I say "still" because this loss continuous and current- my father is still declining, and, lately, I've begun to feel myself tipping off the edge of my own cognitive plateau, beginning to slide.
But here is one new thing: After 15 years, the present is losing its grip on the past. What I mean is this: always before, my father's debility leached backward, discoloring not only the man I loved as an adult, but the man I loved as a child and a teenager. A letter he wrote to me while still cogent, a picture of him cradling my infant skull, a draft of the toast he gave at my wedding- these were agonizing artifacts, a reminder of the man who no longer was.
But finally, unaccountably, the present is receding, abandoning the past in its wake. Going through my own tax records this year, I came upon an old return my father had filed for me when I was eighteen. I do my own taxes now, just as he did. I have opened college savings accounts for my children, just as he did. And I am preparing for an uncertain future using what tools I am able to access- just as he was once able to.
The tax return is brief but assiduously completed; he used the numbers to open, and contribute to, my very first retirement account. Here is another copy for you in case you want it, he scrawls across a duplicate form from 2002.
I know what he means: I love you. I love you, and I always will.
