So this is not uninteresting:

[Moostache]

22. That describes my father in a nutshell...

He has dementia (diagnosed) and is in terminal decline at 82 years old. He seems to be fine at the beginning of any exchange or conversation, but within a few minutes he begins to lose the plot and begins repeating himself. Asking the same question 3, 4, 5 times in a 10 minute stretch, getting stuck on one detail and losing the ability to focus on other details.

If things persist for too long, he begins to get nervous and shifts his weight a lot (as if sitting is becoming painful) and gets a confused appearance and demeanor, sometimes agitation and anger join the party too. I have learned to adapt to him as best I can and communicate in short, declarative sentences and nothing more than a 3 or 4 sentence story / update. Sundowning is also VERY real and VERY confusing for him. He has a terrible time during the evening hours and also with his sleep patterns - often getting into patterns where he tries to go to sleep at 3PM and is wide awake and wandering his facility at 3 AM.

Its heart breaking and deveastating to live through and watch while being powerless to help. Over the last 5 years, my dad has lost my mother (his wife of 53 years), his home (after a stroke left him remarkably intact but unable to be left alone and we had him move 5 hours closer to my sister and I), his independence (when we had no choice but to take his car keys as he was no loner able to drive safely at all), his continence (which was robbed from him by bladder cancer and advancing issues elsewhere) and his mobility (when a fall resulted in a broken hip). Through it all, he has been remarkably resilient and physically recovered from all of it prior to the hip injury. That ended his mobility for good at this point.

Since last summer, he has been fading more rapidly and retreating deeper into the haze of dementia more and more. I visit him twice a week and he doesn't remember the weekday visit by Saturday or the weekend visit by the next week. He has forgotten his grandchildren's names and ages and is receeding deeper by the week. Watching all of this is eerily similar to what happened with my grandmother (his mother) a decade ago. She too had dementia and she lasted 17 years in a care facility and had no idea who any of us were by the 7th year there. By the end, she did not know my dad, her name, where she was, how long she had been there...nothing, just a blank slate. Her decline began around age 80. My dad's issues truthfully began at least a decade ago, but he had my mom until 2020 to cover for him and guide him and remind him of things. Since her passing, he has been adrift in every way imaginable.

All of this weighs on me daily like a ton of bricks. I have started a ghoulish countdown in my own head of the 26 years I MAY have left of good cognition and a reason to keep living. I won't make it that far and I know it. I have health maladies that don't presage a lifespan into the mid-80s or beyond, and given what I have witnessed and seen and lived through twice now, I don't want those years anyway. The humiliation and degradation that my father's eyes reflect every time he can't remember something or is in need of toilet care breaks me and leaves me wishing for no part of this dreaded family tradition.

This past father's day, I became the oldest thing remaining in my dad's life. He was 27 when he lost his father (in 1970, 6 weeks before I was born), a husband for 53 years (until 2020) and my father since 1971 - now 54 years ago. I cherish the time we had, but I mourn his slow, irreversible decline and losing him a piece at a time now hating myself for finding excuses to stay away from his facility at times because I am too weak to take it again. When I was younger I used to fear dying too young, now that I am older I fear living too long. It sucks. The only thing that makes it at all bearable is when I can bring up a memory that he still has command of and the light that comes back on however briefly...I just wish I was better at that than I am.