Flying at Moffett (NUQ) with POTUS, Dad and Navy

My father and I at Moffett Field in 1987, 

getting ready for the only civil aviation flight I took with him.

Sometimes a single photograph in our lives will remind us of a tale about a day that had a sweetness to it. Glancing through an album in recent days, I came across the picture (above) taken on the only day I ever flew in a plane in which my father was the pilot. 

Finding Lost Treasures in a Family Home and Other Lessons

The home I grew up in is in Los Altos, California. My father built our first home across the street when he and my mother first moved to California. We moved into this house when I was nine. My parents lived here until their deaths, three months apart in 2009-2010.

There is a cliche that says "life is what happens to you while you are making other plans." The saying is hackneyed, but true enough, since so many of the things that play a significant role in our lives are the things we never planned for.

Treasures Of Old Photos Help Us Time Travel

My father, in a photo of the 38th Engineers on Ascension Island. I have a lot of photos of Ascension, but I had never seen this one. 2nd Lt. William Ashley Chapman is in the back row, sixth from right. 

A Colorado man whose father served with mine on Ascension Island during World War II, found a blog I keep about the men who built Wideawake Field. Michael Murray sent me the above photo, which made me ponder the importance of these photos of our loved ones, especially those who we have lost who served our nation.  Here's a link to my thoughts on "Wideawake Engineers."

Click for Wideawake Blog Post

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How the Colonel Got His Groove

This is a copy of a piece I just produced for another blog called "Wideawake Engineers." I thought my general readers might enjoy it, especially as a tribute to Independence Day. Men of my father's generation made this week possible. Thank you all for your service.

William Ashley Chapman on Ascension Island in 1988.

I am working on an article about my father's unit on Ascension Island during World War II and I realize the one thing I haven't written much about here is that he returned to the island in 1988. He wanted to go back in 1982--for the fortieth anniversary of the completion of Wideawake Field--and started pestering anyone and everyone he could. He had to do that, because there were no civilian flights to Ascension in the 1980s.

He was a retired officer, a "full bird Colonel" as they say in the Army, so he could get people in the military to take his calls. But after a short chat any enlisted clerk could tell this old guy didn't have the one thing needed to get him there, i.e. pull. Ascension Island wasn't for tourists. It was a priority base. I think a flight there is unlikely. Sir.

From Decoration Day to Memorial Day: A Time We Honor Those Who Keep Us Safe and Free

A vintage postcard honoring Decoration Day, which was the early version of the Memorial Day we celebrate this weekend.

I'll be going to Alta Mesa Memorial Park this weekend to freshen the flags at my father's grave. William Ashley Chapman graduated with an ROTC commission from Auburn in June 1941 and was called to active duty in July 1941. After that, he was in World War II "for the duration" as they used to say. For him, the war lasted almost five full years.

Then he served honorably in the Army Reserves much of the rest of his life, retiring as a full Colonel in the 1970s, at which point he was given Retired Reserve status that allowed him to be called up again if he were needed. "It was the greatest honor of my life," he wrote his commanding officer, "to serve my country in the U.S. Army."

Remembering William Ashley Chapman: December 22, 1919--March 26, 2010

 

Half Moon Bay on a late Saturday aftenoon in about 1955. Even in the summer the Pacific is really cold and my Dad is probably trying to warm me up.

It was three years ago today that my father died. The days around his death were the hardest of my life: he was in a coma and I could no longer comfort him. But I was able to spend the last year of his life helping him. That was a blessing and a privilege and I am thankful every day for that time.

As he lay dying, I knew in my heart it was only a sad time for me. He was 90 years old and very ill. My mother had died a few months before. But I was selfish and wanted him to stay a little longer.

Comparing Them to my Father?

Shoup Park, Los Altos. I think my father was about 85 when this photo was taken.

I've mentioned that I think about my father quite a bit in March, as this is the month he died, two years ago. It was so difficult--seeing him approach the end, and feeling so helpless. The last food he ate was some ice cream I scrounged for him at the nursing home, just before he fell into a coma. "Yum yum," he said softly, "that's good."

Such an appropriate last meal for Dad. Next to pancakes, ice cream was his favorite food.

Situation Normal All Fouled Up! A Vets Day Tribute to the Enduring American Soldier

Capt. Ashley Chapman (1919-2010) on Ascension Island, July 1943.

Robin writes: In honor of Veterans Day in the U.S., I thought I might share with you a piece my father wrote that was published in the San Jose Mercury News, August 22, 1996. It explains, in its own way, why the word "snafu" was coined by the always creative American GI.

