Grandpa was never much of a traveler, but before (and before is always “before Alzhiemer’s) he would visit his brothers and sisters and children with, if not great frequency, at least steady consistency. That is gone now. He is rapidly approaching the state where he won’t go traveling anywhere. This Thanksgiving we went out to a family gathering of all of Grandpa’s children and their children (and even some great grandchildren), and I think this will be his last. Call it a milestone.
Grandpa doesn’t like to travel, and he doesn’t (now that he has Alzheimer’s) like lots of activity and noise and strange environments. But on some deep level he likes to see his family and this showed in his fairly good mood in going out for Thanksgiving, and the fact that he appeared to be in a happy mood when we came back. A big problem with Grandpa going out is that he doesn’t like traveling, and he gets agitated. But the biggest problem is that when he gets somewhere he often wants to go home almost immediately. It was another indication how much Grandpa wanted to be at the Thanksgiving gathering that he was willing to stay around two hours before saying, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”
But the two hours this Thanksgiving was less than the last family gathering, his time shortening, and then shortening some more. I remember last Thanksgiving Grandpa was already having trouble recognizing grandchildren, and it continued this year. “Who is that?” he would say to me. Or he would look at someone and say, “What is the name of N’s daughter?” I was actually amazed how little his difficulty in recognizing people had progressed beyond last year. But perhaps he simply kept most of his problems to himself, overwhelmed or embarrassed at his inability to recognize so many people. I don’t think so . . . when Grandpa is greatly confused it usually shows and he seemed only mildly overwhelmed.
Even so, Grandpa had scarcely finished his dessert after lunch before he was asking to leave. People wanted family photos so he was forced to stand around while people pointed and jostled to get everyone organized. Grandpa found it impossible to look at the camera. His attention was always wondering off to something that caught his attention elsewhere. Grandma kept trying to make him look forward, but in the photos he is either looking away from the camera, or else staring rather vacantly forward like some poor lost soul. The one good picture of Grandpa has him looking sideways, his face caught in profile as he smiles at something else that had caught his attention.
A week or so later Grandpa decided he wanted to visit his brother Gene. Grandpa’s brother Doug agreed to go with him, so Thursday afternoon after I got back from the weekly grocery shopping I took them both down to Gene’s. It’s probably about a half-hour drive. When we got there Grandpa said maybe two dozen words to his brother and stayed about twenty minutes–long enough to drink half a cup of coffee. Then he wanted to go home.
“It’s time to get going,” he said.
“Now?” Gene said. “You just got here.”
“Can’t stay.”
Doug was warned in advanced, and we tried to warn Gene ahead of time, but he seemed perplexed. Why travel all the way to say two dozen words and drink half a cup of coffee? Because, I would have said if I could have explained, Grandpa wanted to see Gene to see that he was well, but he didn’t have any words to say, and being away from home put him on edge, and the gray weather put him on edge and once he had seen Gene that was enough and it was time to go home.
I tried to explain to Gene that this was simply the way Grandpa was now and I think in some way he understood. Standing on the porch and watching us get in the car Gene said, “I guess we should really come down there.”
I nodded. That is the future. Soon even the idea of leaving the house will feel too intimidating to Grandpa as his world shrinks ever smaller and smaller.
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