Sobered by the daily reality of life with family, friends and career? Thank goodness...

Thank goodness we have others to tell us how to put it in perspective.

As we have heard many times, when something bad happens to you (and inevitably bad things happen), it is how you react that matters. Having a support group whether family or family you create for yourself and friends who respect you makes you more resilient.

Psychologist Erich Fromm (deceased1980) championed love. He said "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence". This week I had the good fortune to see it in action with a Star newspaper story I read. It was for me an acknowledgement of love from a son to his father and as it says in the title -- a story of fortitude and resilience. I wrote a letter to the editor about my feelings below which they published. The article I described is below it. My letter:

"Thank you to the Star for this beautiful story about inner strength. In this case, the power it gives one to accept the advent of Alzheimer's by both the family and the one who has it.

?I found Joel Rubinoff's description of the process of?Scouter Al's decline very special. The many disturbing and?unfortunate?occurrences like running away, failing of a good mind and the distress of his father in trying to understand it all was emotionally coupled with the very comforting realization that guess what?- The person who they are inside is still there.

?My mother was a kind and loving person. Even as she mentally declined with dementia before passing, I saw her show this everyday. Whether a person has dementia or Alzheimer's specifically, they continue to connect in many ways that are deep and soulful.

?Your father is an amazing man. The way you and your sons have supported him on this journey is tremendously life-affirming.

?Barbara Chernin, Toronto

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Feature on Alzheimer's struck a cord

Feb. 9, 2025 The Star

By?Joel Rubinoff

?

Alzheimer’s can make my dad hard to reach. Here’s what I do to bring him back-

As he hits the ball, tentatively at first, then more assertively, with the same exacting precision I recall from my youth, I can sense his old rhythm returning.

For a moment, the familiar glint in his eye has returned.

We’re in the activity room of my dad’s long-term-care home, where my teenage sons and I have hauled a folded-up ping-pong table out of a storage closet in hopes of engaging the former table-tennis champ in an impromptu volley, to rekindle his spark for competition.

Scouter Al, into his 80s, was a Masters swimmer, cyclist, squash player, golfer, general sports enthusiast, and yes, a former Cub Scout leader who liked nothing better than to get down to it with those he was closest to.

But at 93, almost nine years into his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, in a wheelchair, mostly non-verbal, dependent on the care of others, we take nothing for granted.

“Your serve,” I say, handing him the ball. “And don’t think I’m going easy on you.”

It’s harder than it used to be because the rolling contraption he’s been confined to these past six months doesn’t allow sideways movement.

But as he hits the ball, tentatively at first, then more assertively, with the same exacting precision I recall from my youth, I can sense his old rhythm returning.

“OK buster,” I tell him,” lobbing the ball more aggressively. “No more Mr. Nice Guy. And don’t tell me the sun is in your eyes.”

Back and forth, back and forth, me joking, him saying nothing as we play the same game we’ve played for decades, as if nothing has changed, because in some ways, nothing has.

If I close my eyes, the father-son dynamic feels exactly the same, just as riding my bike in winter — through snow banks and slush — feels?deceptively like summer.

“You’re back, baby,” I tell him, clapping him on the shoulder as my two sons chase errant balls around the activity room. “You’ve still got it!”

Mr. Ants in his Pants, we used to call him. Mr. Can’t Sit Still.

Why was he vacuuming the carpet outside my teenage bedroom at 8 a.m. on Sundays, bumping against the door, waking me up, driving me nuts, over an offending speck of dust?

Why was he running around, hammering this, tightening that, mowing the lawn, when he could have been sprawled on a deck chair, gulping down brewskis?

He was always a character?— deadpan, wryly humorous, mild-mannered, like TV’s Bob Newhart, Dick Van Patten and Tom Bosley rolled into one, with a touch of Homer Simpson.

And a good sport.

I remember watching him roll up the driveway from work when we were kids, which was our cue to click the deadbolt, turn the lights out and pretend no one was home as he banged on the front door, exasperated, like Fred Flintstone.

We were fun-loving little a—holes, and he was a great dad: even-tempered, supportive, always slightly amused, even when the joke was on him.

“I have a question for you,” I goad when he waves his hand to indicate he’s had enough ping pong. “Are you a man or a mouse?”

Ah, there it is ... a half grin. I give a thumbs up to my sons. Something clicked!

“I just flew in from Miami,” I tell him. “Boy, are my arms tired.”

That one gets a laugh … a bit delayed as his neural circuits take their time connecting, but there it is, unmistakable.

“With your talent, you should be on a stage,” I continue, referencing his favourite pre-automotive joke. “In fact, there’s one leaving in 20 minutes!”

His laugh is more audible this time?— he loves Borscht Belt humour?— emerging in staccato-like bursts at three-second intervals: “Ha … ha … ha.”

I won’t say I’m the closest to him, because all five of his kids have a loving, unique relationship, but as the oldest and last of his brood to settle down, I spent the most time with him after he and my mom divorced, with frequent father-son trips to our family farm, where I would regale him with my relationship anxieties, lament my tragically unrecognized genius and fume over my overlooked potential as a male magazine model.

“Sounds like a plan,” he would nod in his encouraging, non-committal way, only half listening. “That makes a lot of sense.”

One summer weekend in 1999 we drove to a nearby movie theatre from our provincial park campsite to see “The Blair Witch Project,” a homespun horror flick with shaky camera angles about an unseen menace that lurks in the woods.

