On choosing to be where I didn't want to be

A few months ago I signed up to take part in what I might call a spiritual support group -- a group of people who gather to support each other in their spiritual journeys. The first gathering of the group was to be a half-day retreat on sabbath time yesterday. I was very much looking forward to it, as a time to meet other spiritual seekers and to nurture myself. I felt I really needed it.

Then, two days before the retreat, my brother asked me to help move our father into a residence for people with memory loss. I'd known the move was coming -- had visited the two residences that had been recommended to my brother -- and certainly have known for some time that Dad had dementia. But the move had to coincide with this day I'd been looking forward to and promising myself, when I was going to give myself a little extra care.

There was nothing for it. It simply had to be then. My brother had arranged to borrow his neighbor's truck, and he wasn't going to be available the next weekend to do the move. When I mentioned I had something else planned, he told me he and my sister-in-law and nephew could probably manage without me. But I knew he wanted my support, as much as my help in packing up Dad's clothes and driving them the few miles to the new residence.

My brother has done so much to take care of our father, largely because he was the one who lived closest. No one could have been more devoted, more tireless, taking Dad to every doctor's appointment, taking calls from the assisted living facility where Dad lived, making this arrangement and that arrangement, having Dad over to his house, taking Dad to get a haircut. If children owe an enormous debt to their parents for nurturing and caring for them until they are grown, my brother has paid back a very large share of his debt through the care he has given Dad.

And then there's Dad himself. There aren't adequate words for his kindness, his love and support, given to me and my brothers over the years. Now he has virtually no short-term memory, but he knows enough to know that his life stinks without my mother, who died two years ago. He also remembers a frightening number of old baseball scores, and a staggering amount of English literature, which he taught for 30-odd years.

So I went. I helped pack some of Dad's clothes and drove them to the new place. I talked to Dad about why he was there and what I thought might be good about it (he will get more help with activities of daily living, and there are at least a few people there who are nearly as intellectually intact as he is), and stood by my brother to take my share of the blame for the decision to move Dad to this new and frightening place.

It is terrifying and sad to see my father, on whom I have relied for nearly all of my life for moral and emotional support, for a certain kind of steadiness, for humor, for love, become another person, one who sometimes resembles the father I knew and sometimes seems like a cruel caricature of him. It seems so unfair that on top of all of the losses that go along with old age, his disease has robbed him of his dignity as well.

I love him. So, even though I didn't want -- for a range of reasons -- to be there yesterday, I'm glad I was. Perhaps that's what growing up is all about.