RaisingDad

My father went for a walk today.      I must not have said enough Hail Mary's for Easter, because he found his way home.      We're expecting some friends and relatives over for the holiday. As I was buffing the oak floor, the noise must have bothered my tired old Dad because he gave me the Mad Dog look you see on gangbangers and hippity-hoppers. He's given that look to everybody but my wife, because he knows she's in charge of his next meal.      My father, when he's inclined, can give the ugliest bug-eyed look. It's very scary. Imagine the scariest monster in the scariest movie you've ever seen, like the ex-wife fighting Dustin Hoffman for custody of his son in  Kramer Vs Kramer , now imagine that monster with its eyes bulging out of its skull and giving you the stink eye.      It's a frightening look.      As o...

Baseball season hasn't started, but pre-season training has.      Most baseball teams practice and train in Arizona, and they'll play each other several times a week. Several times a week too often, if you ask me, but that's neither here nor there. I'm here, thank God I'm not there. Watching baseball, that is.      My father, even with his Alzheimer's, still enjoys seeing his favorite team play. The game is slow, with a lot of down time, so he doesn't get as confused as with other fast moving sports like bird-watching or chess.      We tried watching a soccer game one time, but we both lost interest. It was during the World Cup, and we fell for the hype.      "What's happening?" my father kept asking me.      "Well," I'd say, trying to muster as much enthusiasm as I could "one player is kicking the ball up the field and now another player is kicking the...

Of course I couldn't let what my brother wrote me to go unchallenged, so I wrote him back that my grandson even mentioned knowing him in Heaven.      "He did?" my brother asked, probably wondering what the catch was.      "He did," I answered. "He said, 'I asked Grandma, "Who's that guy with the Zika head and the big nose?"      'She said, "That's your Lito 's brother. The guy who thinks he's funny."      '"He is?" I asked Grandma.      '"He is," Grandma told me.      '"Grandma," I said, "I don't want to be born anymore."'"     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com jimduchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene  

When my grandson was 2-years-old, he told me many times that before he was born he was an angel in heaven, and he used to see my mother there all the time. When I asked him how he knew she was my mother, he answered that she told him that I was her son. To this day he talks about the times he met and spoke with her.      When he was 3-years-old, we were on a hiking trip.      " Lito ," he asked me, calling me by a shortened version of the Spanish word for grandfather, "why do Angels have wings?"      Just recently, on our last trip, while we were climbing a particularly tough mountain, he asked me, " Lito , do souls feel pain?"      He must have been hurting from the climb, but he didn't complain.      The kid's tough.      Like me.      That night, ...