I felt terrible writing the last line. Telling someone they’ve let others down is a hurtful jab. But it was something I needed to say.

My folks have been together for something like 35 years now. They have had definitive ups and downs and before the diagnosis they were definitely in a down. My mom mistook my father’s disconnectedness, grumpiness, anger, and solitude as a sign of a growing rift between them. Instead of giving up, she got help. The diagnosis has humbled my father. He knows that he owes his world to my mother. She has been a rock through the whole thing, and he appreciates that inherently, even when he doesn’t recognize there’s anything wrong with him.

This Native American lady told me something about when you have a loved one dying and you see an eagle fly by it’s their way of saying their soul has left their body and they’re not in pain any longer. That always stuck with me. My father is not that fargone yet, but I’m sure at some point in the future that mythology will comfort me.

This goes back to him repeating himself often. His short term memory has been far more affected than his long term memory so far. He can tell you a story about his younger days with perfect clarity, but he might end up telling it again as if you’ve never heard it.

Even though my father was a military man, he always questioned authority. I inherited that from him. He was never a bullshitter. I inherited that from him.

Though he’d shown symptoms long before 2009, that day it clicked for all of us: this is real. It changed in our heads, things were different now. The “him” we knew was different now.

I think that at least my father’s legacy yielded two men that are proud of eachother and there for eachother and him.

Rylee is my best friend Shawne’s eldest son. I think he’s 8 right now, very gifted little guy that I mentioned in another Youtube video to my mother. My dad is still great with kids, a gentle giant, I can tell he’s ready to be a grandfather, and in all honesty the clock is ticking.

Last year he decided to try and teach Rylee to play chess on a hand crafted wooden chess table we have. The same one he taught my brother to play chess on. I had to help him teach Rylee a bit, because the he seeemed to be losing grasp of the game. I didn’t pay too much attention to the game, but I happened to walk over towards the end, and helped Rylee with one move, which led to check mate against my father. A 7 year old beat him with only one hint. It had shown how far his cognizance had fallen, I never beat him as a youth.

I went home in June of 2009. My mother had taken my dad to Anchorage (a six hour drive from North Pole) to see a neuro psychology specialist. Three weeks later the tests were to come in. We already knew the results wouldn’t be positive, so I needed to be there with my family.

The results of his battery of tests were delivered to us via conference call. It was a beautiful day out. I stared out the window fighting off tears as the doctor told us that my father’s cognitive skills were far below average in many areas. That he was clearly showing signs of dementia, and they were going to assume it was early onset Alzheimer’s. My father disagreed of course and tried to convince us he was fine and the doctor was full of shit.

I remember the cold calculated tone of the doctor. He was only doing his job, but I hated his voice. As he read the result of test after test, all poor results with no sugar coating, my mother and I silently cried, trying not to let my dad notice. I eventually had to leave the table and go to my room to collect myself.

I think this line is me coming to terms with the fact that I, of course, love my father and that even though we can’t fight his disease, his outlook will always live on through my brother and I.