It’s been just over a year since my father was admitted to a nursing home on Beretania Street, just two blocks from where his business, Honolulu Restaurant Supply Co., was located for decades.

He’s a lot less mobile than a year ago and has lost several more layers of memory, but on most days he still recognizes me and can carry on a conversation, although sometimes with interesting twists and turns.

It was late afternoon when I stopped by this week and, as usual at that time of day, I found him in his bed under the window at the far end of the room he shares with three other men.

I was surprised to see the little bulletin board above his bed covered with pictures of our cats. Turns out that my sister took a pair of scissors to last year’s cat calendar and put the pictures up for all to see. Apparently they have drawn lots of comments from the staff who come in.

When I mentioned the pictures, my dad twisted around in an attempt to see the bulletin board, which is on the wall right behind his bed. At first, I had the feeling he didn’t remember the pictures I was referring to. A brief glimpse, though, and he remembered that they are of our cats.

“You have a lot of cats,” he said, a smile in his voice if not on his face.

“Yes, we’ve got eight right now.”

Then he asked: “Are they for sale?”

I was surprised by the question. “What?”

He repeated. “Are they for sale? Can someone buy a cat from you? People ask me.”

“Of course not,” I said. “They’re our pets, part of the family.”

Then it dawned on me that someone must have looked at the pictures and then asked him whether they could buy one of the cat calendars. Then his brain made a quick short circuit and the question became whether the cats are for sale.

So I tried to gently explain that the cat calendars are for sale, but our cats are not. I got a blank stare in return. I decided it was best to just leave it.

Then somehow we got onto the topic of his boat, which once belonged to Duke Kahanamoku. My dad bought it back in around 1970, and for decades enjoyed fishing with friends. As I recall, his last fishing trip was sometime around May 2008.

He looked at me and asked one of those questions which is really a statement.

“You’re not really a boat person, are you?”

I managed a single-word answer. “No”.

I always thought it was kind of a sore point between us. He would always offer. “Want to go out on the boat with us?” I almost always said no, and then later felt a little guilty, perhaps. Somewhere way back in the mental background, it felt like I let him down.

Then he said something that surprised me.

“I’ve got this boat,” he said, shaking his head, “but I’m not really a boat person either.”

I think he might have meant to add a qualifier. He’s not a boat person today because his world now stretches from the corner of this room where his bed is located, sometimes mistaken, in his mind, for a Waikiki hotel room, and then down the hall to the dining-activity room, which he often experiences as Ala Moana Center or the old Commercial Club in downtown Honolulu, and then there are just a few more steps to the small lounge area in front of the third floor elevators. It’s hard to be a boat person here.

He’s obviously been thinking about his own boat or boats in general. One day he told me that he had spent the night on the boat “with the guy who is taking care of it” before driving driving through Waikiki and eventually back “here”, although he wasn’t exactly clear on where “here” was.

The boat also featured in another visit during one of his “down” periods, when his mental confusion was more pronounced.

That day, he greeted me when I arrived with a simple “hello”.
No “Hello, Ian”.
I wasn’t sure whether he knew who I was.

Then he spoke, his words soft, mumbled.
Said he just had an “aquatic accident” off of Kauai.
He started to stumble over the words and recovered by over-enunciating. Each syllable became a word. A-qua-tic-ax-i-dent.
I tried to ask more about it.
“What kind of accident? What happened?”
He didn’t really respond. He looked at me, his not-so-good eye, glazed by cataracts, looking askew.

“I didn’t know it was illegal.”
Illegal?
“You have to register before going down.”
At least I think that’s what he said.

I wonder. Did he get cited? When did this happen? It won’t do any good to ask. In his mind, whatever it was just happened when he was over on Kauai this morning.

He worried because “there’s another man telling the story.”
He glanced towards the other beds in the room, then whispered.
“Everybody’s probably heard about it.”

Then he slowly closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

I slipped away.

It was a short visit.

When I arrived for a later afternoon visit with my dad yesterday, my sister, Bonnie, was just leaving.

She reported he had been napping, woke up long enough to greet her and exchange a few words, then nodded off again.

Bonnie said she called his attention to the little home-made Christmas wreath on the wall directly in front of his bead. It’s placed so that he can see it as he lays in bed.

“Mother brought it on Monday,” she reminded him. “My mother.” The latter clarification added because he tends to conflate the memories of mother, wife, and daughter.

