My mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006
After she died, I realized how much she'd been shielding me from my father's mental state
He doesn't have Alzheimers, but he has no short-term memory, and is often lost.
I took him to my mother's funeral and to the burial, but when we got home, he'd asked me every 15-20 minutes where my mother was. I'd explain carefully that she had died, and we'd een to her funerals.
This was shocking news to him.
Why had no one told him?
Why hadn't I taken him to the funeral?
Why hadn't he visited her in the hospital?
He had no memory of these events.
After a while, I realized I couldn't keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn't remember, and it was killing both of us to re-live her death constantly.
I decided to tell him she'd gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick.
And that's where she is now.
I asked my father to look into the mirror, while I took his photograph.
Now, the thing you have to realize about my dad is that he was a very handsome man when he was young. When people talk about 'film star handsome', well, that was my dad. In fact, he WAS a film star (of sorts), in Hollywood, during the 1930s.
So when he looks in the mirror, he sees a man ravaged, a man no longer beautiful, and that upsets him deeply.
You see, he's still vain at 98. In fact, his vanity can be quite extraordinary.
I tried to take him to the doctor a few months ago, but on the way out, he caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror.
He was so horrified with his appearance, that he refused to leave the house until I found a 'black pencil' to dye his white hair with.
I find these scraps of writing all over the house... they are a glimpse into his mind, the disquiet he tries to hide from me
Where is everyone?
What's going on?
How lost he feels.
My dad spends an enormous amount of time in the toilet.
Because he has no short term memory, he can be in there for 2-3 hours at a time.
He'll do his business, then stand up, and as he's putting on his pants, say, "Wait a second - I have to go"
If you try and reason with him, and explain that he's just gone, he'll look at you as if you're an idiot...
Eating is often a miserable experience.
I realize now why my mother cooked the same meals over and over, towards the end of her life.
They were the only things my father would eat.
The ONLY thing he'll eat with any regularity is eggs.
Scrambled eggs, egg salad, egg-drop soup from the local chinese. He eats insane amount of eggs.
And yet, when I took him to the doctor recently, is cholesterol was down.
Maybe there are health benefits to an all-egg diet.
Because my parents had me so late, my dad was essentially retired when I was growing up.
But for my ambitious, driven father, he wasn't retired at all, just working on his next career.
Being an artist.
I have so many memories of him listening to opera, sketching, painting, sculpting.
Although he doesn't paint anymore, he still sees. He still has the artistic impulse.
He was admiring the sunset, saying that he could make a "whole series" of painting around those wonderful colors.
The urge is still there, even if the physical ability is not.
My dad is an amazing storyteller.
I've listening to him for as long as I can remember, and I've always taken pride in his oscar-winning performance.
If he is in a bad mood, I'll ask him to tell me one. He embraces the role with such gusto, that his gloom dissapates instantly.
Here, he's telling one of my favourites:
The italian Fishmonger (Judging from the crazy gesticulations and accent)
The man would tell my father, then a 10 or 12 year old kid:
'Donta squeeza the fish! It makes the eyes a-bulge'
My fater was 98 today.
I asked my father to take my photo today.
I wondered if it would show how much I love him.
I'm wearing the ring my mother was wearing, the day she died.
I found one of my dad's film.
It's a Charlie Chan's detective story, shot in the 30's.
We watched it together this afternoon. (That's him on the right).
I don't think he'd seen it since it was made.
He told me that he was too young to grow the required pencil mustache, so he had to have it 'glued on'.
It's amazing to see my dad, not as my father, but as a young man.
Vigorous, lucid, filled with life.
Me, my mother, our lives together, all shrouded in the vast unknown before him...
I'm always amazed at my father's love for my mum.
It's a constant force, like sunlight, or gravity.
He never stops talking about her. His gratitude for her love, for the relationship they had.
For the way in which she was the glue for our little family.
I loved her so much, but she drove me crazy.
My hair was too short. My shirt was too wrinkled. I wasn't standing straight.
She called me up once and told me not to go outside, because it was dangerously windy!
Now that she's gone, I realize that I spent a lifetime resisting her influence, and now, I miss it.
I think she was right about almost everything.
She would have been very happy to hear me say these words.
Sometimes when we're talking, my dad will stop, and sigh, and close his eyes.
It's then that I know, that he knows.
About my mum.
About everything.
~ By Phillip Toledano (www.dayswithmyfather.com)
Toledano's Days with My Father began as a web-based photo journal with the artist’s own text, cataloguing a poignant series of photographs of his father after his mother's death.
The resulting work is an intensely powerful, heartwrenching and yet hopeful glimpse into his personal journey with his father, as they struggle to make sense of the latter's gradual loss of memory as well as their remaining time together in the world.
