Dad

Grandpa Bob points out a bald eagle as it flies along the shoreline of Lake Superior.

It’s been just over a year since my dad passed away from complications of dementia. Today, June 12, 2025 would have been his 86th birthday. This Sunday is Father’s Day, the second Father’s Day without him. These are all hard truths which have, of course, been on my mind, when I’m not worrying about everything from the minutiae of daily tasks to the existential crisis of democracy in our country. Somewhere, inbetween, when I find a calm moment or two and allow my mind to go there, I’m thinking about the one and only Bob Jokinen and what it means to live on the planet in his absence.

Everyone who loses a parent deals with it in their own, personal way. There are countless variations, from the manner of the death itself to the nature of the relationship with said parent. Whatever the variation, it universally sucks, to put it bluntly. In the case of losing my dad, dementia was a slow and heartbreaking process witnessed over the course of a couple years. By the time he passed, he was not living in a manner anyone would consider quality. At the end, he was a shell of his former witty and gregarious self, progressing to the point of needing 24-hour care and being non-verbal. Even with this knowledge, and knowing he would not have wanted to be a burden on his family, it’s still very difficult to say good-bye to someone you love, someone who shaped who you are in so many ways, both profound and subtle.

Living a long distance from your loved ones and not seeing them very often, it’s easy to not do a great job of being on top of things when it comes to their health. I knew my dad was declining, but my mom was pretty good at shielding us from much of the hardship she was going through taking care of him at home. I will always feel like I was not there enough for my mom as his condition worsened and he could not be left alone. When a spot suddenly opened up in a memory care unit, I had just started a new job. I’m grateful I was still able to make a quick weekend trip home to be there and offer a little support, even if it was just my physical presence. His placement at Canal View was a great relief in so many ways, despite it feeling so wrong to take him away from his beloved home on Lake Superior with the underlying knowledge he would never be coming back home.

I returned for another short visit a couple of months before he died and it was one of the toughest experiences I have known. I went to Canal View alone, leaving Oskar and William with Grandma Betty, and I’ll always be grateful for that decision. I am also grateful for this one last visit, as hard as it was to see him in his diminished state. In many ways, the experience made it easier to say good-bye and let go after he died.

My dad was 35-years-old when I was born and died just short of his 85th birthday. We had nearly fifty years together. Maybe I’m terribly selfish as I could have really used another 50 years. I wrote about that final visit shortly after it happened and held the following piece of writing close to my heart over the past year. But, I want to share it here now, as it serves as a good reminder to hold your loved ones close and appreciate the time you have together. It all goes by way too damn fast.

April 2, 2024

I was struck this morning by the difference between watching my 84-year-old father sleeping in his memory care unit room and watching my 8-year-old son sleeping on a twin mattress on the floor of my mother’s sewing room. It’s far greater than the 76 year difference in age.

My father is slowly dying from dementia and upon visiting this past weekend, I’m stunned by how diminished he has become. His body is skeletal, his cheeks hollow. When I first arrive he is awake and trying to take off one sock, his arms shaking as he struggles to do this simple task. He does not know who I am, does not acknowledge my presence and is overall unaware I’m there. The one-on-one nurse is at his side trying to convince him to keep his socks on. Apparently before I arrived he had been trying to take his pants off, for no apparent reason.

The nurse takes my arrival as a chance for her to go on break. It’s my first visit in three months, since I visited at Christmas, and I’m not all that keen on her leaving, as I don’t know what my dad is capable of and not capable of doing. It’s obvious he’s interested in getting up, but he doesn’t know who I am and cannot communicate verbally. He’s shaking and trying to get upright and I am alone with him, not quite knowing what to do. I’m still stunned by how he looks and am forcing back tears.

It’s Easter Sunday and an aide stops by his room. She’s dressed up for the holiday to entertain residents, wearing a pink top hat with bunny ears. She’s cheerful, and senses my discomfort, but says she’s just an aide and doesn’t quite know what to do about my dad’s insistence on standing. She tries to get some kind of support belt around him and I try to convince him to stay put on the bed, until someone more qualified to help comes back. At this point, he thankfully seems to give up on the idea of getting up and lays back down in his bed. The aide helps make him more comfortable, adjusts his blanket, and he turns away from me, laying on his side toward the wall.

Through it all, he looks miserable. I’m still struck by his face, the hollowed out cheeks, his mouth agape in a contorted manner that reminds me a bit too much of the Edvard Munch painting The Scream. He does not look like my father, the gregarious guy who always had so many stories to share and loved to talk. The man who should be sitting down in his Lazy Boy recliner with a bowl of his favorite ice cream covered with Hersey’s syrup, ready to watch the evening news on television. The man who loves Lake Superior and living at his lakeshore home. That man has been gone for quite awhile now and I miss him dearly. His body is left here hanging on, but my dad, he’s no longer with us.

For the next 40 minutes or so I sit by his side reading a novel and waiting to see if he wakes up. The television that’s bolted to the wall overhead behind me is playing the movie, “Pretty Woman,” on cable, complete with commercials. The subtitles are on. I wonder if the nurse had been watching it before I arrived. I know the movie well and between my reading, and watching my father sleep, I take in a scene or two from the movie. Julia Roberts’ character Vivian walks into the fancy boutique that wouldn’t serve her when she was dressed in her hooker outfit, and lets the bitchy sales woman know she made a big mistake - huge! A bit later she’s in the bathtub with Richard Gere’s Edward, offering up some therapy via her long legs. My familiarity with the movie serves as a good distraction from the sad and heartbreaking reality of seeing my father in his current state.

My Grandma Norma always referred to my dad as her little boy. I think about how sad Grandma Norma would be to see her little boy this way. He was a good son to her, always talking to her on the phone and cutting her grass in the summer, shoveling her snow in the winter. I’m not religious, but I still take comfort in the idea of her watching over him and welcoming him to the otherside when the time comes.

The next morning I’m up early and can’t fall back asleep. Instead I watch my little boy, my William, peacefully sleeping as the dawn’s early light filters into the room. I listen to his soft, even breathing and I think back to my poor father in his bed, so twisted. My father, my son - and here I am in the middle. Seventy-six years separate them — a whole lifetime. I think about all the ways my dad has influenced me throughout my life and I think about all the ways I have and will influence William's life. I hold out hope that I can do half as well as my dad did, because if I can, I consider that a big win.