This Demented Life: A Flash Blog

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Gone Girl

I’ve left mom alone for ten days for a petsitting job, and I’m as nervous as she was when she dropped me at summer camp, age eleven.

She’s not alone, really. The caregivers in her memory care home look out for her 24/7. The care director texts photos of her at cooking club; playing the harmonica; modeling new hats. I should enjoy this time away.

It’s hard, though, after spending four years with someone who panics when I’m not there every day. Parenting roles are reversed in our demented lives and each time I leave, it’s as if she were a child again, scared her mother won’t come back. Even after the hundreds of times I’ve left and returned, all she knows is that in that moment, I am gone.

Eventually, worry lifts; fear subsides and I learn to trust the process.

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That Which Doth Not Kill Me . . .

It’s inevitable, living in the Valley of the Sun and working out. Even with pre-dawn runs, shorter morning swims, 50SPF and twice annual skin checks, it happens.

It’s easier when it’s an injury. As a marathoner, I’m used to them. Injuries force you to rest, reminders that you literally cannot take a pain-free step.

My recent surgery—removal of a squamous cell on my shin—is different. I’m not allowed to exercise. Even when nothing hurts. “Nothing to elevate your heart rate,” my dermatologist cautions. “The stitches must heal.”

Now the enemy is not just the sun, but exercise.

Two weeks of no workouts feels like forever. I’m restless as a caged animal. Exercise reenergizes me, inspires creativity. Self-pity tunnels me deeper into my head. So I’m forcing rest and gratitude. Things could be worse. And two weeks isn’t forever.

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Grateful Ned

I don’t write about my father enough.

We talk often, text daily. At 86, he’s remarkably self-sufficient, living contentedly on an island off the coast of Maine. He requires little assistance other than in financial and legal matters. He’s always on the go. He has a “team” of friends and Gilbert the cat to keep him company.

And he’s written a memoir.

Childhood memories were hazy and entire decades blurred, so I asked him to help me piece things together, to tell me his story. Dozens of legal pads later, he painstakingly transcribed his near-illegible penmanship, writing what would become his third book.

My father’s life, I’ve learned, is an endless adventure from the depths of the sea to the vast world beyond. He’s explored the nation, piloting our family across the country in a 1957 Mercedes, and he’s seen the world through the lens of a Greyhound bus windshield. He’s traveled on ships, trains and airplanes to Europe and Scotland, South Africa and South America, Mexico and most recently, on the Trans-Canadian railway through each of that country’s provinces.

Yet, as I edit “Grateful Ned,” his 700-page soul quest, I find that in his perpetual pursuit to live a unique life, we are one. Similar passions flow through our veins like the blood that links us as father and daughter. We share a desire for travel and road trips. A mutual delight in telling stories. A passion for writing. An insatiable thirst for reading. The conscious choice to take the road less traveled.

Even now, my father continues to explore. As he delves further into the past, we both enter a new level of self-discovery. Today, his business cards brand him “EXPLORER.” His sight may grow dim, and his energy level wane, but my father will never stop exploring.

And for this, I am grateful.