Late last week, I arrived to visit my dad mid-morning. He’s been in a nursing home in Honolulu since the beginning of the year.

He was asleep, and I gently woke him up.

He was surprised but greeted me by name. So far, so good.

I asked how he was feeling.

He shook his head.

“I’ve been feeling a little punk. Tired.”

I commented that he had been napping, and it launched him into an explanatory tale.

He had, he explained, spent the evening before with “the guy who watches the boat”. He said he had stayed the night, ate breakfast this morning, and then went over to Kuhio Beach. By this time, in his telling, he was tired.

“I wanted to take a nap, but I couldn’t lay down. So I came back here,” he said, looking around his little space next to the window at end of a room with three other men, separated only by moveable privacy curtains.

“It’s so convenient.”

Thus he explained why he had been sleeping when I arrived.

Then he announced there are several places “like this” where he can spend the night, if necessary. All by way of saying “don’t worry about me”.

Then he looked up and asked a question.

“How much does this room cost?” he wondered. “I hope its not $250 a night, like the Royal!”

Actually, I was glad to realize that he thought he was in a hotel.

Yesterday I stopped by again, this time with Meda. It was late afternoon, and again we woke him up.

He was immediately happy to see us, and especially happy that Meda had come along.

In this visit, his mind seemed clear.

We told him that we are preparing to celebrate our 40th anniversary on Saturday.

He looked at us. “Forty years? That’s a long time!”

He thought about time.

“That makes you pretty old,” he said.

We laughed.

Meda joked that if our marriage were a person, she would be having a midlife crisis. We used to say the marriage was ready to go to college, or was getting an advanced degree. Now a midlife crisis. What next?

He spoke next.

“How old am I?” he asked.

Meda answered. “You’re 95, and will be 96 in a few months.”

“Really?” His eyes lit up. “That’s really old! I wonder what I did to live this long?”

We all laughed.

We asked how he has been feeling. He again said that he has trouble walking because his balance is so bad. It’s hard to stand up on his own.

And, he complained, the staff get all excited whenever he tries to get up without assistance.

Suddenly he launched into an incredibly good imitation of one of his Filipina nursing assistants, shouting out in a completely different voice, “Mr. Lind, Mr. Lind, wait, wait, don’t get up!”

He laughed, his eyes bright.

That made it a very good day, as he was aware enough to be able to laugh about his predicament and act out his part in a larger drama.

I read somewhere that dementia or Alzheimer’s can cause your brain to forget the process of balancing that we normally do automatically. Maybe it was something one of is doctors said–“You’re not dizzy, you’ve forgotten how to balance.”