The Healing Balm of Alzheimer's

“YOU are my daughter?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes! Do you remember you used to call me Via or Vivi?”

“Via…Vivi…Yes…I do remember. And are these your children?”

“Yes!”

This is part of the conversation I had last week with my father.

That last affirmation prompted a look I will never forget - one of awe, overflowing pride and intense joy.

It was heart-breakingly bittersweet.

Because the love and connection that was exchanged in that moment not only balanced out the grief and loss of a longer-lasting relationship that was never so tender nor open, but also highlighted it. 

And becasuse I REALISED THAt i had clearly lost my father. But I might have gained something altogether more PRECIOUS…

When I was studying philosophy, we explored the concept of self and identity.

How you can ‘prove’ that you are the same person as you were: before you went to sleep, last week, last year, when you were a teenager or a child.

One of the principal ‘arguments’ for a continued sense of self is memory: you ‘remember’ being you at each of these times.

But how can you count on your memory? And what if your memory is not reliable?

(Which is of course, one of the many counter arguments to this particular line of enquiry).

This incertitude can also play into the psychodynamic inner work that I support my clients to do (understanding how your past is affecting your present).

It comes up as resistance towards speaking your truth about your past - especially if that truth may not be that palatable to other members of your family or community.

Because the inner child part of you doesn’t want to feel the pain that is associated with her truth - she hid it away for a reason. So any excuse will do. Including second-guessing the veracity of her perception of what happened and how.

The concept of identity also arises when one or both of your parents change as they age.

Perhaps they become harder, harsher and less flexible in their views. Or perhaps they soften and mellow, opening up to a deeper connection with you.

The latter option presents a problem if you are trying to heal the dynamic with that particular primary caregiver (which was very challenging at the time), when it no longer is.

And the inner child - who can find it very hard to advocate for her side of things (even when things were objectively terrible), can find it nearly impossible to focus on releasing this past pain when the person she is channelling it towards no longer bears any resemblance to the perpetrator that (directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously) inflicted those wounds.

I processed my ‘father imprint’ in 2016.

I made peace with the person he was when I was a child, came to accept him as a flawed human being (just as I am equally flawed), and integrated the wounds he inflicted on me as an emotionally immature parent of a needy child.

But seeing him this way threw me. It shook the box into which I’d placed him, and asked me to put down my armour - the boundaries I had carefully erected in order to protect my vulnerability from yet more rejection - and asked me to let him in.

Here was a man that bore no resemblance to what I remembered, his memory also in shreds.

And so I did.

I grieved once more the loss of the father I needed but never had. I grieved the arrival of a love, connection and pride in me that almost arrived too late. And I grieved that this had arrived in an unknown form.

On the one hand, I have never felt so appreciated by him. On the other, he isn't the ‘him’ I have always known him to be.

And whilst this made me doubt whether I was ‘allowed’ to receive this love - was it valid? Did it count as being from the same person? Could I truly let it in?

My conclusion was that, yes, I could.

Because it's never too late to receive love in whatever form it comes, from whomever it comes.

For it is never too late to let go. And it is never too late to let someone in.