Gathering: 10-23-16 and Ramblings

This will be another time that we simply round up our gang from the home and take them to a local restaurant.

In the wake of clearing out my parents' Independent Living apartment, so much of their stuff is cluttering our place, and we are so exhausted from other commitments, that we chose not to invest energy in cleaning to be ready to host people.

I have a new position at the store which is a major assault on my introvert-ism. I'm exhausted from that more than anything else and Evie is juggling two part-time jobs at the moment plus keeping track of mom and dad and their adjustment to Assisted Living.

The mom and dad thing is a heavy emotional burden. Dad doesn't know where he is.  He's in Lancaster but is obsessed with getting back to Pennsylvania. Though we visit regularly, he thinks his children don't know where he is.

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One of my favorite BBC TV series, which has now ended, is Lewis. Lewis, when it was running, was one of the series that could be seen on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery.

Lewis' sidekick, James' Hathaway was struggling, as the series ended, with his father's decline into dementia in a way that hits pretty dern close to home for me and the show's treatment of the relationship between son and father is poignant to me. We have the whole series on DVD and I've been watching the final episodes.

Hathaway, incidentally, is very similar to me. He is a very cetebral person and a former seminary student who still passionately believes in God but has given up on the priesthood.

In the next to last episode, Hathaway is talking to Lewis about his pain and frustration related to his dad's loss of memory and Lewis says to him, "Life is only a series of moments and that's all we have."

For Hathaway's father, of course, those moments are now not connected with each other but for James, they still are.

At the end of the episode, Lewis and Hathaway make a moment with James' dad, which James will remember but his dad will lose.

Paralyzingly powerful to me.

I'm guessing that one of the writers of the show must be going through something similar to what our family is going through with dad.  In any case, Lewis' insight startled me.  I wasn't watching the show to glean life wisdom.

All I have now with dad are moments. For dad, the memory of those moments will dissolve as soon as the moment passes. And, that is profoundly sad.  But, for me, they will live on, probably even after I develop dementia, if I follow both of my parents path.

And, that is something that is very valuable.