The Light of Hidden Flowers

by Jennifer Handford

  On Washington Street, I decided to head back. As I passed Christ Church, I paused, doubled back. Maybe. Though Dad wasn’t particularly religious, he did have a fondness for this church, where both George Washington and Robert E. Lee had once worshipped. I entered the darkness, inhaled the incense-infused space, and found Dad in the back pew. When I approached him, his face was in his hands. He looked a hundred years old.

  “Dad?” I asked, slipping into the cherry wood and red-fabric pew next to him.

  When he slid his hands down and rubbed at his eyes, I could tell he had been crying. His eyes—his bright eyes that smiled as much as his mouth—were bloodshot and lined.

  I reached for his hands. “Did you forget about the appointment? The Hoffmans came in.”

  Dad shook his head no, wiped at his eyes.

  “You’re pretty far from the office,” I said.

  Dad nodded.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Dad exhaled, looked at me. “I couldn’t remember your mother’s name,” he said. “Charlene—her beautiful name that I loved so much—Charlene.”

  Dad rubbed at his face. He was an old man I’d never seen before.

  “I ran into Jimmy Jorgensen and he and I were talking, and I was telling the story of the rainstorm that hit us just days before you were born. I started to say her name, I started to say, ‘Charlene was ready to go to the hospital right then, just in case.’ But the words weren’t there. Her name wasn’t there, like someone had erased it from my brain. I couldn’t remember your mother’s name, Missy. I couldn’t remember Charlene’s name.”

  I leaned into him, pressed my face against the nubby wool of his jacket. “So you forgot.”

  Dad issued a sad smile. “But then”—he again wiped at his eyes—“I started to walk back. And even though I knew the streets, the landmarks, the restaurants and churches . . . I couldn’t remember how they fit together.”

  Dad looked at me, helpless to explain any of this. I had nothing to say in return.

  “Missy,” Dad said. “I was lost. I was lost in my own town.”

  Dad went on. “It’s like everything I’ve known my entire life has been thrown in the air and has landed in different places.”

  At that, Dad started to bawl onto my shoulder.

  PART TWO

  CROSSING OVER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  On the first day of October, the day my mother was killed exactly thirty-one years before, Dad and I crossed the threshold of Neurological Associates, a group of doctors who specialized in memory impairment. Dad was tested and prodded, underwent a brain scan, a neuropsychological evaluation. He patiently endured a battery of diagnostics: the Clock Drawing Test, the Mini Mental Stage Examination, and the Functional Assessment Staging Test. Naming, visual retention, patterning, and recall quizzes. Ad nauseam, he recited his family’s history and submitted to physical exams, plus more tests that scrutinized sensation controlled by the central nervous system. Again and again, he was observed by technicians whose job it was to detect weaknesses in his memory’s integration, his reasoning processes, his language recall. His blood was drawn, his urine collected, his vitals charted.

  Finally, we sat with Dr. Bergman. He opened Dad’s chart, then closed it. He told us Dad had indeed suffered a ministroke . . . and that there was evidence of Alzheimer’s.

  “We should have had you checked out,” I said.

  Dr. Bergman handed Dad a packet. I reached for it and began reading.

  “Tell me about the medication,” I said, pointing to a superlong word in the literature. “What’s our course of treatment?”

  Dr. Bergman rattled on about acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, drugs that work by helping to increase the amount of acetylcholine in the brain, a chemical that is important for memory and learning. Then he talked of glutamate pathway modifiers, another chemical in the brain that is important for learning and memory. There were also vitamins E and C, and a baby aspirin, once a day.

  “How long until I’m totally cuckoo?” Dad wanted to know.

  “Dad!” I objected. “Dr. Bergman is going to set you up with medication. You’re not going to go cuckoo.”

  But Dr. Bergman didn’t shy away from the question, however flippantly Dad had chosen to phrase it. “It’s hard to say,” he said. “But because you’ve already suffered a ministroke, it might progress faster. And, of course, the ministroke is almost always a precursor of more to come. So that’s a worry, too.”