"The Army Tradition: Don't Change a Thing"
by
Col. William Ashley Chapman

"My Dad was a great guy, a veteran of World War I. He didn't like the Army much because of the ever-present confusion and told me I would do well to keep out of it. His example was that when he reported for duty in 1917, they put him in a line, measured him and took his civvies.

The supply sergeant looked at his measurements and said, "We are all out of your size." He handed him a bag of clothing and continued, "Take this stuff and if it doesn't fit, swap with someone." Dad said it was like that all the time.

However, when I attended Auburn University, I decided to obtain a commission in the Army Reserve. Graduating in 1941, as you might imagine, it was no time at all until I received my orders to report for one year of active duty "unless sooner relieved by the President." Four and a half years later, I was finally released to the Army Reserve, where I remained until retirement.

Along the way, I attended the Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and found it to be a superbly run institution. On graduation day, after having received detailed instruction as to how to accept the diploma from the general, we lined up to go into the auditorium for the exercise.

When I sat down, I observed that my name was on the edge of my seat. I remarked to my seat mate how my dad, long deceased, would have been impressed by this precision. This was just not like 1917!

When it came my turn to go up and received my diploma, I performed flawlessly, but as I took the rolled up certificate, the general leaned toward me and whispered: "This is not your diploma. You'll have to swap with the officer who has it."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Yes Dad, you were right after all!"

William Ashley Chapman
San Jose Mercury News
August 22, 1996

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An Emotional Visit with Al the Barber

Al's Barber Shop in Los Altos, California, painted by artist Patricia Howard in 1999.

It took me eight months to gather my courage to go see my father's friend, Al Galedridge, or "Al the Barber" as he is known hereabouts. It is difficult for me to believe it has been eight months since I lost my Dad.

I was afraid I would cry when I saw Al. And I did anyway. But Al didn't seem to mind.

Robin, Al Galedridge, and Ashley Chapman, about 2004.

My Dad was Al's customer for 64 years, ever before there was an Al's barbershop. The two World War II veterans met when my father was living in Palo Alto and Al was working for another barber on University Avenue, not far from Stanford University. The two men moved with their families to nearby Los Altos at about the same time and the friendship continued. I was born after the move and remember Al so well, looking up at him from the vantage point of a tiny child.

The lawn is mowed and Dad isn't wearing a tie, so he and Robin (she's the little one) may be getting ready to go see Al the barber.

On Saturdays, when my mother was tired of my sister and me, Dad would take us with him to the barbershop. To me it was an exotic place filled with the scent of hair oil, the sounds of men laughing and (in those days) smoking, and with strange-looking men's specialty magazines scattered about. There were cars on the cover of these magazine, and guns, and other such male-type things.

I was a little intimidated by the place, but Al was kind to children and always kept Tootsie Rolls around, which he gave to my sister and me when he had finished up with our father. Later, I went to high school with Al's daughter.

Over the years, Dad and Al talked politics and investing during my Dad's weekly visits for a trim. The story goes that Louie, one of Al's barbers, was able to retire early on all the investments he made based on the gossip he heard in this prime shop in Silicon Valley--with HP, IBM, Lockheed, Intel, Cisco, Google, and eBay all nearby, and each one with executives who needed frequent haircuts.

Dad and Al did okay too, though both kept working. Al, six years younger than my father, continues to work on Friday and Saturday. The two men knew each other such a long time, I wrote a story about their friendship for the local newspaper in 2009 in what turned out to be the last year of my father's life.

Al cutting my father's hair in a photo from a story I wrote for the Los Altos Town Crier in 2009.

Dad's hair had gone this gorgeous color of white over the years, and Al's hair had disappeared entirely. "Does that every bother you?" I asked for the story I was writing. "Oh, only every day," Al said and laughed.

Today, I stopped by, finally, eight months after Dad's funeral, with a box of donuts for Al and his customers. I talked to Al about Dad and I cried a little, though I tried not to show it. Al always asks me when I'm going to go back into television because he was one of my fans when I worked at nearby KRON-TV in San Francisco. I guess he assumes the world of television news is still clamoring for my talent. I told him I thought I might do some free-lancing, which actually is one of my plans, and that made Al happy.

Al didn't come to Dad's funeral and I know why he didn't. He is old enough to have lost a lot of customers and, at age 84, he tries to live in the present. I understand.

