loved one who has gone down this path.

My parents have been married for 62 years. Mom worked to help put my father through medical school and when they started a family, she gave up her career to be a full-time mom. She is an incredible woman and my siblings and I were fortunate for both of our parents. We were not wanting for love, attention, or autonomy. Our parents supported us in all of our endeavors.

The love and attention we received as kids, is now offered to Dad. As he is less able to be engaged in the world around him, we made the tough call as a family to get Mom some help. This past week, we went to an adult day care facility for people with memory loss. The staff was kind, knowledgeable and helpful; the visitors there that day were friendly. This seems like the perfect route to go to give Mom some time to herself a couple times a week. While Dad interacted with staff and other adults with memory loss, my sister, my mother and I met with the RN from the facility. Her name was Mary and, coincidentally, she is from Manitowoc and graduated from LHS the same year as my brother. Mary was telling us about some of the activities that people like to do. One of them was bingo. Another was playing cards. Dad was quite a card shark in his day. We had some rather engaging games of Sheepshead at the cottage, especially if my grandfather was there. Upon hearing cards, my sister and I thought that would work out well and smiled. Mom quietly shook her head and said, "Numbers confuse him now." Instantly, my feeling of hope dissipated to sadness and some confusion of my own. Dad. Confused by numbers. Never would I have thought those two things would ever be connected in the same sentence. You could give Dad a date in history and he could tell you what day of the week it was. He could multiply large numbers at ease. He and a high school math teacher would solve math puzzles during church when they were sitting in the choir. In fact, Dad wanted to be a math teacher but his mom wanted him to be a doctor. I recall the first basic calculator he bought, a Casio, that he bought in Hawaii for $100 in 1972. When the Rubik's Cube came out, not only did Dad solve it, he programmed our TRS-80 home computer to solve it. My parents live near an Amish store and Dad would buy a basket of items, add it up in his head and have the exact amount ready when the Amish cashier finished adding it on their adding machine. Dad, confused by numbers? It was my father who gave me my love and appreciation of numbers. Math was always my favorite subject. Algebra came naturally to me. I took Calculus in high school and I was on our high school math team. Yes, I was a mathlete before that word was invented. We didn't get a letter for our participation as the athletes did but we participated in the Fox Valley Math League. My brainiac friends, Paul, Alix, Ann, Scott, David and I would pile into a school station wagon and travel to take on the math teams of other schools. We did quite well in fact but struggled with Neenah, then a powerhouse. Admittedly, my strength was in numbers and arithmetic. I was fast in the head-to-head competitions, less so in the written part. My enjoyment in this activity was a credit to my father. Numbers intrigue me and provide me with order and a playground. In fact, I do the same thing when I go to the Amish store.

In my prime, I could have recited the first 50 digits of pi to you. I know this was irrational. (pun intended). But I enjoyed numbers. I still do. When I bought a car a couple years ago, I was happy that the three digits on it, 607, are a prime number. And when I saw the letters of ZFP, my first thought was that it adds up to 17 points in Scrabble®. I can tell you the serial number of the bike I got for my tenth birthday, or my brother's Schwinn that was stolen. I remember the license plate of a car that almost hit us head on in the 1970s. I've also learned that I count things, often when I am particularly stressed.

Music is closely related to math, of course. Dad is an accomplished musician. He was the rehearsal pianist for some of the local theater group, Masquers, a few times. The songs from Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret are ones I know well from sheer repetition. Dad played church organ often, filling in when there was a need. Mom bought him a violin for his 40th birthday and he went on to not only learn it, but to play 2nd violin in the Manitowoc Symphony. Dad had perfect pitch. He learned to play trumpet when my brother started. Dad also played the accordion. And some of my favorite memories as a child were falling asleep as Dad played the piano downstairs. Thankfully, there is a piano at the adult day facility, a baby grand no less. While we were going over paperwork, my sister noticed the songs we were hearing from a few rooms away were Dad. As the melody to "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" was floating through the hallway, tears were falling down my cheeks. Dad doesn't remember many entire songs anymore but parts of those memories are still there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsocZrEcp0Y

When I think of Dad and music, I can't help thing of the song, Leader of the Band by Dan Fogelberg. For years, this song has made me cry. Now, my tears are unstoppable as I listen to it:

The leader of the band is tired

And his eyes are growing old

But his blood runs through my instrument

And his song is in my soul My life has been a poor attempt

To imitate the man

I'm just a living legacy

To the leader of the band

There is no question my father has changed and that is tough on all of us, including him. There are times when he still cracks a joke and engages in some word play; he does have lucid moments. He is much more soft-spoken and gentle than he was while I was growing up. My heart aches knowing that this once confident man is unsure of many things. I can feel the struggle that he faces to understand the world around him. I find that if I stay in the present with where he is, I can cope. If I start to compare to how he was in the past, then I fall apart.

As I biked around Madison this morning, Dad was on my mind. The name of my blog is "Elliptical Thinking". If you've read my work before, you know that my best thinking comes when I am on my elliptical or when I am biking. Toward the end of my route, as some of this post was taking shape, I thought about life in general. I wondered of my own life. Is dementia in my future? What will my retirement look like? Dad has done much in his life. Then again, so have I. I find that I came away from my ride with more questions about life and living than answers.

As I stopped on a bridge to take a photo of the water, I saw that someone had written this on the bridge, "Live Large". Important advice, I think, for all of us.