Saying No to My Father

My father sits on the deck, and clears his throat.  His voice is barely audible, his words slurred.  He hasn’t said anything more than yes, no, or ok in weeks, lost in some nonverbal space the doctors call dementia.  I have to move closer.  He starts over.  “I need to make one more trip to Germany, and I want you to be my travel companion.”  My heart clenches.  We had this conversation a year ago.  At the time, Ron said immediately, “Impossible.” 

But I understand that yearning for home.  I researched all possible ways to make the trip, including checking into the logistics of getting handicapped hotel rooms and making an ocean crossing.  I discovered that it would be impossible to get travel health insurance for someone over 85 with a history of heart attacks. He’s prone to losing all sense of time and location, even at the Assisted Living, so I would have to share a room with him.  I wondered if he wanted to go home to die.  If that was it, I wanted it to be possible, but in the end, I was relieved when he stopped asking.

“We could fly to Boston, and stay a few days with your sister to recover, and then fly to Frankfurt. From there we could take the train to Gera.”  He’s thought it all through.  Travel planning was a constant all his life.  Even after he retired from his career in international sales, he lived for the next trip.  When he told me that he was done traveling six years ago, I think he expected he could just lie down and wait for the end. 

I listen to his whole plan.  When he is finished, I try to divert him by asking why he wants to go.
Remind him that he had decided he couldn’t fly to Europe anymore.  He really doesn’t have an answer.  At some point he says, “I don’t want to get sentimental about this.”  He never could talk about feelings. 

Instead, he says he wants to pay his respects to his companion Hannelore’s grave, and that he wants to see his childhood home once more.  I ask him if photographs would help.  If he would like to Skype with his sister.  He nods.  That might help.

Ten minutes later he starts over.  “I need to you to come with me to Germany one more time.”
I try several different approaches, but as the evening advances, and the June Minnesota sun begins its slow descent behind the trees, I realize that nothing short of “no” will work.  

For decades I carried anger against my father for not letting me return to Germany.  The memory of how trapped I felt as an adolescent still makes me choke.  But having to say “no, we cannot make another trip to Germany.  You have to stay here, now”  doesn’t give me the slightest satisfaction.  It only breaks my heart.