Time to resume the previous wander

Having now spent 45 days living in my father’s basement (I feel like such a millennial) I now have a real sense of his situation.  I had been staying in an in-law apartment in a brother’s house in the next town and driving to Dad’s to sit with him for a few hours everyday.  We agreed it made more sense for me to simply move in.  Although that has proved to be more difficult than it would seem.  Most times Dad is either asleep or incoherent as whatever is going on in his mind doesn’t relate to what is coming out of his mouth.  Yet four separate nurses have all said that Dad is pretty healthy for a demensiad, deaf, artificial knee shuffling 92 year old who recently lost his wife of nearly 66 years and excepting something drastic like a seizure or a fall, he could last some time.

And then ther is  Nana, my father’s live in aide. He has the experience, temperament, and empathy to deal with Alzheimer patients.  Dad is not his first. His attitude is that he takes care as if the client was family.  We have had 1/2 dozen aides from Ghanna in the past few years.  Most of them were very good.  I think it has something to do with how families there support each other strongly. And since the first day he arrived, amid all the activity surrounding my mother’s death, wake and funeral, I have been impressed with the way he managed Dad.  So faced with that news from the nurses and a need for a break from spending so much time with Dad (I don’t have Nana’s temperament) I have decided to jump the pond and resume my recent wander.  I played around with Ancestry.com and made contact with relatives and have been able to flesh out some history on my mum’s side and now in her memory I plan to visit some ancestrial stomping grounds.  Rather than bore you on the very first blog, let me simple say the target is Wick and Dunnet Head, Caithness, Scotland.

Logan Airport, Boston Ma, USA