Dad in Life in General

My dad is losing his memory a little bit.

My mom told me about it a few months back that he’s starting to be a little bit forgetful, but last night was the first time I noticed it in person. They drove into town to spend Christmas with us which was really nice! Jessica’s mom offered for them to stay with them since they have like 4 extra rooms haha. So they’re staying in her grandpa’s old room since it has like this fancy spa bathroom attached to it.

Well he also had a couple of gun safes in there because he was a big gun nut, and of course my dad is very interested in going through the guns and seeing what they have. We pull out this shotgun and my dad thinks it’s a 12 gauge, but we look at the ammo and all realize it’s a 20 gauge, a little “AHA” moment.

Jessica walks in and I say “It’s a 20 gauge so it’s not too heavy and doesn’t kick as hard” and my dad corrects me and says “Son that’s a 12 gauge”.

We all had just talked about it being a 20 gauge, like 3 minutes earlier. It wasn’t just a little memory slip that can happen to anyone. He said it like we had never talked about it before.

It really scares me because I just watched Jessica’s grandpa slip into dementia and within about 5 years he was basically incoherent. I watched him go from this sweet old man to a paranoid nasty grump. Granted he was much older than my dad, who is about 67 now. I’m just super scared this is gonna turn into some early dementia or, even worse, Alzheimer’s. And my dad is already kind of a paranoid fox-news watching person, so if he slipped into dementia I think he’d get real nasty towards my mom and I don’t think she could handle that.

Now there is some hope because my dad does snore like crazy and has been that way for years. His heart is starting to have some enlarged chambers or something and the doctor says it could be the snoring. But apparently the snoring can also explain the memory issues. My dad has had a sleep study scheduled a few times in the past but always cancelled them because he didn’t want to do it. But I guess me and my mom nagged him enough this time that he’s kept the appointment and it’s next month.

So basically that’s what’s been on my mind this Christmas.