  After I had dropped off Dad at home and was on my way to my house, my phone rang. It was Lucas.

  “We’ve just come from the doctor,” I said. “There’s indication that he had a ministroke. And what’s worse, there’s evidence of Alzheimer’s.”

  I began to cry, so I pulled over to the curb. In that moment, I needed Lucas for one thing and one thing only: I needed him to ask how I felt about it. I would start at the beginning, explain that my father was my anchor, and how he and I have been braving it alone all of these years. I would confess that without my father, I feared I was nothing. I’d narrate my childhood, describing how Dad greeted me every morning with smiles and optimism, never missed one of my school events, and cheered on my every accomplishment. I’d venture to measure the size and weight of Dad’s pride for me, how it was too large to hold in even his giant hands.

  But Lucas was a problem solver and a tax attorney and a sensible, reasonable guy who was able to extract emotion from his decision making. “From a business standpoint,” he said, “I’m sure you know that now would be a good time to put his and your affairs in order.”

  “Put our affairs in order?” I repeated, attempting to tamp down the anger rising in my chest.

  “You know, your paperwork. The financials.”

  I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands into fists. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I said, and then hung up without waiting for a response.

  He was just being practical, saying what made sense, building a bridge of pragmatism over my river of emotional churning, but talking about business at a time like this made me loathe him. His misunderstanding of my father’s and my relationship was so profound it left me shaking.

  For hours, I sat at my computer and researched Alzheimer’s disease.

  The human brain is a remarkable organ. Complex chemical and electrical processes take place that let us speak, move, see, remember, feel emotions, and make decisions. Inside a healthy brain, billions of cells called neurons communicate with one another, receiving messages through electrical charges. Messengers called neurotransmitters move across synapses or microscopic gaps between neurons. This cellular circuitry enables communication within the brain. Alzheimer’s disease interrupts the neurons’ ability to communicate with one another.

  And then I researched the link between Alzheimer’s and stroke victims.

  Neuroscientists have known for years that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is doubled for stroke victims. During a stroke—no matter the size or severity—the oxygen to the brain is depleted and as time goes by, the toxic chemicals related to the development of Alzheimer’s disease accumulates. Even strokes that are without symptoms and thus undetected can serve as the catalyst for Alzheimer’s disease.

  I went to my bookshelf and pulled down my high school senior yearbook. I flipped to the index in the back, found Joe—pages 66, 134, 257. I opened to his senior picture, a gorgeous shot of him in a blue blazer and burgundy tie, his earnest gaze I held so dear. Next to his name it listed his activities: football, baseball, student council, the Lettermans Club. Then I found my page, plain-Jane me in my white blouse and beige cardigan, my puffy hair restrained with a headband, my rosy cheeks casting a glowing sheen, sitting up straight with my hands folded on my lap. Cross country, tennis, yearbook, Key Club.

  I sat in my town house, having never felt so deserted in my life, so utterly depressed, rootless and alone. Yet t
he memories were something. They held value that I clung to fervently—my hopeless lifeline—even though I was certain my recollections, my attendant feelings, weren’t exactly correct. How I remembered high school now—with such longing. How I perceived Joe now—as if staring long enough at his senior photo might invoke some telepathy between us. I knew I was floating in some make-believe froth of pointless desire, trying to will my past to be big enough to compensate for my present.

  Then I thought of Dad and his now suddenly, horribly tenuous relationship with his own memories, a thousand times grander than mine. His wonder years growing up in the 1950s, falling in love with Mom, shipping off to Vietnam, and befriending all the guys like himself. Then a lifetime of service in a career he valued, along with his clients, his philanthropy, Jenny, and me. How would Dad survive without those memories? What would he do without his sacred ground?

  I logged on to Facebook and clicked on Joe. I needed to talk to someone, and he was the someone I wanted. First I looked through all of his posts, all of his photos: his wife, his children, their activities, their life. And then I opened up a message to him and began typing.