When Dad was near the end, I called Al and he came up to my Dad's nursing home to give Dad what turned out to be his last haircut. Al always treated my father as if he was as fit and well as he was when they first met, and my father truly enjoyed having Al cut his hair. It was a familiar star in Dad's universe and it felt good. It felt familiar. It is difficult for me to recall that last time they were together, just a few weeks before my Dad died.

But I finally sucked it up and went to see Al. Al who has known me since I was a baby. I'm glad I made the visit. It was like going to see family. And that felt so good.

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Entering the No Brag Zone

General D.C. Helix with Colonel William Ashley Chapman (in civvies), 1994, at the 30th anniversary celebration of the U.S. Army's 351st Civil Affairs Command. Col. Chapman was then president of the 351st Alumni Association.

Since the death of my mother--and the sorting out of things in the family home--I've learned so many things about my father that I never knew. The photo above is an example. I never knew that when he retired as a full colonel from the 351st Civil Affairs Command, he was elected president of its Alumni Association. I was working on the East Coast then and his letters were filled with news about the latest church picnic and the size of his tomato crop. Sure; he was president of a big group of retired, high-ranking military people. But he found it unnecessary to mention it.

I also learned he gave tours to school children when they visited the Water Quality Department at the City of Palo Alto, where he worked as an engineer. Dad, giving a talk? That stumped me, since he only ever said about four things at the dinner table each night including: "Bless this food. Amen." and "Please pass the margarine." But now I know he hosted students at his Water Quality Plant (aka sewage treatment facility) because I found a picture to prove it. It is from a City of Palo Alto press release:

The photo caption on the back of the picture reads: "Ashley Chapman, city engineer, shows Greg Hayward and guide Gwen Taylor how sewage unit works.

Did he inspire the kids with his talk of primary, secondary and tertiary sewage treatment? I wonder if young Greg Hayward is still around and if he became an engineer too?

I discovered my father was elected to two engineering honor societies in his senior year at Auburn: Tau Beta Pi (1940) and Pi Tau Sigma (1940). Never mentioned that either.

He came home from the war with five medals, the last one, the Asiatic Pacific Medal with 1 Bronze Star. "Oh everybody got that stuff," he told us when we found out.

I found the grades he earned at San Jose State when he received his Master of Science Degree in Civil Engineering in 1972. He got all As and Bs. We never even celebrated with a cake, nor attended the ceremony. And he earned the degree while working full time and never missed a class or a day of work.

I discovered he won 29 medals as a sharpshooter on the U.S. Army Pistol Team between 1956 and 1971, winning all first place ribbons and a few seconds shooting with .45s and .22s. The trophies and ribbons and patches were stuffed in a shoe box and never displayed in our house.

In the years before he retired from the Army Reserves he graduated from Command and General Staff College, at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal (December 1971) and the Meritorious Service Medal (April 1973). Nobody at our house framed those citations, though Dad did wear the medals on his chest as per Army regulations.

Oh, and I learned he was once threatened with a gun while on the job as an engineer. I found this in an article dated November 1, 1983 from the San Jose Mercury News headlined: What's Smoke Doing HERE? It read:

"When smoke billowing from under the toilet frightened a Palo Alto woman as she showered recently, her husband did what many husbands would do: he threatened to shoot a city crew chief who showed up to tell the couple the smoke was part of a test to detect leaks in local sewers. "There was no injury or damage," said Ash Chapman, project engineer for the sewer program. "It's understandable that she got a little bit frightened.""

Good thing the husband didn't know the project engineer was a dead shot with a .45.

All of these things--both funny and accomplished--are part and parcel of Dad's life. But he said nothing about them. Told no amusing stories featuring himself. Wrote my sister and me no letters filled with tales of his outstanding, hilarious, heroic achievements.

He let my mother stand in the spotlight. He watched quietly from the sidelines spending his time doing exactly what he wanted to do, exactly as he wanted to do it. The fun for him seems to have been in the doing and in having things come out precisely. He seemed not to need or like any congratulations at the end of the day.

When he built his first home in Los Altos, he keep a meticulous record of his hours worked on each day of the two years it took to complete the home. At the end his hours in the house totaled 369: the adding machine slip of the total is included in the small notebook. He never showed anyone the notebook. I never laid eyes on it until last week. But it was important to him, because he saved it in his bureau drawer. All these years.

Which means that even though he often looked like the man who only held Mom's coat, he knew that his quiet life went much deeper. If you didn't know this, he simply didn't care.

Dad, doing that coat holding thing, in this case doing it with a car door. The picture's focus is on Mom.

