My parents have always been very respectable people – my mom was the director of the regional library and my dad was a civil engineer. We even had a book at home that included his biography with the structures he had a hand in.
But old age spares no one. Mom left us quite early because of health problems, and Dad began to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Since I, my husband, and our daughter lived with my father, we did not immediately notice his forgetfulness. He rarely went out on his own, and it was no surprise that the man couldn’t remember exactly what he had bought at the store. I, too, am sometimes surprised when I sort through my purchases at home and find something that I didn’t put in the basket.
We began to notice his illness after my older sister from Israel came to visit us for a while. She often made jokes about my father and his forgetfulness, and in some ways even his cluelessness. She asked how such an intelligent and educated man could not remember some elementary things that even our little daughter knew.
We had to consult a doctor after her father went out alone to draw water from the pump-room and disappeared for the day. It turned out that he wandered around the neighborhood, confused by the similar houses and could not remember the exact address of our house. He was first prescribed pills, which generally didn’t help at all; he probably needed something else.
People with Alzheimer’s also suffer from fits of rage in addition to all their forgetfulness. So Dad started throwing tantrums at us. I didn’t like the fact that my daughter was an unwilling witness to them, but I couldn’t abandon my father. Until he told me not to set foot in his house.
He felt ashamed if my husband or I helped him dress or led him around the house by the hand in front of his neighbors, to whom he was known as a very important and respected man. I understood this, I guessed it at least, but there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t take him out for a walk at night, could I?
And he was angry. Cursed us all. My husband was very patient with him, but when my father told us to move out of his apartment immediately, he was the first to say yes. I didn’t want to leave my father until the last minute, but he was becoming completely unbearable. He was kicking us out out of spite. In the end we decided to move out and in return we hired a nanny from the nursing home to visit him once or twice a day to make sure there was food in the house, that the gas was shut off and my father wasn’t lost somewhere.
Maybe it was wrong, but we’d take the keys away from him, and he’d get even angrier at us, even though we weren’t there for him. This was the first time in our lives that we were faced with such a problem and we don’t know how to do what was right for a sick loved one, and not to feel guilty.
