For the past week I have been in southern Alberta visiting my family. I didn’t come at Christmas, so I am coming at this time when it is a lot cheaper. The weather has also been quite nice too. However, the big reason to come is my father. His health has gone down a lot lately. He is now living in a facility as the family can no longer take care of him.
He was initially in a nicer place, but he kept falling and was not able to take care of himself enough for them to handle. He ended up in the hospital for several weeks due to one of the falls. Now he is in a transition house until we can find a place that can really handle him. The building is very old, and feels decrepit, but everyone there seems to be nice and helpful. We think we might have a new place for him at the start of February.
Seeing my father this way is hard. He has good days and bad. His imagination is also working well as he seems to think he is in a different place every time. He was in Northern Africa at one point, and Cuba another. But he was always happy to see us. It is sad to see his deterioration. He is much quieter and he has trouble finding his words. I find it better to just talk about happy memories we have had in the past. The trouble is that I’m finding I don’t have as many memories of time spent with my father as I would like; we didn’t do that much together when growing up. I’ve tried in the past few years to work on a project together with him, but he never seemed to find the time to do his part.
Another reason I am here is to help clear out my father’s stuff. He was a bit of a hoarder and didn’t throw things away. I was put in charge of getting rid of his old computer. I downloaded all the data I could find to an external hard drive and then wiped everything. His computer was old, so no one wants it, but he had a lot of his life on there.
Then there are the books and notes he had; a lot of them. Some are easy to get rid of as they are recent books that no one wants to read. It was a great discovery to find that the magazines and journals he had were all available online; into the recycle bin with all of those. It is the old books that are hardest; some are over a century old and look like they might be valuable. We don’t want money for them, but we would like them to go to a place that would appreciate them. A university would probably be the best place for them.
I flew here on WestJet and it was a good experience. A direct flight that was not very full, so I had my entire row to myself. I am having a similar experience on the trip back because I keep selecting the window seat in the last row. On flights that are not full, the stewardesses want that row, so they keep moving me and I keep demanding that I if they move me I get the row to myself. They are accommodating to that request.
I also got to use my American passport for the first time. Unfortunately I have not got it working with my NEXUS card, which means I still had to go through the long line for security. I was there for over half an hour, and was talking to the CBP for only a minute.