Oh boy, what a mistake.

Returning to our deserted campsite in the dark, not a human in sight, we sat bolt upright in our tents the entire night, too terrified to sleep, every rustle from the bushes conjuring visions of demonic ghouls hovering on the periphery.

In the end, he was equal parts father and court jester and?— with my mom?— one of the few people I could truly be myself with.

So when his vicious, life-sucking diagnosis came down, and the synapses in his brain started misfiring with increasing regularity, I had no intention of letting it get between us.

At first, his issues seemed manageable: How do I drive to your house? (Solution: You can’t. Your driver’s licence has been confiscated and we sold your car. We’ll come to you.)

How do I work the stove? (Solution: Don’t touch it. We signed you up for Meals on Wheels and?— surprise?— we’re moving you to a retirement home.)

How do I pay for all the socks I buy at Walmart? (Solution: Too many socks! We confiscated your Visa and put a fixed limit on your debit card.)

Do you know where I left my mountain bike? (Solution: Ugh … there is no solution: it’s gone forever.)

But as this irreversible, progressive brain disorder that affects one in three seniors 85 and up progressed, and the issues became more severe, keeping him safe became harder to accomplish.

Resettled in a retirement home a year after his diagnosis, he was able to maintain his independence until, one night after dinner, he went out for a walk and didn’t come back.

Where is he? Police were called, picking him up at a building two blocks away, under-dressed and shivering.

To prevent future occurrences, an electronic tracking bracelet was affixed to his wrist and life, as they say, went on.

Well, until the next day, when he cut it off and went for another walk. More police. Another bracelet, more tightly secured, as we confiscated his vast collection of pocket knives.

Ah crap, we forgot about the scissors. More police, another wristband. Uh oh.?What about his nail clippers and X-Acto knives?

More police. A stern lecture from the retirement home manager, by now losing her patience.

“You say I got lost on my walk and the police brought me home?” my dad confided after wandering off for the fourth or fifth time. “I don’t remember, but I feel great now.”

It was only a matter of time until a long-term-care facility?— what used to be called a “nursing home”?— could no longer be avoided, and cheerful as ever, off he went.

This was late 2019, right before the pandemic, followed by two years of virtual house arrest as we interacted through face shields, gowns and masks, like alien interlopers from the planet Bloopus.

By the time normalcy returned in 2022, he was showing signs of wear, although his years of rigorous exercise, we agreed, seemed to have slowed, if moderately, the disease’s progression.

“Just take me to a forest, tie me to a tree and let the wolves eat me,” he used to joke in his lighter moments. “That’s what they did in the old days.”

“It’s not that I don’t like the idea,” I told him with a gentle pat, “but I’m pretty sure there’s a bylaw forbidding it.”

As time marched on and the “activities of daily living” (ADLs) edged slowly beyond reach, a?wheelchair became a necessity and a ceiling strap was installed to hoist him out of bed, the reigning sentiment might have been one of downright despair.

But shed no tears for Scouter Al.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he told me shortly after his diagnosis. “It’s a fact of life. It happened to Ronald Reagan. It can happen to the paperboy. You’ve got to keep your sense of humour.”

The biggest surprise about Alzheimer’s, for me, is that even with its relentless assault on my dad’s cognitive and physical functions?— the mental confusion, mood swings, fits of anxiety?— his basic personality has somehow remained happily intact.

“So?” I said on a recent visit, motioning my younger son to push the button as we waited by the elevator.

“No,” responded my dad, who hadn’t spoken a word since we got there.?“But I knit a little.”

Rote memory response? Pavlovian reflex? Shecky Greene fixation?

Maybe, it occurs to me, as we age from one decade to the next, we stay the same people we always were, unchanged at our core, despite the life experiences that broaden us and the inevitable frailties that, if we live long enough, bring us to our knees.

I can’t speak for other aging boomers, but I, for one, am shocked that my “punk rock” teenage personality — defiant, impatient, consistently outraged (for no particular reason) — still exists, despite my veneer of adult sophistication, long after I assumed it would morph into something between Grampa Simpson and Henry Fonda in “On Golden Pond.”

When I visited my dad last month with the two teenagers who, as toddlers, would climb on his lap and yank his hair?— it seems like just a minute ago?— I could see his eyes light up, just as I remember my own grandfather’s eyes lighting up in similar circumstances when I was a teenager, and which my own grandkids may notice while visiting me at some indeterminate point in the future.

In the end, this isn’t a story about loss or regret, but of fortitude, resilience and acknowledging pain without letting it hijack your relationship.

It’s the story of a Silent Generation survivor who?—?like many of his peers?— strode through life with grace and humility, raised five kids, ran his own business, took things in stride, and never sweated the small stuff?... well, other than specks of carpet dust that inspired manic vacuuming every Sunday at 8 a.m.

My dad, in the end, is the same guy he’s always been, and maybe that’s the lesson.

On a good day, surrounded by loved ones, engaged on a personal level, he’s like Glen Campbell as he turned in note-perfect renditions of “Rhinestone Cowboy” on his final, fateful farewell tour, long after dementia had rendered him touchingly, achingly vulnerable.

With my dad it’s a ping-pong racket, but the feeling is exactly the same.

Joel Rubinoff, longtime Waterloo Record columnist, now writes on Substack (@joelrubinoff), where a version of this column first appeared. Email him at [email protected]

#love #dementia #ageing #heathcare #ageing#alzheimers #dementiaawareness #elderly