I will never forget the moment my father’s eyes danced with recognition. One of the last times his bright blue eyes met mine and meant it.
The sun fell in torrents on this magnificent spring day of 2022 and pierced the dozen windows in our living room. It also brightened the light green walls and bright teal kitchen backsplash. Woodpeckers pecked at the gray siding outside, birds chirped within earshot of every room. A tire swing – long unused – hung in the side yard. If I listened closely, I could hear a younger version of myself asking Dad to push me harder. Faster.
The living room television was watching us. Empty. The news was usually broadcast in the morning at that time, if anyone was home. Dad was never here at that time on weekdays. But everything changed when he started showing symptoms of aphasia – yes, like Bruce Willis – which turned out to be a one-in-a-million and always-fatal neurodegenerative disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). ).
He died a few weeks later.
“Dad, why don’t we go through the worksheet?” I insisted. Like I did when I was a kid and needed help with my math homework. My 8th grade math “problem of the week” became OUR problem of the week.
But this time, the worksheet wasn’t mine. It was his. Duties of your speech therapist. His aphasia kept getting worse, not better. He started forgetting things too quickly. The doctor he was is now just a distant memory.
Dad, do you remember your name?
“Hey Dad, what’s your name?”
“Mark,” he said. RIGHT. GOOD.
“That’s right! And my name?
“Brand.” He said it like he was trying to say “David,” but he was defeated. No one prepares you for the moment your parent looks at you and can’t remember their name. they selected. I had experienced it for the first time a few days earlier on another beautiful spring day, during a walk in a park near my childhood home. I asked him my name after walking around the big pond, having been warned that he might not remember it. I didn’t look at my reflection in the pool. I couldn’t bear the horror that would reflect back on me.
“No, my name is David,” I stammered. “And your wife’s name?”
“Brand.” Not yet. Lisie. Her name is Lisie. Your wife of almost 31 years.
“No. What color is this folder? I asked, frustrated.
“Red.”
“Yes!” My blue eyes lit up like wave pools and met his. He looked at me, but almost through me. I don’t fully register my presence, but I don’t miss it either. Like he was stuck between worlds.
The speech therapist gave us this “red” tip. For some reason – which I’ll look for another time – asking him the color of that red folder motivates him. Brings him back to earth, wherever his mind is at this point.
Maybe he’ll get better, I thought, every time he succeeds. But then I asked him to name objects around the house – a remote control, a blanket – and we’re back to square one. Repeat the name “Mark” or the color “red”.
His favorite song
“Dad, why don’t we listen to music?” Maybe “Take five?” » » He shrugged his shoulders. I don’t know if he heard my question, but whatever it was, it gave us both pause.
“Take Five,” by Paul Desmond, is his favorite song. A jazz essential. I scrolled down to my Spotify app and started playing it.
The drumbeats began. Then the saxophone came on stage, the star of the show. Dad played professional jazz in the Catskill Mountains of New York many years before and wouldn’t let anyone forget it. He also played clarinet in a trio with a flautist and a violinist for decades. He would often bring out one or both instruments for family gatherings like Passover, for informal recitals. These memories invaded my mind, the musical notes jumped like a plague of frogs.
“Da-da-da-duh-dah-”
Wait.
He was singing ? The same man who can’t pronounce my name, my mother’s name, sometimes not his own name, knew the tune to “Take Five?”
He wasn’t smiling. But he sang. Somewhere, in the recesses of his brain that the CJD prion proteins were destroying, he remembered. I remember playing “Let My People Go” at the Passover Seder with unnecessary (but beautiful) jazzy trills. I remember visiting jazz clubs across New York City, probably hearing “Take Five” over and over again. I remember being reminded to play the clarinet myself even though I definitely hadn’t practiced it, not once, even though my parents paid for private lessons.
He looked at me this time. Really to me. How was this possible? Why was this possible?
Did that mean something?
What I think of “Take Five” now
I wish it meant something. Maybe he was getting better, maybe the music would somehow shock his brain into working properly again. That he could say “David” without hesitation like he did for almost 30 years of my life.
What I understand is that CJD hadn’t completely sucked the life out of him yet. Of course, the rapid decline was in full swing, but it was also moving in slow motion. In moments like this, both minute and poignant, melancholy and beautiful, terrible and true. Dad was dying but he was also still Dad. My dad.
We took a break after the song finished. His eyes returned to that stuck spot. I filmed his buzzing, though, and I’m glad I did, so I can get back to it now. Are tears stinging my eyes? Yes. But two years later, I press “Take Five” and think of him. Sometimes I hear it in the world and imagine it humming. Or better yet, play that saxophone.
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