Note: the following is an excerpt from a story in which a woman’s father has dementia. He has wandered out of the house and she finds him in the backyard, slowly gathering pinecones. It is a moment where she truly realizes that her father’s dementia has progressed, and she needs more help in caring for him….
“Finally, she walked around to the side of the house, and there was her father—out on the grass under the tilted pine tree. The old man was shuffling across the grass with a kind of weary determination. His plaid house shoes were wet and he drug each foot slowly across the morning grass, leaving a flat trail of blades behind him. He paused and then bent with an awful ricketiness, reaching for something in front of him.
“Hold on,” Hattie whispered into the phone. Her brother asked why and she said again, “Hold on.”
Her father plucked from the grass a small brown pinecone the size of an egg and held it by one of its pointed ends, carrying it between thumb and pincer like a mouse’s tail. He hardly straightened his back as he walked toward the tall cylindrical compost bin that sat between the pine and plum tree. And when he got there he rest his free hand on the rim of the bin and slowly raised his other hand over the edge. He dangled the pine cone over the center for a moment, then released his pinch and peered over the rim as if he were watching a penny fall to the bottom of a wishing well. He stood looking for a long minute then he turned, head down, and slowly bent for another pinecone. His knees barely hinged as he reached for it, and the physics of his posture made no sense. But the old man stood up again, made a few slow shuffles back to the compost bin, and dropped another penny down the well.”
….to be continued…
by Michelle Kicherer of www.BananaPitch.com