[AT] Reagan Remembered (by Patti Davis) Off topic but great reading

[DAVIESW739 at aol.com]

I got this off AOL today it is one of the most  beautiful things a wayward 
daughter could say about her father.

Even if  you hated Reagan please read this as it pertains to all of us who 
are getting  old and may face the same  fate.
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Reagan  Remembered
Months Before the Ex-President's Death, His Daughter Shared  Memories

By Patti Davis, People

What was once my father's office  is now his bedroom. On top of the desk 
where he rested his elbows as sunlight  slanted through the window, where he wrote 
his last letter to America announcing  that he had Alzheimer's in 1994, 
bedsheets are often stacked – ready to be used  for a change of the hospital bed 
where he now stays around the clock. When he is  awake, which is not that often, 
he can gaze at the trees outside the window. The  other day, my mother and 
the nurse who was on duty moved the bed to the open  doorway so he could look 
into the back garden, where the sun was making prisms  on the leaves after a 
morning of rain. "Did he seem to notice the different  view?" I asked my mother. 
"I don't know," she said.
People often ask me how  my father is doing. They want to know if he still 
recognizes me, if he still  recognizes any of us. It makes me realize that my 
mother and I have been so  protective of his condition since he became ill – 
almost a decade now – that it  has allowed people to imagine he is still talking, 
still walking, still able to  stumble into a moment of clarity. But it would 
be a disservice to every family  who has an Alzheimer's victim in their 
embrace to say any of that is true, and I  don't believe my father would want us to 
lie. Today, we are like many other  families who come to the bedside of a 
loved one and look into eyes that no  longer flicker with recognition. It 
rearranges your universe. It strips away  everything but the most important truth: 
that the soul is alive, even if the  mind is faltering.
My father is the only man in the house these days, except  for members of his 
Secret Service detail who occasionally come in. It's a house  of women, now – 
the nurses, my mother, the housekeepers. Me, when I am there,  which is 
often, since I live only 10 minutes away. When my brother Ron visits  from Seattle, 
or our older brother Michael comes over, the sound of a male voice  seems to 
register with my father. He lifts his eyebrows. Is it recognition of  his 
sons? Curiosity about this new male intruder? I don't know. We frequently  arrange 
dinner around his bed. In fact, it has become the center of the house.  
Everything radiates from that space, whether he is awake or asleep. It radiates  
from the man whose life is thinning to a stream, yet flows and follows us even  
when we drive off the property.
In the room next to my father's, my mother  now sleeps in a new bed. The 
king-size bed they shared for so many years came to  feel vast and empty to her, 
so she had it taken away and replaced by a  queen-size bed. Less empty space 
across the mattress. Yet it's no relief from  the loneliness of sleeping alone 
after 50 years of rolling over to the person  you love. She still tiptoes 
across the floor if she gets up in the middle of the  night; her heart forgets that 
the other side of the bed is empty. I remember the  day the larger bed was 
replaced. I remember the mark on the carpet where the  king-size bed once was. 
It seemed to say everything.
Alzheimer's is a long  series of I-don't-knows. My father's doctor doesn't 
know how he has lived so  long with this disease, especially after breaking his 
hip in January 2001. I  think it's the tenacity of his soul – he just isn't 
ready to leave his reunited  family. At a certain point in time, it might all 
come down to this – life is  about learning how to die, how to let go and how to 
hold on to what is really  important. One thing that was so startling about 
the TV movie that has gotten so  much publicity is that it was based on years 
of our lives when my mother and I  were often at war. The script made use of 
things I had written at that time,  before I was able to put my rebelliousness 
and political stridency aside. After  reading the script, she said to me, "I'm 
so sorry about the way you were  portrayed." I think I answered, "Well, we all 
came off terribly." But the moment  was not lost on me. A single sentence can 
be a bridge over currents of old  history.
My father will leave, we all know that. There will be many people  poring 
over his political career. There will be debates and discussions about  his 
Presidency. But as a family, we will be elsewhere. We will walk past an  empty 
room. We will be assaulted by the silence, the emptiness, and we will, I  think, 
try hard to listen – to echoes, whispers, all those things that don't  vanish 
when a person dies. That is, if you believe in such things. My father  did. And 
that might be his most important legacy for us – what lives on in the  heart.
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Walt  Davies
Cooper Hollow Farm
Monmouth, OR 97361
503 623-0460