"Did you hear from my kids?" Frank is at my back patio door again this morning. I've become accustomed to entertaining in my pajamas, but I'm still not accustomed to seeing him standing right in front of my full glass patio door at six in the morning. He looks desperate. He's pleading me with his eyes. "No Frank, your kids don't call me. Remember, you didn't want them to talk to us?" I know it's kind of mean, but I can't help myself from rubbing it in a little bit now and then. Matt and I have become Frank's caretakers, but it wasn't long ago he wouldn't even speak to us.
We moved Frank into Terry's house. He's not quite 50 years old yet, but so far no one has said anything. I think because the residents all loved Terry so much, they're giving Frank a pass, but they all know. Apparently it's the talk of the town. Whispers at the club house, "did you see Terry's son?". . . "something's not right.". . . "I stopped to talk, but he just smiled like he had no idea." . . . "the lights and tv are blaring all night long." . . . "yeah, the lights are on but no one's home, heh heh."
There was no place for him to go. Pat is getting married and moving to Wilkes-Barre. The house is on the market, so Frank's days were numbered there and Pat didn't want to show the house with Frank's stuff all over. We did manage to find the dog a great new home. Frank seemed sad to see him go, but he wasn't taking care of the poor dog properly. A dog should not live in a cage, he should be part of someone's family. Matt placed an ad on craigslist. We had several calls, but most people couldn't afford the $300 asking price. That was kind of a test. If you can't afford to pay for the dog, you probably can't afford to keep him; hence the asking price. We had a near miss with a twenty-something girl who came with her mother. The mother didn't seem happy with her daughter's decision to buy Panser but she was going ahead anyway. She said she would bring the money on Friday morning, but she never showed up or called. A few days later a motherly-looking, 40-ish woman came to see Panser. She said it was a surprise for her kids. She wanted to know why we were getting rid of him and we explained that our brother couldn't care for him any longer. She seemed to understand and looked sadly at Frank. She went over to him and said she would take very good care of him. She told Frank about how much her children have been wanting a dog and he was going to make them very, very happy. That really brightened Frank up and he seemed more willing to give Panser to the kids he didn't know. I think in the end it was a relief for him to not have to think about taking care of him any longer. About a month later Matt got an email from the woman. It was a picture of three happy children sitting on a couch surrounding Panser who had a big happy dog smile in the middle. She said he was adjusting well after a rocky start and the kids just adore him. They renamed him Sandy. I wanted to cry. I said to Matt "he must think he died and went to heaven. Look how happy he is." "Yeah we did the right thing, we had to." Matt agreed.
"Does your son talk to them?" Frank asked again. "Well, I think they talk sometimes, not often though." We've had this same conversation just about every day. "Are my kids okay?" Frank is obsessed with knowing something about the kids. He asks constantly. It's consuming him. He heard that the large company that Kat works for was bought out by an even larger company but all the employees lost their jobs. Frank thinks that the kids are poor now, so every day I reassure him that they're fine and they have plenty of money. "Do you . . . do you think they have food?" Frank is worried, no matter how much I reassure him.
The next day, he's there again. I can't deal with this every single morning. If I scrunch down I can get the cereal and a couple bowls and bring it up to the kids in their rooms. Eventually he'll leave. But he'll be back.
Another morning, here's Frank again pacing at the door. "I saw Kat, and she was driving my Jeep." Frank was almost breathless at this new development. "No Frank, how could that be." I said.
"I'm telling you I saw her. She was driving by the place, and she slowed down and she looked right at me." Frank explained. "What place Frank, where were you?" I was getting concerned. "Over at Rich's" Frank said. "Frank, you're not supposed to be over there. Why did you go there?" I asked. Kat has a PFA order against Frank, and Rich is her hot-head, a-hole brother. This could be trouble. "Frank, do not go there." I said loudly and plainly so he could understand. "Oh, yeah, I know." Frank answered, but it was becoming increasing difficult to communicate with him and his behavior was becoming more worrisome. He's still driving, and doing it well. I've driven behind him and watched him. He looked both ways, used a turn-signal, pulled out cautiously, so he still has his keys. It's where he's going that has me concerned.
I told Matt about this Jeep story and he got to the bottom of it, because sometimes it's too hard to put the pieces of missing words together. Frank had bought an old 1980 Jeep Wrangler and it was in Kat's brother's mechanic shop getting repaired when the sudden break-up with the PFA order occurred. Now that Frank had some money and Matt's support, he was looking for it and he was imagining that Kat was driving around in it. This was the second occurrence of hallucinations, but we didn't think hallucination at the time, we just thought he was mistaken.
The first hallucination occurred right after Frank moved into Terry's house after she had passed away. He said, "I saw Mom." His eyes were wide open; he was slightly amused but also serious. "She was standing right in front of me, and she was yelling at me." Matt and I couldn't help but laugh. I said, "If your mom could come down and yell at you I'm sure she would!" Matt said, "It's probably because she's seen the mess you made in her closet." It was amusing at the time, but in retrospect this was a new phase of the Frontotemporal Dementia that we didn't even know he had.
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