by Kelly Rimmer
I dump my bag on the table and don’t quite manage to hold back the sarcasm as I ask,
“So the door wasn’t jammed?”
“Sorry,” she says ruefully, glancing back at me as she makes my tea. “But you have to admit, it doesn’t make much sense. Why on earth would he install a lock like that? It’s a dead bolt designed for an external door. I’m a little nervous about what’s in that attic now, to be honest.”
“Me, too,” I admit. “I was up half the night thinking about it.” At least it was partly Dad’s mystery attic that kept me awake. I’ve been sleeping less and less and the insomnia isn’t always so easy to explain.
“How did we miss it, Beth?” Ruth sighs suddenly. I look at her in alarm, thinking she’s referring to me, but then I realize she’s still talking about Dad.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I think we were so focused on the heart issue, we didn’t realize there was another condition at play. We noticed he was different after his retirement, remember? You even asked me about it—you all did. I just thought it was him coming to terms with the changes in his physical health...adjusting to the new stage of life.”
Dad founded Walsh Homes when he was a single father with four young children. He worked with his hands and built houses and eventually a business that supported our family in a comfortably middle-class lifestyle. Given that I’m struggling to keep my head above water with one kid, I just have no idea how he managed. He outsourced the cleaning every now and again and we had help from Aunt Nina and a part-time nanny until Tim was old enough to supervise us after school, but for the most part, Dad handled every aspect of our household on his own.
I hope he thinks it paid off. I never doubted that we’d made him proud, but lately I’ve been feeling so guilty. The result of all of Dad’s nagging about school is four grown children with solid educations, two of us health professionals, yet not one of us smart enough or at least aware enough to notice that it wasn’t just his heart that was failing; his mind was going, too.
“I feel so guilty,” Ruth admits, her voice husky. “We took the kids to see him yesterday and he’s completely lost. I just wish I’d pushed his doctor to do some more tests after the heart attack. I suspected something was up then. It was hard to put my finger on what was wrong.”
The heart attack came out of nowhere. Dad was swinging a hammer with the team on a job site when he collapsed, and at first, it seemed he’d just need medication and some lifestyle changes. It soon became apparent though that his heart was damaged, and we were all in for a second fright because the cardiologist soon determined that Dad was in heart failure. Still, the doctor seemed optimistic that we had years and years left with Dad if he looked after himself. Dad had been cleared to go back to work and he seemed excited to do so. His sudden retirement came as yet another shock.
I still remember that day. I’d just arrived home from work to the phone ringing, and when I ran to pick it up, Ruth was sobbing on the other end. At first, I thought the worst—maybe another incident with Dad’s heart...maybe a more serious heart attack this time. Instead, Ruth told me he’d given her the business and had decided to paint full-time.
“Paint?” I repeated. “As in, paint houses?”
“No, Beth. Paint. As in, paint abstracts or landscapes or... I don’t know. Something like that.”
“But... Dad doesn’t paint.”
“Well, apparently he does now.”
Dad loved his job and he loved his company, and that’s when we tried to talk him out of retiring, even Ruth, who stood to gain ownership of the family business. But Dad, he was adamant. He said he needed a quieter lifestyle, and that giving up work would mean less stress on his heart. This was what he needed for the next chapter of his life, and in the face of such determination and logic, who were we to argue? He’d certainly worked hard enough to be entitled to rest if that’s what he wanted to do.
And it actually seemed Dad had been hiding an extraordinary talent. He’d never been trained in visual art, but soon he was prolific. He was painting all kinds of things—abstracts, portraits, landscapes—his talent seemed endless. Hunter even has a series of Dad’s artwork on the walls at his law firm, a collection his boss commissioned. They are vivid and clever and layered. That commission seemed to represent the start of a whole new, if somewhat unlikely, career for Dad.
But the reality is, Dad’s sudden interest in art was an early symptom of a neurological condition rather than a long-hidden talent, and it was just the start of his decline. Ruth’s right—it was hard to identify exactly what was wrong, but his presence and his world just seemed to shrink. He slowly disconnected from his friends, and while he’d always liked to keep the house tidy, cleanliness gradually became an obsessive focus. I remember Jeremy telling me that when he’d come for a visit, before he’d even set his beer glass down after the last mouthful, Dad took it right out of his hand, washed it and put it away. Tim expressed concern about Dad’s weight gain. Ruth was still confused about Dad’s sudden retirement, convinced it wasn’t an empowered, smart way to live out his later years, but a sign of an irrational impulsivity and an indication that something was drastically wrong.
I’m the psychologist in the family, so it was me they called when they were concerned, and I dutifully assured them Dad was fine. He’d gone from sixty-hour weeks at the helm of his own company to endless days with no set agenda. And Dad was facing a terminal diagnosis—despite the excellent chance he’d survive for years, the confirmation of his mortality was likely still playing on his mind. Of course these things were going to have a psychological impact. Of course he’d need some time to adjust. I tried to help my family focus on the positives, not the negatives. I even remember telling Hunter that it was nice to see Dad talking less and listening more now that his life had slowed down. Dad and I have always been particularly close, but after his retirement, he seemed to have endless time to listen to me, gazing at me with patient, quiet wisdom.
