What I Know About Alzheimer's

[ellajam]

Hi, 71, . You've really grown something very effective here. I like the subtitles guiding me. Here are a few thoughts I had when reading. Thanks for posting this, your work on it has been interesting and enjoyably heart wrenching reading.

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What I Know About Alzheimer’s

i. After Death

I’ve always wondered
if father dreamed, did he remember
his own name
Did you wonder if he dreamed or if he knew his name in his dreams? If the latter, which IMO is more striking, you may want to consider a colon after wondered.

He’s buried now with a whirligig
beside his plot, a headstone etched
with his name and dates so others
will remember him, even if he couldn’t
Love the way this is wistful yet matter-of-fact at the same time.

His last years were beach sand,
a gift to be blown away; Alzheimer’s
was how his distance widened,
how all his names moved
farther and farther away

Sometimes, when I visited, I wondered
whether he was ashamed he could dream
at all.

ii. Before Death

His hands hold the new electric razor;
they can no longer be trusted
to the straight edge. He reminds me oddly
of an older model of a father: boned,
collapsible, something to be forgotten
in a deep closet. Pocked skin, his veneer
of fatigue; arms as if from a child’s drawing. Love this stick figure.
Older is iffy for me, I think you mean previous but age weighs so heavily here it seems to mean even older than the old he is. Maybe that is what you mean, I'm not sure. Even if you somehow mean both, this was a sticking point for me.

He asks me to how to use it and puts it to his face,
as if wanting to scrape thin ice on a winter windshield.

No, here, Dad. Let me show you.

He watches in the mirror as I guide his finger
to the on/off switch, says with a cold-fact delivery,

I used to do this kind of stuff for you.
The crux of the poem for me right in the center. The mix of a stray memory separated from the emotion that is usually tied to it is the heartbreaking truth. For me it makes "Yes, you did. Many times." superfluous.

His dark eyes are hungry to remember; I feel my finger
on his finger, feel the calluses, his skin flaking into dust.

Yes, you did. Many times.

iii. Death Night

Father never took slow showers,
nor did I ever ask him about his dreams

over coffee or between bites of corn flakes
or raison toast with Skippy peanut butter.
typo, raisin. I don't know that you need corn flakes when this line so beautifully brings the picture.

He never went religious, not even after Lisa;
I often fell asleep with his Twin Cities voice

on the radio, statically, like bags of salt,
selling London Luggage leather hand bags
I can't figure out the bags of salt.

or used cars from towns named Cadott
or Chippewa Falls, cities that have supplied

the world with cozy children. There is no way
back from there; even when I used to wake

with him on the bed’s edge, I considered him
a genius in our city by the river near the trees.
I'm not sure you need "even when." If it's to say that you still consider him a genius there might be a better word there.

A very satisfying ending. Thanks for the read.