  Hi again. There’s a reason for my dad’s forgetfulness. He’s sick. Alzheimer’s. It’s hard to believe. I suspected something was wrong, but hearing the diagnosis felt like a dagger to my heart. It never occurred to me that he would be anything other than the towering guy he’s always been. I know how much you liked my father. I just wanted you to know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  JOE

  Tough Tuesday again. I sat in the waiting area of Kate’s counselor. On the doctor’s door was a giant poster. “How are you feeling today?” it wanted to know, followed by a hundred different cartoon face illustrations. A circle face with a smile = happy. A circle face with a squiggly-lined mouth = anxious. A circle face with a raised eyebrow = skeptical. A circle face with red cheeks = embarrassed. A circle with hooded eyes = exhausted. A circle with an O-shaped mouth = surprised.

  Olivia listened to music through her earbuds. Jake played on his iPad. And I stared into space because today had been a rough one. My guys at the hospital were in a foul mood. On a number of the marine blogs this morning, there’d been a report of a Humvee hitting a mine in Afghanistan. Three confirmed dead, others injured. It hit me hard, too. I should have just sat around with the guys and commiserated, joined in on their “Everything is crap” chorus. Instead, I pulled out goal worksheets and asked the guys to plot out where they wanted to be in a month, six months, a year. Carlos and Andy made an attempt, but Tony and Jerry both scribbled on their pages and then crushed them into balls, tossing them into the trash. “What’s the point?” Tony wanted to know, and I didn’t have a ready answer for him.

  And then I picked up the kids. The second I saw Kate’s face—her mouth a tight line, her cheeks flushed red, her eyes as wide as shields—I knew it had been a bad day for her, too. I didn’t need the chart of circle faces to tell me she had been shaken and was ready to blow.

  She slid the van door open, hurled in her backpack with more force than was necessary.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Another day in paradise,” Kate said. “Girls laughing at me, no seats at the lunch table, Kelly telling me I couldn’t listen to what she was talking about.”

  “What about Ellie?” This girl was a friend of Kate’s. “Where was she?”

  “I’ve been exiled by Ellie,” Kate said. “She’s best friends with Claire now. Doesn’t give me the time of day.”

  My knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. I steadied my breath and reminded myself that I was only hearing one side of the story. Kate shucked off her sweater, getting it tangled with the seat belt. When she did, I saw that her blouse was on inside out. It must have happened after gym, when she changed back into her clothes.

  “Kate,” I said. “Your blouse is on inside out. That’s probably why those girls were giggling behind your back.”

  “What?!” She scratched at her shoulder and seized the shirt’s exposed seam.

  “See? So, no big deal. It’s not like they were laughing at you, per se. They were just being immature.”

  “Like it would have killed one person to tell me?” A tear the size of a water balloon sprung from her eye.

  Luckily, Olivia and Jake were in the third-row seat with their earbuds in, oblivious to Kate rapping her head against the window. Meanwhile, my head began to throb under the stress of having to shoulder all of these wounds. Battle was entirely worse in a thousand different ways, but this—feeling my daughter’s hurt—was eviscerating. Who knew that I’d be a vessel for her every ache? When she was in agony, I suffered. When she failed, I crumbled inside. When she had a bad day, I had a bad week. How many more years until this knot in my stomach untwisted?

  Kate finished her session and the counselor called me in. “Can I talk to your father for a minute?” she asked Kate. Kate joined her brother and sister in the waiting room while I took my turn with the doctor, who reiterated to me that my daughter was suffering a crisis of confidence. She’d asked Kate to write a story, and what she wrote was entitled “The Girl Who Tried Too Hard to Be Liked.” I’m wrong in every way, it began. I pressed my arm into my gut, which felt like a cauldron of fire. I asked what we could do.

  “Continue to fill her up with the things in her life that have meaning to her,” the counselor said.