“Monday?” he asked with interest. “She’s going to visit on Monday?” He’s excited by the prospect.

Bonnie explains: “No, she was here this past Monday.”

Monday was his 96th birthday. I joined my mother and sister for a small celebration at his bedside. He enjoyed a piece of birthday cake, although I don’t think the idea of “birthday” was fully processed. And he didn’t say anything to my mom and seemed to barely recognize her presence while we were there, a very noticeable issue.

Bonnie told me all this as we stood at the door that opens into the lobby at the bottom of the stairs of this nursing home. The lobby is cozy, a small space, with the door to the kitchen and a small receptionist’s office opposite the elevator and stairs, and bounded in the other directions by the automatic door out to the parking lot on one side and a glass door out to Beretania Street on the other. There’s a vending machine with a selection of candies and nuts. A sign on the wall warns visitors to stay away if they have any cold or flu symptoms. There’s a dispenser of antiseptic hand lotion on the wall between the vending machine and the kitchen door. Not much else in that sterile little space.

I asked if he was awake and aware enough to justify my walk up the stairs.

“He’ll at least know you were there,” she said.

Bonnie was carrying a canvas bag with his dirty clothes. We thought about his inability to remember Monday’s family visit and the odds that he might connect with our presence today. Then, with a mutual shrug of sorts, we went our ways. She hit the green button to open to door to the parking lot, and I headed up the stairs to the 3rd floor.

It’s always morning in the State of Dementia.

So when my dad sensed my arrival, he opened his eyes, blinked.

“Good morning, Ian,” he said a bit slowly.

This time I didn’t correct him, as I’ve often done in the past.

I went through the checklist of small talk. How did you sleep? How are you feeling today? Have you had anything to eat? Isn’t the weather nice? Bonnie was just here.

“She was? Oh, yes, she was.” Question becomes statement.

He looked up and saw the wreath.

“Did you tell me that mother made the wreath?”

I remind him that it was Bonnie who told him.

He nods. I don’t know which “mother” image is in his mind. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

It’s morning in his mind, and he complains about his bad memory.

“I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do today,” he says, not quite whining about it.

“There’s something important I’m supposed to do, but I can’t remember.” His voice underscores the word “important”.

I respond that the thought will probably return again, as these things seem to do.

He says that he was reminded of it several times in the past few days, so is sure that the task is waiting to be done.

He stares into the shallow pool of memory. We sit in momentary silence.

Then Bob, the 3rd floor nursing supervisor, sticks his head in the door, looks across the row of four beds to our spot at the end of the room in front of the window, curtains now closed to hold off the late afternoon sun. I wave a greeting.

“Hello,” Bob responds cheerfully with a friendly wave of his hand. “Hello, Mr. Lind,” he shouts across to my dad. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” he says, returning the wave.

Bob backs out of the room, continues down the hall.

My dad looks at me.

“Does he own all these places?”

Sometimes he thinks he’s in a hotel, in a friend’s apartment, or maybe in a bunk in his boat. I used to say he was in a hospital, but I quickly realized that was the wrong answer.

Does Bob own the hotel?

“I think Bob’s one of the managers,” I explain. He knows about managers. As a salesman of equipment and supplies to restaurants and hotels for more than 60 years, he’s known a lot of managers. It’s an answer he understands.

Then one of his regular nursing assistants came in carrying a tray of food, delivered the first tray to another of the men in the room, then returned with the second for my dad.

“Breakfast,” he said with mild enthusiasm.

“No, Mr. Lind, dinner.”

He’s surprised. More than surprised, really. Shocked.

“Dinner? What time is it?”

“It’s 5 o’clock, Mr. Lind!”

He looks at me. He was sure it was morning. I guess that happens when you wake up and your memory is a pretty clean slate. It must be morning.

Now, for at least a brief time, he realizes that another day has gone missing. You can see it in his expression. His eyes are asking the question. What happened to the day? Did I sleep through it? Did I forget it? Where am I?

He picks up the small cup with small bits of ripe cantaloup. First he fumbles around trying to pick up slippery bits of fruit with fingers that don’t have much feeling. They defy his efforts. I lean over, pull the fork out from under a napkin, set it out in the open. He shifts to the fork, spears a piece, eats it. Good. Spears another.