And this is bittersweet. My sister and I wish we had not had to wait until several weeks before his death to learn how truly superior a man was our father. His silence about himself and what he did also left us with little knowledge or direction about how to handle the family trust he has now left to us.

Did we fail in our efforts to reach him? Or was he too busy living his inward life to be a deep part of ours?

We are left with a mystery. On this side, the story of a man who excelled and was recognized and admired. And on the other, two children who wonder what part they played, if any, in the plot.

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"We will stay in this house until we die ..."

"Don't get around much anymore."

We are having a huge debate in our family, about what is the best thing to do for Dad. This is happening all over America now and has in the past and will in the future. With his ability to walk failing, with his ability to read our notes slipping away (it is the only way we can communicate with him because he is deaf), with his interest in food beginning to fade, and with eight or ten medicines a day to deliver to him at the proper times--should he be in skilled nursing care?

His doctor gave my mother a firm lecture last week that he does. "Mrs. Chapman," he said, "I know your heart says no. But you must make this decision with your head. Your husband may fall, and if he falls now--its over. Please, please think this over carefully. Mr. Chapman needs to be in nursing care."

I'm with the doctor on this. Or am most of the time. I know Dad isn't safe at home, regardless of the 24-hour care, for which we pay a fortune. The job is too complex and the house has no ramp, no hospital bed, no lift chair, no comfortable couch from which it is easy for him to rise. Ive asked Mom if she would make these changes and remove the dangerous rug in the kitchen and she told me, after our visit to the doctor last week: "No! I'm still in charge of this house. That is a stupid doctor. Your father and I will stay in this house until we die."

Your first instinct is to say; "Okay, let's get to it. Shall I strangle you now and bury you in the backyard?" But you take a deep breath and realize that in her place you might want to do the same thing. Who wants to leave home? Have a spouse leave home and be left alone?

But what is best for him? He is confused these days, but he knows he's at home and he knows my mother is there with him. Sometimes, it is true, he thinks she is running a boarding house there, but it doesn't seem to bother him. He thinks she's amazing to be able to manage it all. Once, he asked me to show him the annual report of the boarding house so he could see how it was working out.

In nursing care his medicine would be dispensed more carefully and on a more regular basis. He would have nurses on hand and appropriate equipment to ensure he did not fall. He would have a visit from a doctor on a regular basis that would not require the now-painful work of getting Dad to the car, into the car, out of the car, into a wheel chair and up to the doctor's waiting room, each move creating a risk we might injure him.

Mom is adamant right now so it doesn't matter what I think. But my sister and I have decided that we will have to step in and incur the wrath of one and the sorrow of the other if we feel either of them is in imminent danger.

Ashley and Faye at McDonalds just a few months ago. We don't take him there anymore because it is just too hard for him to get around. I bring his favorite hotcake order home to him, in the famous Mcdonalds take-out bag.

This is a very difficult line to walk. You want the best for a loved one and there is a solution out there that you should take/make use of. But having him miserable for the last weeks or months or years of his life: is that a good solution? Or would he adjust, and live a decent life there and gain some weight because he would have more food available to him than he does at home. Mom has an eating disorder and still at the age of 88 and the weight of 98 pounds, counts their calories. Dad's weight has dropped 9 pounds in the last few months.

Meanwhile I'm the one that needs Valium and a rest home. I wonder if I'll live to care for them, or get an ulcer, have a heart attack, lose what is left of my mind, and die of the stress.

What to do, what to do? My sister and I wait and hope the answer will come to us, like an epiphany, and like an epiphany we hope for a little Divine help while we're at it.

The Beauty of the Tangible

My father as a toddler, in a photo taken by the Boyett Studio, 2008 Second Avenue, Birmingham, Alabama, about 1920.

While my sister was here, she swept our mother off to run some errands and I had time to sift through a box of old family photos as my father sat nearby and talked and dozed. In his mind that day, he was back in Alabama, where he was raised, and the stash of photos I found confirmed to him that his old home on Palmetto Drive, in Homewood, Alabama, was near enough for us to visit.

He talked about sneaking under his new house, when he was eight years old and the house was being built, and finding a neighbor girl had sneaked in behind him. He kissed Loula May that day, he said, though he knew he wasn't supposed to. He held up an old photo, and told me about the funny shoes he had to wear the day the photo was taken. The present is fading for Dad, but the past is very clear.

The short pants and the not-so-favorite shoes.

