Days with My Father

I found a website which is a photo-journal of an old father who has no short term memory (thus being unable to recall his wife’s death and that he did attend her funeral).

A heart-wrenching short story is shared below:

My Mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006

After she died, I realized how much she’d been
shielding me from my father’s mental state.

He doesn’t have alzheimers, but he has no short-term memory,
And is often lost.

I took him to my mother’s funeral, and to the burial, but when we got home,
he’d as me every 15-20 minutes where my mother was. I’d explain carefully that
she has died , and we’d been to her funeral.

This was shocking news to him.

Why had no-one told him?
Why hadn’t I taken him to the funeral?
Why hadn’t he visited her in the hospital?

He had no memory of these events.

After a while, I realized I couldn’t keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn’t remember, and it was killing both of us, to re-live her death constantly.

I decided to tell him she’d gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick.

And that’s where she is now.

This site is a journal.

An ongoing record of my father, and of our relationship.

For whatever days we have left together.

Source: Philip Toledano – Days with My Father

Filed under: Excerpts & Quotes, Random Ramblings , biography, Father, lost ones, loved ones, photos, remembrance