Chapter 4: My Father's Apocalypse "Voice Message"

July 18, 2011

            I found out that my father had Alzheimer’s in a recorded cell phone voice message in  mid August 2009. Mom and dad were in Jacksonville at the Mayo clinic for medical evaluations to try and determine what was wrong with dad.  They had been gone for three days. Dad’s failing memory, his increasing depression and nightmares, his insistence that he heard a sound in his brain “like a whisk broom”, his trouble forming words were all starting to wear on him and mom. They needed answers that weren’t being given by dad’s regular doctors.

             School had only been in session for about a week. I stayed at work late that day. When I left my classroom there was only one other teacher left in the building.  I clocked out, walked out of the building, and reached in my bag for my cell phone. I kept it turned to silent during school hours per school rules. I saw there was one voice mail waiting. I entered my password and there was mom’s voice, “We’re on our way home....” her voice breaks “He has Alzheimer’s. Your dad has Alzheimer’s’”

At this point my knees buckle out from under me. I sink to the ground slowly and silently, like a puppet whose strings have been snipped.

Mom starts to cry, “We’re on our…. way home.. What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

The message ends. I can’t get up.