This is not exactly a fun trip. I have literally dashed to Louisiana to check on the situation with my dad. At ninety-one, there will be a certain level of slowing down. The assisted living facility he and my stepmother are in is basic, but nice. His Alzheimer’s seems to be as manageable as it can be. He is quite functional with predominantly short term memory issues. It’s distressing for him of course and part of the reason for me coming is to try and help him process through this stage. No, it won’t really help him since he won’t remember, however, I might be able to “impress” a few supportive phrases he can hold to. I am not a practitioner in neural linguistics programming (NLP), but will do what I can. What I can do is capture some of the old stories he has because if you’ve been through this, you know those are often the memory links that become more vivid. It’s always been a source of interest to researchers. Anyway, I’ll get as many of those as I can over the next few days and we’ll take a couple of short outings. Daddy is on a walker now, although moves quite well with it.

The trip itself was fairly smooth – minor delays on both flights. There was a situation out of Atlanta I had not previously encountered (to the best of my knowledge). During the pre-flight inspection, they discovered a small hole in nosecone (I think they said). They patched it, but had to wait for the epoxy to dry and be inspected. Okay, yes, that would be a good thing. Smooth flight after that and on a larger aircraft than I was accustomed to coming to for this route.