My Dad died this morning from Alzheimer's

Alzheimer's Disease is an absolute nightmare. It took my Dad this morning and was ultra-aggressive in doing so. It probably took 4 - 5 years. My Dad is the one pictured at the console in my avatar pic training John Glenn on the Mercury capsule for his historic Friendship 7 orbit around the Earth flight.

My Dad went on to do so many great things at NASA covering all the programs from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Space Shuttle, ISS, etc. . His area of focus and expertise was in astronaut training and simulations...preparing the astronauts for spaceflight missions. He was project manager over the building of the Space Shuttle simulator at NASA Johnson Space Center...that trained the astronauts for Shuttle missions. He was there in the beginning starting in 1958 after graduating from The Citadel military college and retired from NASA in 1999. He worked with most of the great astronauts back in the day.

Anyway, Alzheimer's slowly took his brain, his function, his ability to walk, his ability to move, his ability to eat solid food, his ability to swallow, and his ability to breathe. The final two things it took just in the past three days or so. He was on morphine and died peacefully at home. Thankfully, I was able to visit him yesterday and say goodbye. I thought he would still be around for another visit on Thanksgiving but it wasn't meant to be. He died on my Mom's birthday of all days...who was in the next room at their home.

My Dad was a great human being who loved his work, loved raising a family, loved being there for his two sons (when he basically had an absentee military father growing up who was in WWII and a POW camp), and was supportive in every way possible. He was kind of a strong-opinioned, quirky man who loved to gripe and nag but that just made his personality what it was. He didn't show a lot of outward emotions and wasn't a touchy/feely kind of guy. I don't think he ever told me he loved me but I know he did through his actions.

Alzheimer's is such a terrible thing and he didn't deserve any of that. He was taken care of best he could have been.

I welcome any prayers for him. I said mine as soon as I found out after I got the dreaded call this morning.

Unfortunately, he died a few times because he lost his mental faculties along the way and forgot who I was. So sad. I'll miss our conversations, the griping, the nagging...all of it. What I wouldn't give to have him back the way he was. So long, Dad. He was 84 years old and around 79 - 80 when he started showing the dreaded signs. He lived a full life but the latter part of life wasn't kind.

 

This is true. My Dad was totally into all my sports growing up. He would come to my basketball, baseball, and soccer games. I have one very distinct memory of him standing behind the metal cage surrounding at home plate watching me play in a game where I hit four homeruns and one double in the game. It was the red, mechanical pitching machine type baseball game. But, what a day that was.

Also, so many memories of us playing catch with the NFL leather football, throwing the baseball back and forth, and playing basketball on the driveway at my childhood home. Every son should have those memories. And, going to see the Astros, Oilers, and Rockets play back in the day. Those were such great times...even if the home team always had a habit of letting us down by losing!

And, lest not forget the memory the time we went deep sea fishing out of Galveston but had to sit on the bench on the outside of the cabin and the motion got us so sick we never dropped a line to fish. We went into the air-conditioned cabin and laid down. Going out to sea for tens of miles on a boat that goes up and down over chop/waves the whole time is no picnic. The Dramamine didn't help one bit. No fish that day. But, we did a ton of other shore fishing all around, like on Clear Lake and the Texas City Dike.

I cherish those memories and am thankful I got to do them.

I appreciate everyone's well wishes and words so far. You'll make me feel better on this tragic day.

 

The part I'm dreading is having to return to that house tomorrow and see an empty room. Just trying to fathom him not there and gone. My bro sent me a picture of him following the transport of him to the funeral home. It's just all so surreal. I've never dealt with a loss so close to home. I thought putting down dogs was bad. And, I didn't think I would cry so much as I don't think of myself as a cryer.

When you have so many bad memories in the house your parents live in (not my childhood home), it's not something you want to keep around after. There were good memories there but so many bad memories came later. My Dad used to "sundown" around that house. Sun-downing is where Alzheimer's patients can't sleep at night so they get up and wander doing all sorts of crazy things in the middle of the night over and over again after you try to put them back to bed. They lose the sense that day is for doing things and night is for sleeping. It's like they are rising in the morning at night instead of going to sleep. It's the opposite. And, you have to monitor them to make sure they don't leave the house or whatever else. We used to have sensors in the hallway that would blare an alarm when he walked by so we could get up to assist him. Imagine trying to get a good rest in such an environment.

It was actually a sad relief when he could no longer walk...cause then we didn't have to do that. Then, you just worry about him falling out of bed or his chair...hurting himself....which he did and had to have a rod inserted in his leg. He was always wanting to get up even if he couldn't walk and go home...meaning a home we lived in two decades ago that he thought was his current home. He always thought he was on vacation or something...even though he was in the current home he owned. Going to visit Dad when he was at the "home" for brain-impaired, he thought he was in a hotel room and he would be leaving with us to go home. You just had to sneak out of there when he dozed off. Heartbreaking. And, the first time you had to leave him there and he's asking the people there where his family is trying to get out of there. I'm so thankful we got to bring him home from that place where he could live out the remainder of his days in his own home.

I mean...Alzheimer's is f-ed, man. I wish they had a clue how it started. And, they better f-ing figure it out sooner rather than later. Apparently, there is a medicine that they are testing on mice that clears up the Alzheimer's gunk in the brain and restores brain function some to those already in the midst of the disease. Let's pray it pans out and works on humans.