When my mother died in 1984, Dad saw the light. He’d been asleep in the chair next to Mom’s hospital bed when she passed on. My sister Jo Ann was sitting with her as she left this place for the next. When Jo Ann woke Dad it took just a moment. In that moment he saw that bright light that some speak of. I’ve always believed that he watched Mom walk on. It was earlier that day that he’d gone to the chapel and changed his prayer. Before that he’d always prayed that Mom’s cancer be healed. That day he accepted that her time was done and prayed that she be at peace.

I’ve often wondered about the connections between the physical and the spiritual worlds. How are we called? How does the connection speak?

Now, my Dad is 91 and his mind is changing. The way he speaks of the world is different. Dad has always seen himself as less intelligent because he didn’t finish school. In today’s educational system, I wonder if he’d been taught to read differently and had a different outcome. Dad grew up, in his early years, speaking Luxembourgish at home and didn’t speak English as his primary language until he was at school. It had to be tough to step in to a learning system and try to learn in a whole new language as a little boy who just wanted to be out on the farm running around and helping his dad. Then his dad left. Grandpa died in August of 1935. It had to be traumatic for Dad. I remember the story. They were out in the field. Grandpa was back on the hay wagon and Dad was driving the horses. Grandpa called out to him “Slow those horses down! You’re killing me back here!” Later that day Grandpa had what seems to have been an unrelated appendices attack. He was taken to the hospital and never returned. Grandpa was Dad’s hero. I wonder how that experience continued to impact who Dad became.

I know that some years later Dad was working on a farm. He skipped work one day. On that day the farmer’s child was playing where they shouldn’t have been and was hit by a truck and killed. Dad spoke about that event with sorrow and guilt. He told us how had he gone to work he would have been in that truck. He always believed that he would have seen the child and they wouldn’t have been struck and killed. There’s nothing to prove that one way or another. It’s just something he carries with him.

I’m thinking about this all as Dad’s mind changes because of some of the things he’s saying. He mentioned several times that he needs to go back to work, that he’s been gone too long. He gets worried about not getting to his job or sometimes he talks about getting back to school.

I find myself wondering if he’s unconsciously planning for his own journey. Is this how he’s preparing to go back to be with those he used to know? It’s a land of confusion. He doesn’t know this world fully anymore, nor does he belong to the next yet.

He’s not the same as he once was, but having this long process of goodbye tells me how gifted we are. Right now his dementia is a largely a gentle confusion. He gets lost and sometimes frightened, but not angry much yet and he generally knows family and friends or if he doesn’t he at least knows that they’re good people and probably someone he did know.

I don’t get to see him much, living a state away. But, he still recognizes me on the phone and other family see him almost every day. Sometimes I am near tears after talking with him when he’s confused or having a hard time with his phone and struggling to hear me. But, I feel so grateful, so proud to be his daughter. He is, to me, the symbol of strength and so wise.

As his mind changes, it seems more words of Luxembourgish may be slipping in again too. He always said he couldn’t speak it, but he could. He’d slip into it with friends. Now, sometimes a word slips in here or there to describe another’s behaviors. I don’t know the language at all, but can get the idea when he speaks of someone who talks too much or something like that.

The mind is interesting place. It is both sad and a great and joyous gift watching Dad’s mind taking him back to his younger days. I’m not sure that this story has gone anywhere, but it needed to be written to help me think things through. Thank you for reading.