[or-roots] A tribute to a father by Patti Davis

[DAVIESW739 at aol.com]

Reagan Remembered
Months Before the Ex-President's Death, His  Daughter Shared Memories
By Patti Davis, People



What was once my father's office  is now his bedroom. On top of the desk 
where he rested his elbows as sunlight  slanted through the window, where he wrote 
his last letter to America announcing  that he had Alzheimer's in 1994, 
bedsheets are often stacked – ready to be used  for a change of the hospital bed 
where he now stays around the clock. When he is  awake, which is not that often, 
he can gaze at the trees outside the window. The  other day, my mother and 
the nurse who was on duty moved the bed to the open  doorway so he could look 
into the back garden, where the sun was making prisms  on the leaves after a 
morning of rain. "Did he seem to notice the different  view?" I asked my mother. 
"I don't know," she said.
People often ask me how my father is doing. They want to know if he still  
recognizes me, if he still recognizes any of us. It makes me realize that my  
mother and I have been so protective of his condition since he became ill –  
almost a decade now – that it has allowed people to imagine he is still talking,  
still walking, still able to stumble into a moment of clarity. But it would 
be a  disservice to every family who has an Alzheimer's victim in their embrace 
to say  any of that is true, and I don't believe my father would want us to 
lie. Today,  we are like many other families who come to the bedside of a loved 
one and look  into eyes that no longer flicker with recognition. It 
rearranges your universe.  It strips away everything but the most important truth: that 
the soul is alive,  even if the mind is faltering.
My father is the only man in the house these days, except for members of  his 
Secret Service detail who occasionally come in. It's a house of women, now –  
the nurses, my mother, the housekeepers. Me, when I am there, which is often, 
 since I live only 10 minutes away. When my brother Ron visits from Seattle, 
or  our older brother Michael comes over, the sound of a male voice seems to  
register with my father. He lifts his eyebrows. Is it recognition of his sons? 
 Curiosity about this new male intruder? I don't know. We frequently arrange  
dinner around his bed. In fact, it has become the center of the house.  
Everything radiates from that space, whether he is awake or asleep. It radiates  
from the man whose life is thinning to a stream, yet flows and follows us even  
when we drive off the property.
In the room next to my father's, my mother now sleeps in a new bed. The  
king-size bed they shared for so many years came to feel vast and empty to her,  
so she had it taken away and replaced by a queen-size bed. Less empty space  
across the mattress. Yet it's no relief from the loneliness of sleeping alone  
after 50 years of rolling over to the person you love. She still tiptoes across 
 the floor if she gets up in the middle of the night; her heart forgets that 
the  other side of the bed is empty. I remember the day the larger bed was 
replaced.  I remember the mark on the carpet where the king-size bed once was. It 
seemed to  say everything.
Alzheimer's is a long series of I-don't-knows. My father's doctor doesn't  
know how he has lived so long with this disease, especially after breaking his  
hip in January 2001. I think it's the tenacity of his soul – he just isn't 
ready  to leave his reunited family. At a certain point in time, it might all 
come down  to this – life is about learning how to die, how to let go and how to 
hold on to  what is really important. One thing that was so startling about 
the TV movie  that has gotten so much publicity is that it was based on years of 
our lives  when my mother and I were often at war. The script made use of 
things I had  written at that time, before I was able to put my rebelliousness 
and political  stridency aside. After reading the script, she said to me, "I'm 
so sorry about  the way you were portrayed." I think I answered, "Well, we all 
came off  terribly." But the moment was not lost on me. A single sentence can 
be a bridge  over currents of old history.
My father will leave, we all know that. There will be many people poring  
over his political career. There will be debates and discussions about his  
Presidency. But as a family, we will be elsewhere. We will walk past an empty  
room. We will be assaulted by the silence, the emptiness, and we will, I think,  
try hard to listen – to echoes, whispers, all those things that don't vanish  
when a person dies. That is, if you believe in such things. My father did. And  
that might be his most important legacy for us – what lives on in the  heart.
Walt  Davies
Cooper Hollow Farm
Monmouth, OR 97361
503 623-0460 

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