My Dad, Dementia, and the Things We Don’t Forget
In the end, all we want is to be remembered.
“Do they remember me?” Dad asks me, brows furrowed.
It’s midwinter break, and I’m visiting Florida with my kids. Specifically, I’m in the memory care facility where my dad has resided since his second wife, Ruth, passed away in June 2022. I’m here alone, as my kids opted to stay with their grandma today, and I can’t blame them — she’s taking them swimming. And grandpa visits make them uncomfortable.
Pre-dementia, my dad was difficult. Volatile, misogynistic, and prone to yelling, I made my peace with his limitations and maintained a consistent yet distant presence over the years. He lives in Florida and I’m in Seattle, so it was easy.
Then his cognitive decline began, followed by his wife’s death. I flew cross-country on a day’s notice and had the unenviable task of finding a memory care for him in under a week, and then extricating him from the home he’d known for 35 years and tricking him into a locked nursing ward.
It was an excruciating time, one I’ll never forget.
Or will I?
Looking at my dad, I can’t be sure.
But I can reassure him of one thing. “Of course they remember you,” I say. “You’re their grandfather.”
For the moment, he’s at peace.
Because a moment is all his short-term memory can hold.
My visits to the memory care are infrequent — maybe 2–3 times per year.
He has no idea how often I’m there.
He forgets I was there before I even get back to my car.
And yet. It’s still important to me to fly across the country to check in.
The memory care sits on the ground floor in the back right corner of a campus built on a nature preserve. To get there, I check in at the front lobby and then walk counter-clockwise around the landscaper courtyard, the verdant Florida old palm growth contrasting with the multistory stucco buildings surrounding it, and the two swimming pools in the center.
I gaze wistfully at the pools, their aqua glint flashing at me from beyond the ropes that render them ornamental, inert, forgotten. My hippocampus jolts at that color and the waft of chlorine, souvenirs of my south Florida childhood.
I left Florida as soon as I came of age. Seattle is now my home — by choice, by love, by perpetuity.
I love the Pacific Northwest.
I loathe Florida.
I may have grown up swimming, but I always felt like a fish out of water there.
But when I return, I’m flooded with core memories, more sensory than cognitive: the pointy jabs of the manicured lawns, grass spiky and enduring. The sulfur scent of sidewalks just as the late afternoon humidity cracks into a downpour. The micro-checked hazy grey of backyard patio screens to separate us from mosquitos that breed on the waters of man-made suburban canals. The rosy-red of honeysuckle flower clusters, almost begging me to pull out their wee center stems and taste their nectar. I was always too scared to try it; my mom instilled a fear of eating plants lest I get poisoned, but the neighbor kids always did and lived to tell the tale.
I might have chosen not live in Florida, but Florida lives on in me.
As long as I’m able to remember, it always will.
So 2–3 times each year I revisit a flood of memories as I return to Florida to visit my dad, who remembers so little.
A kindly nursing aid opens the locked door to my dad’s memory unit. “He’s sitting with Kiyana* in the common room,” she tells me.
I head over, bracing myself for the stunned look I know I’ll see on my dad’s face as I enter, even as I’ve told him repeatedly about this visit.
One day he might not recognize you at all, I think to myself.
“Hi Dad!” I call brightly as I enter the room.
He looks up, and I can see the change in him since I last visited three months ago. He’s slower to process, his affect blunted as he watches me approach.
“Dana??” he asks, incredulous.
“Yes Dad, it’s me.”
“Dana, it’s you,” he says, choking up. “Dana, I love you so much.”
He was never emotional with me, growing up. But now he sits in his wheelchair, a slow light brightening the stupor from his eyes as he extends his hand to me.
I decide to be grateful for his astonishment, and his affection.
It’s easy to be a witty conversationalist in a memory care center. During my visit, I share the latest family updates — again and again and again. I’m lucky a few key talking points can keep us occupied for hours, in circles.
“A got her driver’s license,” I tell him.
“What??” he replies, as dumbfounded now as he was the last time I told him, approximately two minutes ago. I smile and give him the same response.
“Oh yes, she’s a good driver — even on the highways.”
This time he gets almost teary as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Does she remember me?”
“Dad, of course she remember you,” I say. “You’re her grandfather.”
Kiyana and the rest of the staff at the memory care adore my dad — and the feeling is mutual. Gone is the angry, impatient bully who raised me. Dementia has replaced him with the insecure, scared little boy the bully spent his life protecting. My dad hugs his caregivers, revels in their attention, eager for their approval.
As is common in such places, my dad is one of the few men, and many of the women residents dote on him. The staff likes to rib him about his admirers.
“Here comes your girlfriend, Mitch!” they taunt as one of them approaches our table. My dad looks at me, flustered, but the staff keeps going. “You like Angela*, don’t you?” they tease. “Tell me, are you going to marry her?” I can see they’re being playful, but they don’t seem to notice my dad is confused and getting upset.
“But I’m married!” he finally sputters.
“You are? To who?”
“To Ruth!” he cries, exasperated.
