A Hundred Shades of Green

Day by day, I was losing my daddy to dementia. What would be left of him?

- By SHAWNELLE ELIASEN, LeClaire, Iowa

PLANTED WITH LOVE Shawnelle with her son Logan at his house in Des Moines, Iowa

Driving along Interstate 80, I was so preoccupied with thoughts of my father that I almost didn't notice the “check engine” light glowing ominously on the dashboard. I'd just dropped off my fourth son at college and had begun the three-hour drive home through the barren Iowa cornfields. I could only guess how long the light had been on. Now ice pelted windshield. Gloomy clouds bruised the horizon. Was I driving into a blizzard? Daddy would have known. He could read the clouds. He was in tune with nature in a way few people I know are. Though not so much anymore. My best bet was to call my oldest son, Logan, and stop at his house half an hour away so I could get the car checked out. He'd know what to do.

Lord, help me get to Logan's before the snow hits, I prayed after clicking off the phone with my son. Logan's voice had calmed me. He was so much like his grandfather. He too could be at one with God's world. But the truth was, my daddy's view had become increasingly clouded by dementia. He'd first begun to struggle with memory loss and confusion a few years ago. He'd forget a name or mistake one of my five boys for another. I tried to pass it off as the normal lapses of aging. Heck, I mixed up their names sometimes! Then he became unsettled in familiar places or worried about things that weren't real, like missing a meeting at the mill he'd retired from 25 years earlier. I always felt as if I could put him back on track with a few careful words.

Then the other day, Mama had an out-of-town medical appointment. Daddy had said he wanted to go with us, but when I arrived to pick them up, my normally punctual father was disheveled, not waiting by the front door in his pressed khaki pants and neat cardigan. "I don't feel well, darlin'," he said. "Will you be okay without me?"