  When we stopped at Chipotle for dinner, Kate was in a better mood; she always was following counseling. Unburdening herself seemed to provide a lift. I wondered if my guys at the hospital felt better after meeting with me. The kids chattered on, and I stared out the window and thought about my daughter, so smart yet so unsure. I didn’t get it. Kate had always been so quick on her feet, sharp-witted. Why was she letting these girls call all the shots? Why didn’t she just put them in their place?

  Jake pulled up a YouTube video on his iPad—cats and dogs dressed in clothes, wearing eyeglasses and hats—and the kids collapsed in hysterics. To see Kate laughing, her real smile, not stressed for a second, almost made me cry.

  We were still eating when my phone chimed: an e-mail message from Missy Fletcher. The kids were happily goofing with each other, so I opened it.

  Frank, poor Frank. Missy, poor Missy.

  She wanted me to know.

  Later that night, in my bedroom, I opened my laptop and clicked on to Facebook. I had to write Missy. I had to tell her that my heart was aching alongside hers for the man who cared so deeply for the two of us.

  No argument, my day had been pretty rough. The Humvee explosion, the guys at group, Kate and her tears, and then hearing about my buddy Frank Fletcher and the dagger to Missy’s heart. A circle face with an ugly scowl. Really, the day couldn’t have been worse.

  But tonight, seeing Kate relaxed, hearing her laugh—a real laugh—and then getting a message from Missy, just feeling that connection with her, however thin it might be, lifted me up. It was a stretch—a desperate stretch, but maybe we had hit rock bottom and were on our way up.

  A circle face with wide-open, optimistic eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Late that night, I read a message from Joe:

  I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. There are only a handful of guys like Frank Fletcher in this world. I’ve been lucky to know him. I’ll never forget how good he made me feel, like everything I did was groundbreaking, golden. I’ve always wondered where he got his enthusiasm for life.

  I laughed out loud and then wiped my eyes because Joe remembered Dad like I knew him, he recalled the joy he transferred onto every person he came in contact with. I read on:

  For some reason, I thought back to the time you and I got him a computer. He resisted it, said we couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks. But we set it up for him and then got online and showed him how to use a Google search box. “What are you interested in?” I asked him. When he said Vietnam, I type
d in “Vietnam 1965” and tons of pages came up, and Frank nearly fell over. He thought I was magic. “How’d you do that?” he wanted to know. “You’re a genius!” he said, slapping me on the back. That was Frank, the guy who believed enough in me to give me credit for Google’s search engine.

  I dabbed at my eyes—tears, happy and sad. I finished up reading:

  It’s really great to hear from you, Miss. It’s been too long, and reading your message was like coming home. Please keep me posted on Frank. Maybe a cure’s right around the corner, right? Tell him his old buddy Joe says hey.

  A month later, I got a call from Dad’s neighbor. He found Dad in his yard in the middle of the night. He walked him home and put him back to bed, he thought I should know.

  The next day, while Dad was at the office, I hired a group of guys from a hospital supply store to safety-proof his house. Childproof latches were put on the cabinets that contained cleaners and drawers that held knives. Sensors were installed on the doors and window locks, so I’d receive a text every time Dad left the house. An automatic shutoff switch was connected to the stove. Area rugs were removed so that he wouldn’t trip on them.

  At the office, Dad spent a lot of time talking on the phone with his buddies. They knew about him, and they were here to help. I had Jenny schedule two client meetings per day, first thing in the morning—so far, he hadn’t had a lapse in the morning. I took up the slack in my own way. Dad’s goal each day was to reach out to our clients, to check in on them, reassure them that they were on the right path. I wasn’t comfortable on the phone, but I could whip up a pretty decent piece of correspondence and colorful report. Each day I composed three of these, and had Jenny send them out. A few days later, Jenny called to follow up, to see if the clients had any questions. I talked them through the charts—over the phone, in person. I could tolerate these conversations where there was an objective. Yes, that’s the yield. That’s the dividend. That’s the alpha and the beta. When the clients asked about Dad, I explained to them that he was easing off a bit, enjoying more time on the golf course. He deserves it, they would say. Good old Frank. No one deserves a nice retirement more than he.