growing old

“My Mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006

After she died, I realized how much she’d been shielding from my father’s mental state.

He doesn’t have alzheimers, but he has no short - term memory, and is often lost.

I took him to the funeral, but when we got home, he kept asking me every 15 minutes where my mother was. I had to explain over and over again, that she had died.

This was shocking news to him.

Why had no one told him?
Why hadn’t I taken him to the funeral?
Why hadn’t he visted her in the hospital?

He had no memory of these events.

After awhile, I realized I couldn’t keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn’t remember, and it was killing both of us, to constantly re-live her death.

I decided to tell him she’d gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick.

And that’s where she is now.

This is a journal.

An ongoing record of my father, and of our relationship.

For whatever days we have left together.

http://www.dayswithmyfather.com

This journal is so incredibly heart breaking yet incredibly touching all at the same time. Please take the time to read every photograph on the site, it’s like a giant book and at moments I just burst into tears. I’m brought into this family and feeling everything Phillip Toledano is doing for his father. It’s intimate, it’s love, it’s what children must face as adults when they have to start taking care of their parents through life and death.

Step into his world. He has completely changed mine. and probably many others too.

Till soon.

Love, N.