Papa?

This past May we spent two weeks here in Atlanta for Aunt Tricia's wedding. On the first night, Grandpa could not find the small blue bag where he had packed his medicines. Search, search, search all through the bedroom where he and Grandma were staying and nothing. The next morning I found it on the kitchen counter crammed behind all sorts of other miscellany that accumulates quickly when eight extra people descend on a house. He got upset and wanted to know why someone hid his medicine.

A few weeks ago I drove to the Orlando Airport to pick up Grandpa who had been out of town attending a funeral. After an hour's worth of driving around, sitting in the cellphone parking lot taking pictures of pelicans, and getting nonsensical information from him as to where he was in the airport and what he was doing, I parked the car and went in to get him. We ended up leaving the airport two hours after his plane had arrived. A miscommunication, he said.

Earlier this year, before I got my van, Grandpa agreed one day to drive Blue and me to a doctor's appointment. He got into the driver's seat of his old Mercedes and waited while I stood behind him buckling Blue into his car seat. Suddenly, while I was still ducked in the back fiddling with the harnesses, the car started to slowly back out of the garage. I screamed. Grandpa looked back at me, chuckled and said, "It's a good thing you have such a loud voice." In the twenty seconds it had been since he got into the driver's seat he had forgotten Blue and I were there.

Grandpa has Alzheimer's. We'd known for some time that his memory was not the best but he is 84 years old. And besides, even I lose my keys, forget the date, and mix-up Blue and Swoosh's names from time to time. But this is not just old age forgetfulness. A couple weeks before we left Florida, his doctor told him to turn all paperwork responsibility and his car keys over to Grandma. And if he had any words of importance to say to anyone in his life, any thing he needed written down, anything of importance to accomplish to do it now before it was too late. Grandpa didn't sleep a wink for days after that.

It saddens me terribly to see this happening to such an amazing man. But I am so grateful for the ten months that the triplets got to experience their Papa everyday. His silliness, his French lullabies, his louder than loud organ playing.

Grandpa helped to pack our van the day we left, pulling out a ladder to tie the cribs down to the roof of the van. When I came out to the car after one last check of the house, he was bent into the back talking to the triplets. He waved when he was done, turning away from me so I wouldn't see him cry.

Since we've been in Atlanta this week, the triplets call out "Papa?" whenever they see a white haired older gentleman. And I know he is the one they remember and miss most of all.

I had wanted to leave for Atlanta after Thanksgiving so that grandma and grandpa would not have to make the long drive to Atlanta in a car that is on its last wheels, spending money for gas that they don't have. But my worry about the triplets' safety in that house that was never meant to house active toddlers had reached fever pitch. And grandma said finally she could not help to take care of three little ones and a quickly fading old man, too. So my sister and I will foot the bill for the Thanksgiving meal and all the trimmings and my brothers will get together and see what they can do about getting Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Dyna up here for what I hope and pray will not be the last Thanksgiving that Papa is Papa.