self portrait of ‘fish’- Habs fan extraordinaire artstudioforchildren
The art camper I nicknamed “fish” for her love of water (this was my nickname at camp for the same reason) -with the bravest outer shell, was tender last night with me.
” I miss my mom” she said, voice cracking. She has not been away from her much and never this long.
I said “I understand. I miss my dad”
Gosh. I don’t even know where that came from.
She looked at me quizzically.
“When did you see him last?”
I said ‘in June or several years ago’
She asked lots of great and deep questions and I realized that it has been a long time that I have needed to explain Dementia in child like terms. My children were raised on his slow fading.
“He was once this man’- and I held my hands in the air the way you would if you were holding a beach ball-‘ funny, smart, tall, strong, fit, lean, good-looking and sassy. And a 1000 other things too. Then after he got sick he became a smaller version of himself-my hands travelling to the right in an imaginary line with the hands pretending to cup a smaller and smaller ball as they travelled.
Now all the campers were around us- listening intently, heads tilted.
I turned to the one with the youngest sib-“We begin life like your baby brother with no ability to fend for ourselves, we can’t walk or talk or feed ourselves – he is travelling backwards to where James started off at the beginning. His birth.
Wow, this is getting deep.
“What kinds of things did he forget?”
“He loved to swim like you and me, fish, and one day while swimming, he completely forgot how. It was sad because I think he was aware of it. We got him out and it was fine. But he never swam again. When I swim now I do it for him and for me.”
“Can they make him better?”
“Nope”
“That is really sad” they said.
“Yes. Very.”
My dad was a tough customer expecting quite a bit from us. Sometimes I wish he could see me now fully because this is the best version of me I have been yet and it would be good to tell him what I can do. He never saw my strongest strong. He would say with a twinkle ” I am really proud of you, Nance. You are the best” and he would mean it and it would float me for months or years maybe. And then we would go down for a swim. Because we could.