My mother talked about the fall as though it was a freak accident, but I was panic-stricken. My father was still driving! ,Lifelines: Long-Distance Honey,My mother talked about the fall as though it was a freak accident, but I was panic-stricken. My father was still driving!
I was the first one to notice that my father was slipping.
Or at least I was the first one to say it aloud. He himself kept insisting he was fine and everyone around him wanted so badly to believe it that they found ways to explain his every lapse. He left the car running when he came inside? He must have been preoccupied. He made Havdalah instead of Kiddush? Senior moment isn’t that funny? He went to the grocery store for milk and came home with chili peppers instead? We all forget what we went for sometimes don’t we?
My father had always been so vibrant so dignified so capable that no one — least of all my mother — was willing to admit he was getting old. Physically he was still in good shape: He stood straight he walked briskly he even rode his bicycle sometimes. But he was 70-something and even if his body wasn’t showing signs of aging his mind was.
I saw it clearly but no one else did. Maybe it was because I lived in a different city hundreds of miles away and only saw my parents a few times a year. Or maybe it was because I inherited my father’s down-to-earth get-it-done nature while my three siblings were more like my mother: dreamy artistic passive.
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