"Life is brutiful."
Life is both brutal and beautiful.
My 70-year-old father-in-law has Alzheimer's. It's a sad, frustrating, scary disease. It's unfair and awful and cruel. It pretty much encapsulates the "brutal" aspect of life.
When Dave was a kid, his dad and his grandpa taught him to waterski, and Dave's loved the water ever since. It was his dream to someday get a cottage on a lake with a boat.
We now have that boat, but Dave's dad, Dan, with his dementia, often refuses to come on the boat. The last time we did get him out there, he sat on the boat meticulously folding the soaking wet towels into perfect squares.
Today, on our third trip out, we got Dave's dad out on the boat with us. Kate showed everyone how to kneeboard on a board we'd just bought of Craigslist, and we asked if any one else (meaning her cousins or uncles) wanted to try. Dave's dad stood up and said, "Okay. I'll do it."
Getting up on a kneeboarding isn't easy. I really struggled and I regularly tube, ski, and wake board.
After Dan volunteered, the rest of us sat awkwardly. No one said anything and Dan just stood there. He was going to try it. Why didn't someone say something? Then Dave handed his dad a lifejacket.
I said, "Hey, Dan, there are actually skis in that compartment under your feet. Want to ski instead?"
He said, "I can ski board."
"You'll ski?"
"Sure. I can knee ski or ski board or whatever you're talking about!"
We got the skis out and brought them to the back of the boat. Dan asked, "Now where do you want me to go?"
I guided him to the back of the boat, and gave him the skis, but he just looked at them. Dave showed him how to put them on, but Dan couldn't figure it out.
Dave began putting his dad's feet in the skis. I heard him keep saying, "They're just like shoes, Dad." It took ten minutes.
I had thought maybe skiing would be okay, since he once knew how to ski. I thought he might have that muscle memory. But, waiting for Dave to get his 70-year-old father's feet in the skis, I thought this might be a really bad idea.
After Dan's feet were in, we still had to get him into the water. Despite our efforts to help him, he somehow ended up with most of his body in the water, but both his skis still caught on the deck of the boat.
I tried to control my panic. What if he gets hurt? From this awkward perch, Dan asked, "Is the water cold?"
"It only feels cold for a moment," I told him in an overly cheerful voice I'd use to comfort a child.
"I know. Geesh," he said, chuckling, "I was kidding."
Oh, now you're kidding.
He sat there stuck for a moment more, and then, with an oddly graceful scoot forward, he was in the water.
Dave pulled the boat forward and Dan yelled the words they'd used when Dave was a kid, "Hit it!" Dave accelerated forward, but Dan fell.
We got him the rope, and he tried again. This time he got out of the water, but stayed crouched down. After he fell, Dan yelled to Dave, "Don't pull so hard. Just go really slow, because I'm trying to figure this out." Obviously, you can't go slow when you're pulling someone up on skis, but we just told him we would try that.
It took Dan two more tries, but then he got up, and he stood up, and he skied all the way down the lake! He was smiling; everyone was cheering. Seventy years old, can't figure out how to put skis on his feet, but here he was, skiing right down the lake like it was nothing!
His dementia, having taken so much of his life away the last few years, now seemed only took away the awareness that he was 70 years old, that we weren't asking him if he wanted to kneeboard, that he hadn't been up on skis in nearly 30 years.
So he skiied. And for that moment he was young and healthy, free and happy.
It was beautiful.