In hindsight, I was seeing what I wanted to see.
He started forgetting words, which was easy enough to ignore at first. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t communicating—he’d just pause midsentence and often ask, “What’s that word again?” Or he’d wave his arms vaguely while he talked about the “thingy” or “you know, the whats-it.” But it got worse and worse over time, and soon he was confusing nouns—saying chair when he meant table, tiger when he meant cat. But he seemed happy, so much so that he’d developed this adorably innocent laugh. It’s hard to accept that someone might need some kind of additional medical intervention when they are utterly delighted by every aspect of life. And Dad really was so smiley...so quick to joy and laughter.
Then one Tuesday evening he came to visit me and Hunter. Five minutes after he left to go home, I opened the door and Dad was there on my doorstep again, overjoyed to see us, completely unaware that he’d only just said goodbye. When we explained that to him, he chuckled at himself and insisted he was just having a “senior moment.” He didn’t seem concerned about what happened...and he didn’t seem embarrassed. But Hunter and I were nervous, and so we drove Dad home and then I called Tim. We made plans to get Dad over to Tim’s hospital for a checkup later that week, but Dad’s health crisis couldn’t wait that long. The very next day, the straw house of explanations we’d built around Dad’s personality changes collapsed entirely.
I was six months pregnant with Noah and I was having a bad day. I’d had a series of awful appointments with my clients—a child who was developing an eating disorder, then one who’d been abused by a parent, then one who was self-harming. Such a lineup wasn’t unusual, but something felt off in the way I engaged with each child. I was already becoming uncomfortable as the pregnancy progressed and I knew I was increasingly distracted. I wasn’t giving my patients my best—something I’d always prided myself on. I wondered if I should think about going on maternity leave early and I called Dad for his advice.
But when he picked up my call, I could hear that something was wrong. He wasn’t calm or wise, he was confused—the pattern of his speech sounded fluent, but the way he was using the words made almost no sense. I wondered if he was having a stroke. I left work and went right to his house, but Dad was inexplicably beside himself, babbling and crying, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t calm him down.
I called Tim again, and he met us at the Overlake Medical Center. Tim broke all the rules that day—not just the speed limit, but by insisting that the staff at the hospital let him do Dad’s cognitive assessment. By the time he’d finished, I knew Dad was in serious trouble. Even if my own training as a psychologist hadn’t given me just enough understanding of neurology to interpret some of the results, the look on Tim’s face would have said it all.
From there, it was days of more formal testing before the consultant neurologist sat us down and confirmed what we’d finally figured out for ourselves. The dad we knew and loved was already leaving us, brain cell by brain cell. His language skills were in significant decline, and what I’d thought of as patient listening was actually Dad disconnecting from our conversations. What we’d thought of as him becoming house proud was actually obsessive behavior. That stubborn change in his diet was a symptom, too, and we soon came to suspect he’d been existing on that one roast meal with us for Sunday dinner, supplemented by endless caramel ice cream over the rest of the week—his freezer full of dozens of tubs of the same brand and flavor.
Even the overnight emergence of artistic skill was no late-life crisis brought on by the heart attack. It turns out that sudden visual artistry is a recognized symptom of his particular type of dementia—and this particular type of dementia is known to happen sometimes in patients suffering heart failure.
We’d all missed it, even as Dad walked through years of decline alone, right in front of our eyes.
“I should have listened to you guys,” I say suddenly. “I shouldn’t have been so quick to justify the changes in his behavior—” I trail off at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Two young men appear, one carrying a toolbox.
“Excuse me, Ruth,” the taller of the two says. “The door is off.” He shifts, then scratches his neck and stares at the floor. “So is there anything else?”
Ruth sits up straight and clears her throat.
“No, thanks, Harry,” she says, then she nods. “I’ll see you boys back at the office.”
We sit in silence until the front door closes behind them, then I stand.
“Let’s go check out—”
“Just wait a second first, Beth,” Ruth says, her voice coolly professional. I bristle a little, but remain standing. I was very much hoping to avoid the intervention Ruth seemed to be building up to, and as awful as the detour was, I was relieved to focus on Dad’s illness for a few minutes, instead of letting her focus on me. But she gives me a pointed look, and I know distracting her isn’t going to be easy.
“Aren’t you curious?” I ask, giving it one last shot. I even go as far as to take a step away from the table and add, “I’m dying to see what’s up there.”
“Of course I am, but it can wait a few minutes.” When I don’t move, she gives me an exasperated look and points to the chair. I guess lifelong training at the hands of a bossy older sister has left me with some ingrained habits, because I sit heavily. “What is going on with you? Are things okay with you and Hunter?”
“Everything is fine,” I say impatiently, and I motion toward the hallway. “Let’s—”
“Is it Noah, then?”
I shake my head, and give her a desperate look.
“Don’t you remember what it’s like with a newborn? I hardly sleep, I’m basically a walking milk machine. It’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard.”
“Sure,” she says, shrugging. “It’s hard, and I had days here and there with each kid when I felt like it was too hard. But I didn’t disconnect from you, did I?”