I wonder if generations to come will have the pleasure of holding old photos in their hands? So many of them now are saved as digital files, which is very convenient. But you can't hold a digital file between your fingers nor enjoy the tangible clues that a photo on paper provides.

Details from paper photo frames, surrounding circa 1920s photos of my father.

The old photos of Dad as a child are beautifully set in old graphic paper frames, and there are a number of them that catalogue his youth. Baby pictures, pictures of him at about age five, and then the pictures that show the growing maturity of a lively young boy and then a gangly young man.

One of them was in a frame behind glass and touching it reminded me that my grandfather Chapman was a very heavy smoker. The picture seemed obscured behind a haze and when I took the photo out to clean the glass I found it coated in a sticky layer of nicotine. My grandfather died of heart disease at the age of 57, just a few years before I was born. My father never spoke of him, until recently. Now his father's death brings tears, as if he is mourning a death that just happened.

We don't have any of these studio portraits of my mother. Her family was having a tougher time in Spokane, Washington, surviving the Great Depression and there was no extra money to spend on studio portraits of the the four Latta children. Dad's father, on the other hand, was more prosperous. Though he himself had achieved only a high school graduation certificate, he was already planning to send both his son and daughter to Auburn University, from which they both graduated.

Another photo, is one my father had taken during World War II when he was on leave from Ascension Island, at an "R and R" station in Recife, Brazil. It is a photo that was printed, as they sometimes where in those days, on a postcard. It wasn't sent that way, though, because it was not written on or postmarked. Holding it, you see the stamp of the processor, written in Portuguese on the back: "Foto Lux."

My father, on leave during World War II, in a photo taken in Brazil.

Here you see a dutiful son, away from home in a terrible war, having his picture taken on leave to send to his parents. His letter arrived and they took the photo from its envelope, and held it like a treasure. They had not seen him in two years. Carefully, they put it behind glass in a frame, where his father could see it as he paced, and smoked, and worried, and prayed that his son would come home from war safe and well.

My father dozed. I held the photo. Taken sixty-five years ago, it was now a treasure to me; for, though I will one day go to him, he will not come back to me again.

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Los Altos Newspaper Salutes A Sixty-Three Year Tonsorial Friendship

My father began having his hair cut by Al Galedrige in Palo Alto, California in 1946. Conveniently for both, both men moved to Los Altos in 1950 and as of 2009 they are still customer and barber and still long-time friends.

The Los Altos Town Crier ran my story on this friendship in its April 8, 2009 edition. And why not? Its a relationship that has outlasted many marriages!

I've listed the link to the article below and you can click to the Town Crier Web Site to read it. Be sure and come back here to enjoy the rest of the photos (below) that didn't make it into the paper.

The Link is:

Ashley Chapman in the Los Altos Town Crier


Here's Al in his World War II uniform, just a few years before he and my father met at the barber shop.

Al's ship, on which the teenage sailor survived the battle for Iwo Jima, though the ship was badly damaged.

Dad on Ie Shima, where he was awarded a Bronze Star. (But that was before I knew him.)


And here's Dad (also before we met) in about 1948, standing on the lot he and Mom bought on Echo Drive (then called Clark Avenue) in Los Altos. Al the barber bought his own lot in Los Altos at about the same time.

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Memories of Old Dad: Loving the Dad of Today

We, as humans, are so much inclined to judge a person by how he looks, that we spend most of our lives misjudging the people we meet. This is probably in our DNA: we meet to mate, to fight, and to hunt as our ancestors did, long before Freud explained to us the inner meaning of all our curious behaviors.

My father is so very handsome, I'm sure he spent most of his life surprising people by not being at all what they expected him to be: that is, if they expected him to be suave, charming, sophisticated and as elegant as he looked.

Look at that picture of him with his Jaguar XKE. He looks like an ad from Country Living or Gentleman's Quarterly. And I think I've explained that he wasn't like that at all. He was a serious nerd, in the nicest meaning of that word.

Now, with his disease, there is so much of his life he does not remember and the nerd part of him has kind of faded away. But he still remembers that Jaguar! Not because it was elegant, or exclusive, or expensive-looking (naturally he bought it from a guy for just a few thousand dollars and restored it himself) but because of its engine. That is after all, the root of the word of his profession: engineer.

"That car was really hard to drive and I had to work on it all the time to keep it running," he told me the other day, remembering the Jag as if he'd just let go of it recently. "But when you took it out on the freeway, I had to work hard to keep myself from getting a ticket. That car was really fast." And he smiled, remembering it.