“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know that,” they answer, though of course, they know.
He used to know Ruth was gone, too. Now he only remembers sometimes, and gets weepy when reminded. To distract him, I take out my phone and start showing him photos of my life in Seattle.
He recognizes my home, and my cat Josie.
“If something bad happens to Ruth, like really bad, I don’t ever want to be alone. I might want to come live with you,” he says. “Would that be okay?”
On past visits I’ve tried to reorient him, to remind him Ruth is gone. But today, I decide it’s kinder just to go along. What’s the point in reminding him of grief?
“Sure you can, Dad.”
“Would that be okay with the girls?”
“I’m sure it would be.”
“Do you think they remember me?”
“Of course they remember you,” I say. “You’re their grandfather.”
“I never hurt anyone,” my dad blurts.
To my knowledge, this is true, in the physical sense.
Then a memory chimes in, distant but visceral. I’m standing next to the pool at my childhood home; I must be about seven. My dad is holding a plastic test kit that assesses levels of… well, I’m not sure what. I’m only seven. But I’ve seen him do this before, and I know there are two cylinders in the kit, and he adds drops of chemicals to each one to test the water, and the water turns pretty colors. Then he dumps the water from the kit back into the pool. I love to watch the colors dissipate.
“Daddy, can I pour it in?” I ask excitedly.
“You’re too big for that,” he scoffs, or at least, I think that’s what he said. All these decades later, I can’t recall the exact dialog. But I remember my delight in that pool test kit alchemy, how I wanted to pour it all out and make those colors swirl in the water. I can still sense his impatience and his rejection, how dismissive it felt when he shut me down.
I was only seven.
Why did he turn me down when it was so easy to say yes?
Why has this fleeting memory endured? Was this the moment when I learned not to ask, not to believe in my wishes? I have to think yes.
Not all hurt comes in the form of physical violence.
I stare at the meek man my dad is now, under dementia’s influence. I see him, but I also remember a different dad — the one who raised me — the one whose angry outbursts darkened our family home and eclipsed so much of my early potential. I came into adulthood stunted, unassertive, non-confrontational. I didn’t ask stupid questions.
I chose a major — speech pathology — that kept me smaller, instead of pursuing a career in writing where I would have had to compete, to believe in my own creativity and competency, to trust in the audacity of my words and ideas. I didn’t believe I could. It’s taken decades of adulthood to finally enter into my power, to know I can — or at least, that I can try.
It’s always worth it to say yes to simple acts of beauty, or to acknowledge a childlike request.
So I do.
“I know, Dad,” I say gently, rubbing his arm and changing the subject. “Would you believe A got her driver’s license?”
“She’s driving now??”
“She sure is.”
“Do you think she remembers me?”
“Of course she remembers you,” I say. “You’re her grandfather.”
“Did I tell you I started a new job?” I ask him. This is another topic we can discuss. My dad ran his own business, and likes hearing me talk about work.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and I collaborate with people from around the world — Dublin, Berlin, even Hong Kong,” I tell him.
“Hong Kong is a really nice city.”
“When were you in Hong Kong?” I ask.
“When I was in the Army.”
My dad never traveled to Asia.
My dad never served in the military.
This is a new theme for him, as he’s regaled my brother with similar war stories. It’s also a new phenomenon. His dementia has long kept him stuck on the same topics and questions. But they’ve always been based in reality.
My dad as a war hero is new, and false. No one in his family ever served in the military. He evaded the Vietnam draft with a high lottery number and then a job at a company that held government contracts. I’m grateful as a child of the 70s; I would never have been born if he’d been drafted.
But as lifelong Republicans, I know he and his wife donated to the Wounded Warrior Project, and had an overblown admiration for those in military service.
I don’t think my dad is lying now. I do think he’s revealing more of his insecurity, his regrets that he’s unable to verbalize.
Through him I realize: there are the things we remember, and they don’t always align with the ways in which we wish to be remembered.
Somewhere between his blurred brain and limited time left, a core sense of who my dad wanted — or rather, wants — to be emerges in our fragmented conversation.
A devoted father and grandfather.
A valiant warrior who defended his country.
A kind man who never hurt anyone.
He’s trying to close that gap for me, his oldest child, while he still can.
I have the power to contradict him, to reflect a harsh light of reality onto his false memories. I have the cognitive power he lacks and the receipts to prove none of it is true.
But I also have the power of compassion.
So I nod and smile. “A passed her driver’s test and has her license now,” I tell him.
“Oh god, she can drive now?? I can’t believe it.”
He’s incredulous again, the Army and Hong Kong and any hurt he’s caused, forgotten.
“She sure can. She’s a good driver too.”
“Does she remember who I am?”
“Yes, of course, dad. You’re her grandfather.”
And for the moment, this is enough for him.
*Names changed for privacy.
Greetings!
I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of two Medium publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns and Three Imaginary Girls. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.
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A beautiful glimpse into the slow disappearing of dementia. Makes me think of memory dissipating like the swirl of color in the pool.
A beautifully structured and well written essay. Thank you!