“I haven’t disconnected from you.” It’s a complete lie, and an unconvincing one at that.
“It’s like you’re here, but you’re not really here,” Ruth murmurs. “You come to family dinners, but you don’t say much, and you’re dragging Hunter out the door as soon as we finish eating. You’ve been doing more than your share of the heavy lifting with Dad, but as soon as anyone else arrives to help, you leave. Jesus, Beth. You even left Noah’s baptism early.”
“Well, he was crying—”
“And Chiara and half of her family and Tim and Ellis and I, and Fleur and Jez and even damned Alicia all offered to help you, but you wouldn’t let us. It was like you were looking for an excuse to leave.”
I scowl at her.
“Come on, Ruth. It wasn’t like that. It was hot that day and he was miserable. We had to get home so he could sleep.”
“Chiara locked herself in her bedroom and cried for an hour after you left. You hurt her.”
“Well, that certainly wasn’t our intention—”
“Stop talking about that day like Hunter wanted to leave,” Ruth interrupts, exasperated. “He was trying to talk you into staying right up until you snatched Noah up and put him in the car. Hunter left with you, but only because you gave him no choice.”
I pause, frowning as I try to remember.
“That’s not how it was at all.”
“That’s exactly how it was, Beth.” Ruth doesn’t exaggerate, and I can see she’s telling the truth. I remember feeling so removed from the festivities that day, watching myself through a thick pane of glass, so tired and frustrated I could barely force myself to sit through the ceremony at the church. “And what’s really happening with your job?” she adds now, apparently not done yet. When I’m feeling better, I’m going to give my sister a few tips on how to guide someone through a psychologically difficult time, because she’s really making a mess of this intervention. The last thing I want to do right now is open up because with every second that passes, I feel more attacked. “You told me you were taking another six months unpaid leave. You told Jeremy you’re going back anytime now. And Tim said he asked you last week and you changed the subject. Is there a problem at the clinic?”
“I thought this was a welfare check, Ruth. I didn’t realize it was an interrogation,” I say defensively, and I rise again. The last thing I want to do is admit to Wonder Woman that I’ve put off my return to work not because I want to, but because I don’t trust myself with the welfare of innocent children right now.
“Just answer one question,” Ruth asks, pulling back all of the accusation in her tone and speaking to me very gently. “Yes, this stage of life is hard. And yes, it’s tiring. But it shouldn’t break you. It can’t break you, because I know you’re used to being responsible for other people’s welfare at work, but what you’re doing now is literally the most important role you’ll ever take on. Are you coping okay?”
One day Noah was screaming and I couldn’t bear the way the sound pierced my ears. It grated and grated and I suddenly realized I couldn’t bear it for another second. I walked out the door and down to the coffee shop on the corner of our street. I zoned out completely—I’d actually ordered a latte before I even realized what I’d done. I ran home and sat next to his crib but I still couldn’t convince myself to pick him up and comfort him. He cried himself to sleep. I sat on the floor beside him and I sobbed for hours. I still can’t explain what actually happened that day and I’m too scared to talk about it because I don’t want everyone to panic.
“I’m fine,” I say, and when she opens her mouth to talk again, I lean back to snatch my teacup from the table and head toward the hallway. “Honestly, Ruth, you’re being ridiculous. Come on, let’s go see what’s in this attic.”
Ruth sighs and rises. As she follows me along the hallway toward the staircase, she murmurs, “It was hard for me at first. I missed having a mom so much. There was no one aro
und to ask for advice and I had to figure it all out for myself and it felt so lonely. If you’re feeling like that, I really want you to remember that you’ve got me, and you’ve got Chiara. You’ve even got Elena and Harriet. I know they’d be happy to be there for you if you let them.”
Elena and Harriet are friends from college, with six kids between them. But just like Ruth, Elena and Harriet had babies and made it look easy. God, I remember Elena putting off her return to work for an extra six months not because she didn’t think she could cope but because she was enjoying motherhood so much she couldn’t bear to be away from her kid. Sure, they might have practical experience, and maybe they could offer me advice about diapers or pacifiers or feeding, but that’s not actually the kind of advice I need right now.
What do you do if you find yourself as a new mom and you realize you’re just not capable?
“Maybe I’m just finding my footing,” I blurt. Ruth frowns. “I just mean, I still don’t know what I’m doing. When does it start to feel natural?”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Ruth says, blinking at me. “He’s five months old. You’re already doing everything you need to be at this point. Feed, change, play, cuddle. That’s it.”
“I know, I just...” She’s looking at me as if I’ve suddenly grown a second head and if I could go back in time a few seconds, I’d have kept my mouth shut. This is why I haven’t talked to anyone about this. I knew they’d look at me like Ruth is looking at me now—as if it doesn’t make any sense, and that’s a perfectly reasonable response, because the way I’ve been feeling doesn’t make sense. I straighten my chin and try to backtrack as much as I can. “If I seem stressed, it’s just because my life is so different now. I’m still adjusting.”
Ruth doesn’t seem convinced. She touches my elbow gently, trying to stop me as we walk toward the staircase.
