Family Time

My wife Carol and I have returned from an extended (23 day) live-in experience with my 92 year old father in his apartment in the Memory Care unit of his retirement community.  He moved into memory care a couple months ago, and for a while before that, it appeared that he was nearing death. Carol and my sister Cindy decided that we would stay with him for his last weeks, and we took turns living with him.  We appreciate more deeply and better understand the work staff in these places do. Lots of bathroom time.  Understatement. 

Now Dad's recovered some physical abilities. He is still able to walk, talk, and laugh, but has very little short term memory.  His thoughts and memories and present experience seem to blend and twist into surprising shapes and utterances that challenge one's ability to make sense of anything.  Being his son and having all those shared years with him at a tender young age the things he says and does often trigger emotions and thoughts that add to the drama and mystery of this end-of-life story.

My dad Ron with his friend  Lois

At first, realizing that he had recovered sufficiently to conceivably live months or even years longer,  we gave serious consideration to buying a personal assistant to watch him 24/7 like we were doing.   He has a propensity to wander and totter along on the edge of crashing at all times. Ultimately, we remembered that it was he who decided to stay put in his senior living facility, even though we had strongly encouraged him to move closer to one of us so that we could bring him into the day to day of our lives.  He knows all the people there, has lived there for 12 years, and they're ready and willing to give him the best care possible.  Sure it's better to follow him around and keep him from falling, but even if we lived there, we couldn't do that all the time.

He's survived without incident (at least they're not reporting any to us!) for the last week, and it's still One Day At A Time, although now Carol and I are spending our days at home in New Orleans, and Cindy is back in Michigan.

As you can see from the photo, I don't look so good after mistaking a soap sample for a piece of candy.  Carol and I were strolling down Royal street in the French Quarter and the beautiful young man in black and his gorgeous colleagues were offering window shoppers samples of skin care products that we were encouraged to believe would help us look more like them.  Luckily there was a nick-nack store a couple doors down, and a bit of fudge helped to neutralize my sudsing stomach.  After awhile my fear of belching bubbles abated.  Happily, I noted that very little humiliation arose.  Apparently, I now accept such  goofy behavior and faux pas as just part of my senior status. 

I'm still figuring out my retirement schedule, but it's going to include a bunch of bicycle related projects.  Bike Easy is the local bicycling advocacy organization and they offer lots of opportunities for involvement.  Last Friday I joined a small crew of volunteers in breaking down the protected bike lane demonstration project in the Central Business District here in New Orleans.  We had to tear off the tape strips on the road surface that either covered up or created new lines and corridors for bike travel, and rip out the plastic bollards and protective fencing that delineated the places cars couldn't go.  The idea is that lots of folks don't ride because it just seems too dangerous to share a lane with cars.  If protected lanes were available, folks would feel safer and chose to bike instead of drive.  Bike Easy has canvassed the neighborhoods where the temporary lanes were created, getting input from users as well as neighbors and businesses.  I haven't seen the results yet.  I can tell you that what we heard Friday from the businesses along the protected corridors was uniformly negative: "Oh, man, thank you for getting rid of this shit, what a disaster".  "I had drivers yelling at me, cutting in and out of the bollards, one even drove over my foot! I need a doorman-cam!!"  A passerby heard me explaining what it was all about.  "Let me tell you something, cars are what's supposed to be here, not bicycles. This road is for cars!"

Still, what a great thing it is to be able to try things out, to keep on moving in a direction of win-win.  That's got to be the organizing principle, because the bike-car match up is always a potential smash up for the riders. I look forward to the data on this project and the opportunity to help create and implement the next ones.