Another One Is Called Home

Yesterday, July 13th 2013 my father, Alfred LeRoy Dodson passed away. He lived to be 85 years and 47 days of age.  

Dad was the third parent of ours to pass within the past ten months. Beatrice (Mom) Dodson went first on October 17th 2012. Marian (Penny’s Mom) Widdifield was the second parent to leave us for the journey home on March 23rd 2013. 

In the view of my wife Penny and I, he left our world on his own terms. Dad had become a resident of the Sherwood Nursing Center in December of 2012, having lost the ability to care for himself at home any more. Pop struggled with adult diabetes, cardiovascular issues and also was contending with what we believed to be stroke-induced dementia. Very recently, further cognitive testing disclosed the probability that it was Alzheimer’s dementia that was chipping away at him.

I believe that, faced with a diagnosis of AD and contemplating how AD would devastate his life even further, pop chose to surrender to  his cardiovascular problems. We learned that he sustained a massive heart attack while taking a midmorning nap and never felt a thing. To pass away and make the journey home after dying in one’s sleep is the private hoped-for exit strategy of virtually most humans living upon our planet.

Dad had been right in the middle of caregiving duties himself with Beatrice Dodson (his wife and my mother) from perhaps 2007 up through late September 2011 when we were compelled to place mom in a nursing facility because of her dual fight with adult diabetes and advancing Alzheimer’s.

Caring for mom while she was still at home took a lot out of dad. Though from the old school and not well informed about what AD can take away from someone, dad gave everything he had towards mom’s care and attention at home. Penny and I became progressively more engaged with dad, helping him in caring for mom as her health issues became more pronounced. 

The price he paid in the process was to often neglect his own nutrition, forget to take his own medications or otherwise feel the suffocating effects of the stress of caring for a wife who’s dementia behaviors were often odd, sometimes hostile and completely unpredictable. 

In late September of 2011, Mom Dodson had to finally be placed in a skilled 24-hour nursing facility for the kind of care she required. For the following nearly thirteen months that mom resided at Sherwood, dad faithfully made the multiple weekly trips back and forth to visit with and spend time with his wife of sixty three years. Even when the AD brought out some of the ugliest, most hurtful behaviors in mom towards dad, he weathered the storm and soldiered on.

Mom’s passing away in October of 2012 was a mixed blessing. Her battle with diabetes and the corrosive battery acid effects of AD finally ended. Dad handled her loss well but beneath the surface, you could sense the vast empty hollow place that now resided where the warmth and kinship of a decades-long marriage once existed. Pop missed mom.

It was in mid December 2012 that we finally had to place dad, by his own choice, up at the Sherwood Nursing Facility for his continued long-term care. He could no longer take his medications, remember when to eat and was stumbling and falling down too often.

Through  all of his own seven month stay at Sherwood, dad held onto his own sense of humor, his penchant for being sociable and chivalrous as well as being cooperative with the nursing staff of the place. Quite a few nurses and cna’s became attached to pop in the short time that he was there. They all mourn and are saddened by his passing. 

Penny and I are pleased to the extent that he has rejoined mom, has now re-connected with my middle brother Tim whom we lost in 2005 as well as the spirits of his parents, his sister and ancestors. 

He is whole and infused with boundless energy and vitality once again...just like he was before he chose to come down here the first time. 

Thank You for the privilege of being born and raised as one of your three sons. Thank You for your loving  devotion, your parenting, your ass-kicking when it needed to be measured out, and all of those other unforgettable moments that you handled in consummate fashion as my father.

There will never be another one that comes along quite like you.

Jeff Dodson

July 14th 2013