Dad kept a daily journal. A tradition started generations ago, handed to him by my grandfather.
It's a pragmatic recollection of the day's weather, visitors, daily tasks & any interesting tidbit that made for a chuckle or smile.
This is the last one he wrote in.
It's pages are full of him. His faith, his love, his kindness, his humour, his patience, his unceasing energy...and his dementia.
The entries slowly but surely degrade from orderly, dated anecdotes neatly written in handwriting so very much like my own - to undated, out of order & eventually to nonsensical ramblings of people whose names he no longer knows, to scribbled markings on paper.
But I touch the pages, I trace the lines he made with the pen and am comforted in knowing that his hands touched them as well.
And the whirling confusion and ache of losing 'him' in the stories turns into to the connection of love in his desire to continue this tradition, to tell the story in the only way he could.
And it comforts me.
