My father, a retired attorney, was succumbing to his Parkinson’s related dementia, and was pretty much confined to bed in a nursing home. Grim, beige, in a town about 6 hours from my home. My mother had died about 13 months before, after 60 years of marriage. My brother lived in his town, and knew and trusted the management of the nursing home. I was able to visit over Thanksgiving weekend, and spent time with him, both with other family and by myself.
On the morning I was due to drive home, I stopped in to see him one last time. He wanted to know when he was leaving. I said I wasn’t sure, and asked where he was going. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”
I said that as far as I knew, he was going home to the place he loved best: the Indiana sand dunes. He could set up his sketch pad and his easel on the hill above the water, overlooking the beach. The sun would be shining, the waves were gentle, and Mom was standing knee-deep in the shallows, talking with friends after her swim. His children were building sand castles and calling to him to dig them a boat in the wet sand (One of his wonderful magic ways with children as to dig into the sand at the edge of the water and create a boat or a car for them to sit in and drive).
I described his favorite stretch of dunes, remembering for him and myself all the beauty and wonder of spending summers there. When I ran down, he said, “Let’s go. I’m ready.” A little while later, I said good-bye and left for breakfast with my family. I told them what I’d said, and suggested that they build on that when he asked them. They did, for the next couple of weeks. And then he died.
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