Just for a Moment, I Held My Father

My father had Alzheimer’s disease.

He died in 2001, after ten years of gradual loss. Six weeks before he passed, a stroke left him agitated, unsteady, and restless. In those final days, his body remained, but his memory rarely surfaced. He struggled to speak. Struggled to recognize us.

I visited him on a tough day.

He kept standing up and falling, or rolling out of bed, over and over again. He didn’t know where he was, who he was with, or how to get comfortable. I stood beside the nurse, helpless, watching my father thrash in confusion.

“I think we should move the mattress to the floor,” I said. “So he doesn’t get hurt when he falls.”

The nurse looked at the bed, then at my father, then back at me.

“Okay,” she said. “But what do we do with your dad while we move the mattress?”

We both looked down at him—my once-strong father, the man who could fix anything. He was seventy-two. Never a heavy man, but now small, almost weightless. His body, like his mind, seemed to be disappearing.

“I’ll just hold him,” I said.

I bent down, scooped him into my arms, and stepped back against the wall.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Move the mattress.”

And she did.

I doubt I held him for no more than thirty seconds. But even as it happened, I knew those seconds would stay with me for the rest of my life. I felt his bones through the thin hospital gown. I felt the heat of his body—the weight of a lifetime in my arms.

Our roles had reversed. I was cradling the man who had once cradled me.

In that moment, I was holding time. I was holding my past. I was holding my father.

When the mattress was on the floor, I bent down and laid him gently on it.

He died a few days later, surrounded by family. There was quiet. There was love. And then it was over.

I have never held an adult the way I held my father.

Sometimes, it stays with you.

A moment that will stay as long as I have a memory.

Me and my dad 1962