My phone rings. Today it announces the call with a few guitar chords. It’s Meda, ready to be picked up.

It’s a good time to leave. He’s occupied with food, then he’ll sleep.

And he’ll awake in the morning. Always in the morning.

Pictures can be deceiving.

In this series of photos taken yesterday on my dad’s 96th birthday, he appears to be smiling and enjoying the occasion, complete with birthday cake, several cards and messages, and family.

Actually, he was mentally confused and didn’t feel well.

When I arrived, he was looking at a photo of his high school graduating class.

He told me he didn’t know who these people were, and when I said it was his high school class, he said quickly, “not my class!”

So I pointed out where he was standing in the back row. He looked. Then he identified Phyllis, in the front row, who married his older brother. “She’s passed away now,” he said matter-of-factly.

Then he told me that there was a big job waiting in the afternoon moving a shipment. I think, in that dreamworld that becomes a dementia patient’s reality, he was dealing with what had been a typical business problem. Get a customer’s order from the dock back to the store, then delivered to their business.

“There’s some big stuff that has to be moved,” he told me, voice serious.

Then he looked down at the class photo and the thoughts merged.

“It’s going to be hard moving 65 people,” he said, looking at the group.

I decided not to try following down that mental path.

When I told him it was his birthday, he wanted to know what year it was.

“Nineteen…nineteen…” He paused, looking at me to fill in the blank, tell him what year it is. I had to say that it’s 2009.

“So how old am I? Eighty?”

96, I answered.

He looked bemused. 96 is something that happens to someone else, to old people.

Then lunch arrived. He had scoop of what looked like a creamed turkey, rice, mixed vegetables. He pushed at the vegetables with his fork, but did not try them.

“What do you think that is?”

I told him that it looks like peas, corn, and beans, just sort of mixed up.

He turned the plate around so that they were on the far side, away from him.

He poked the fork into the turkey, then moved it to his mouth, sampling the taste. Then he put his fork back down without eating any more.

“It’s turkey.” I say the obvious because sometimes it makes a difference. Sometimes he ignores his food but, with a little encouragement, eats through the whole plate.

This wasn’t one of those times.

He seemed to have trouble with the food, although he drank a small can of Ensure, a protein drink. Even with that, he looked somewhat pained as he drank, as if it was in danger of unpleasantly returning.

I tried to get him to eat a little more. He refused, first saying that he didn’t like the food. Then that he wasn’t hungry. But I could see that food wasn’t going down well. After we sat for a while, he said that when he tried to eat, his breathing got faster. I don’t know what this could mean, so I reported it to the nurse on duty. She said it would be reported to the doctor. All that will come later.

My sister, Bonnie, and my mother then arrived and went down the hall to his room, so I hailed a nursing assistant to help us make the trip back to his bed, a trip that’s becoming increasingly difficult.

We made it, with some difficulty along the way, but finally he was back in bed, settled, alarm clipped onto his shirt, comfortable. Bonnie had a birthday cake set alongside the bed, but he didn’t notice until she pointed it out. There were several birthday cards, including one from his sister in California (his only surviving sibling), and another from the members of the Waikiki Surf Club, which he served as a founding member and first president more than 60 years ago.

I passed on a telephone message from one of his friends with a boat near his at the Ala Wai Harbor.

He went through the motions of reading the cards, but I don’t think he can actually see much without his glasses. Even after he put his glasses on, I couldn’t tell if he was able to process the contents, despite the time he spent on the task.

Then we got to the cake. He perked up. Despite skipping lunch, he managed to work his way through a nice piece of cake. I still don’t know if he understood that it was birthday cake served for his birthday. But perhaps that doesn’t matter. Looking at the photos, he was happy, in that moment, birthday or not.

One sad note. Although he often asks about my mom and frequently worries about her, he didn’t have much to say to her during yesterday’s visit. Perhaps he just felt comfortable and simply accepted her presence without comment. I don’t know. I hope that he understood that she was there to share the birthday with him and all of us.

Then he was ready to take a nap. We packed up the paper plates, the plastic implements. The cake went into a box. My mom tacked his birthday cards onto the bulletin board above his bed. Bonnie lowered the head of the bed, which had been up in sitting position. We wished him a happy birthday and a pleasant nap, Bonnie said she would be back today with another piece of cake, and we all made our exit.

96 and counting.