I told him about the bumper sticker I had seen on an old Jag that read: All of the parts falling off this car are of the finest English craftsmanship. He laughed and said, "That was the Jag. But she really could go."

Cars, airplanes, trucks--anything with an engine--always interested my Dad. He actually liked working on them himself, even though he always could have afforded having someone else do it for him. Once, he was working on a Ford Thunderbird we owned and he seriously cut two of his fingers. Thoughtful and kind as he was, he held his fingers together with his other hand and went to a neighbor and asked to be driven to the hospital. He didn't want to frighten my mother. When he was settled at the Emergency Room, the neighbor then came over and told my mother. When Mom arrived at the ER to check on him, her face was so white they almost admitted her instead of my Dad.

We were at the doctor recently for my Dad's three-month checkup and after the doctor had told him how healthy he was--blood pressure, blood oxygenation, weight, all the rest--he asked the doctor if it might be okay for him to drive again. My mother and I looked at each other with seriously raised eyebrows.

"No driving," his doctor wrote on a pad for my now-totally deaf, Alzheimer's afflicted father.

"Well, I knew you were going to say that," said my Dad, "but I thought I should at least ask."

When I told the story recently about having the firemen take my father upstairs to my apartment, and the confusion that resulted, my sister said it made her sad, because the Old Dad is gone.

Well, she's only right in part, I think. And anyway: some things about the Old Dad were somewhat challenging. I remember very distinctly how the Old Dad once gave one of my boyfriends a tour of the City of Palo Alto Sewage Treatment Plant, primary, secondary and tertiary systems included, and how I wanted to disappear into San Francisco Bay as he discussed how the effluent was treated, in colorful detail. That was the Old Dad, all right.

And the one we have now hasn't left that guy behind entirely. He still remembers the engine power of his old Jaguar XKE, and how it felt when you shifted it into fourth gear and it leaped ahead on the freeway.

And dementia or not, he still wants that feeling again and still wants to drive a car, God forbid. Fortunately he never mentions the sewage treatment plant, which he helped design and where he spent the last part of his career. But he still remembers he loves us, something the Old Dad was much more reticent about than he was about sewage. I didn't make it over to see him yesterday, because a friend of mine is very ill, and today Mom called to say Dad wanted to know if I was okay and wanted me to come over as soon as possible.

For every time in life there are compensations. I miss the Old Dad too. But I'm learning to love the New Dad just as much for whatever time we have left to love him.



I had a new camera one Christmas and got Dad to pose for these pictures. He looked so happy--not always a look you saw on Dad's face.

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Weeping Over an Oil Change: Welcome to Alzheimer's Disease

My father, back when he kept his cars in perfect condition, and really was a car expert.
I try to make my father's battle with this horrible dementia disease as funny as I can because it is funny sometimes, and laughing about it helps to keep away the tears. Today, for example, he woke up with a paranoid obsession about his car. He told me there was a conspiracy of the "enlisted men" against the "officers" to not care for his car properly, and since my sister's husband was a Marine enlisted man, he was sure his son-in-law was in on the conspiracy along with "that other husband."

"But I don't have a husband," I told him.

"Well, you clearly know more about this than I do," he said and on that particular subject I have to say I am the sole expert.

But the car oil change-conspiracy-obsession ceased to be funny when we picked up my sister at the airport this morning and all he would talk about was how we had to have the oil changed. We looked for the service report and saw that it had been changed in October and since my parents drive about 10 miles a month (my father, thank goodness, no longer has a licesnse) it is clear the oil does not need to be changed. But he would not be denied and grew increasingly agitated, which caused Mom to yell at me (when I tried to distract him with a photo album) and my sister to threaten to put him in a nursing home. I put my computer in the basket of the three-speed Raleigh and headed out to the WiFi Bakery for some blogging relief.

It reminded me of a story I heard at a support group for Alzheimer's families I attend. One woman there wept and told us this month that she had had to put her husband in assisted living because he has been insisting on calling her by his first wife's name. He was married to his first wife only four years and he has been married to his present one for fifty, but he kept perusing his old divorce papers and crying and telling his present wife that he never loved "that woman he was married to for fifty years." His agitation grew each day and he just became too much for his wife to handle.

That's the way my Dad was this morning. My sister has come all the way from Colorado and I've come all the way from Florida so we can give him a birthday party tomorrow and right now I don't even want to see him. I know it isn't his fault, but I want my old Dad back. And like the lady at my support group, even though I know an oil change is no big deal, I weep.

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