This Demented Life: A Flash Blog

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Word Wizard

4:00 am, Sky Harbor. Gate agents, harried already, check in bleary-eyed travelers. The sky slumbers in the curious blue-gray of first light.

I’m in panic mode, as lost as a wizard without a wand.

Because somehow, with all my careful summer vacation packing, I forgot a pen. Newsstands, most offering more snacks than periodicals, have yet to open.

And neither the lone restaurant, where bored passengers wait in line for day-old sandwiches and coffee, nor the gate agent can locate any form of writing instrument. Pens are fossils now, as dinosauric as the newsstand.

We’re boarding in three minutes, the robotic voice says over the PA. Writing radar strong, I spy a ballpoint, its French blue cap poking out of a cup of paper luggage tags. The nod to old-school irony is not lost on me.

Mightier than the sword of technology, I shove the pen in my backpack and pray it’s not out of ink. It’s not. The magic from my PaperMate wand flows before we reach cruising altitude.

From the disconnected solitude of 35,000 feet comes the wizardry of words: an essay, short story outline and flash poem.

And I am free. 

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Ties that Bind

We were both only children, John and I, united as siblings in our pre-teens when his mother married my father. For while, I chose this family, mirroring my father’s departure as I left my childhood island home and my mother on her own.

But, like so much of the future I envisioned for myself, this idyllic second family was as transient as I. At sixteen, I moved in with a boyfriend and soon after, my father and stepmother divorced.

John and I have stayed close all these years. We’ve shared our own divorce woes, visited each other across countries and continents. We spend summers together at the family lake house; I’ve watched my nieces go from cartoons to college.

John has also kept in touch with my father, the man who raised him. He’s nearing his nineties, insistent on living alone in his island cottage. He still drives, although his macular degeneration worsens each year.

Over the past five years, I’ve spent more time with my parents in the than I have in my entire life, and what I’ve found is this: it’s easier to be patient toward a mother with Alzheimer’s than a father who, in his ruthless determination to be terminally unique, is stubborn and quirky to a fault. He recalls very vehicle he’s ever owned in vivid detail. He prefers befriending the mice in his house to a visit from the exterminator. Often, his dinners consist of dark chocolate and a handful of peanuts.

Recently, John and I took our father on a riverboat cruise along the Seine. At first, I was a basket case. Dad complained. A lot. He slept through the whole excursion to Normandy. His breathing was as labored as a freight train going uphill. It took a week aboard that ship and John’s patient reassurances that I was a good daughter to finally accept my father for who he is.

Like the recent death of my husband’s daughter, I’m doing my best with a situation I’ve never been through: being a parent to my parents. Although his legs may be slower than his thoughts, my father’s mind is still razor-sharp.

And for that, we’re all grateful. 

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Little White Lies

I’ve lied to my mother all my life. 

As a teenager, it was all about the party.

“Can I borrow the car? My friends want to see the new Superman movie.”

(We’re going to the kegger at Barrett’s Beach)

“We’re going on a field trip at school.”

(It’s senior skip day)

Through much of my adult life, the lies were silent whispers, shrouded in alcohol.

Today I am sober. I care for a mother with Alzheimer’s, in a world of falsehoods and misperceptions.

“We’re going to Arizona for a while so I can take care of my husband.”

(You need more help than I can give. The memory care home is safe.)

“I’m so glad you’re here to help me take care of my husband.”

(His imaginary illness reminds you you’re needed and helpful).

Therapeutic lies have become our reality. Yet my decisions—once based on self—are now motivated by love. And, as every medallion marking another sobriety milestone tells me: “To thine own self be true,” I find that I am. 


Here’s why experts recommend lying to someone with dementia.