Second-Guessing

I got online to see about a last-minute flight to Wisconsin. I am ambivalent. Not in the current sense, which people take to mean "apathetic"; I mean it in the old school sense of being drawn strongly in two different directions.

Stay? Go? There are three little people who rely on me for day-to-day living if I stay. There are parents and siblings who might be glad if I go. I consider what my husband needs and what our plans are. I consider that I have absolutely no control over when my father passes. This fact is true whether I'm here or in Wisconsin. I consider the nature of Dad's illness and the fact that he may not know me even if I go to speak with him in person. There is nothing lacking in his care. I add nothing to that equation. Mom and my sisters have it completely covered. And yet.... and yet....

I inventory my feelings. I do not want to see him withering away into a shell of a man. I do want to remember him as he was before the Alzheimer's, before the stroke, before this all began. I dug up some pictures from my college albums and was somewhat surprised to see him in that way. Its memory had faded for me.

My Dad was a complete cut-up when people got to know him. To the adolescent boys who dated his daughters, however, he was stoic and stern. Mom could be gracious and hospitable to our suitors, but Dad was stand-offish and non-commital. I'm sure it was a defense mechanism. He had to protect his daughters. He didn't want to be cowed by any young Joe. And, of course, he was once a teenage boy yearning for manhood. He knew better than we what he was up against: testosterone and delusions of immortality.

I could use a measure of that certitude today.