GREENVILLE, N.C. — Bedridden by a stroke and Alzheimer's disease, my father's primary activity has become non-stop talking. Ironically, the first indication that something was going wrong inside his brain several years ago was when he began having difficulty remembering words.
Doctors are at a loss to explain how the stroke's rewiring effect has somehow boosted his vocabulary. Words he had lost before the stroke he now says in great abundance, even if they don't always make sense.
My father served as a minister and a gifted speaker inspiring and entertaining countless ballrooms and banquet halls. For those of us who are his audience now — at his home, where my mother takes care of him — there remains a tendency to search for meaning in his words.
From time to time, he'll break from what seems to be confused babble and offer a sweet, loving phrase to my mom, or say something that makes us laugh. Perhaps it's the sheer number words spoken that ensures these occasional flashes of apparent clarity.
He recently came out with something funny as my mother and I were adjusting his bed.
"You like that?" he smiled after I started laughing. Then he became serious and looked hard into my eyes before delivering a rare exchange, pointing his finger for emphasis.
"OK," he said, "Now I'm going to do something you didn't expect me to do."
"What's that?" I asked.
"You'll know when you see it," he added before looking away to resume a less lucid conversation with no one in particular.
With dad's illness, and especially after the stroke in late June, his wife and four children have confronted life-and-death issues that had never visited our family. Certain inevitable questions sprang from knowing how Wiley Rutledge would and would not wish to live out his last days.
My brother, Jeff, has noted that as long as our father is alive he has purpose. That's true, but it can be difficult to see.
I saw some of it over the Labor Day weekend as we sat around a fire ring on the farm. It's a beautiful spot with a gorgeous view of the mountains and surrounding farmland.
My kids were playing with their cousins while adult friends and family enjoyed the view. We did it over Memorial Day, too, except mom and dad were able to join us.
"This is where I want to be," dad said sitting by the fire on that night back in May.
The rest of us have occupied the same spot several times since.
"Think of all the moments we've had out here this summer since your mom and dad have been going through all this," my friend Paul said at the fire ring last weekend.
During the trip home, I thought of how my father's decline really has brought us closer together, which adds to what Jeff said about dad's continued purpose. That caused me to think again about that moment of clarity he seemed to have with mom and me.
"Now I'm going to do something you didn't expect me to do ... You'll know when you see it."
Maybe those were just some incoherent words rolling around inside my father's head. At the same time, maybe they have meaning, too.
Mark Rutledge writes for The Daily Reflector in Greenville, N.C. E-mail mrutledge (at) coxnc.com
