It all changed like that. Forever. After that nothing was going to be the same again. I could never work again. I could never walk without a cane. At age 45, it all changed.
It was a cold fall morning, I sat in my arm chair reading Birdsong and drinking a cup of coffee before I was to head into the lab that morning. I began to lose feeling in my left side, the words on the page became scrambled, a pounding headache began to crush my skull.
It was the same thing that had happened to my grandfather when he was 56, and I knew immediately that if I did not act fast, the damage was going to be much worse than it is today. I called for an ambulance.
            The doctors knew immediately,
“Scott, it appears you’ve suffered a minor stroke. But due to your fast actions you saved yourself from much more damage.”
To myself I thought, does it really matter how mild it was, a stroke is a stroke, and my life would change regardless. Some days I would rather be dead, others I accept my battle and fight it.
But life didn’t stop there, within a month of my stroke my father started to show signs of Alzheimer's. As an only child this is terrifying, knowing that I am the one who is going to have to look after my father, despite my handicap. However, because of my stroke I can no longer work, and now have the time to spend with my father, and watch over him.
My father, and I were never extremely close. We barely spoke but I know he had love for me and simply had a difficult time expressing this love.
My father is getting progressively worse, as the days, and months pass, his brain degenerates, now he can no longer recognize me. One day I went to visit my father while I was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and in his mind this triggered something, he mistook me for his friend Johnny from World War II. We had the most beautiful conversation that day, I learned so much about my dad and who he was during the war. I played the part of Johnny and he played the part of his 18 year old self in WWII.
I’ve worn a Hawaiian shirt everyday since, and the effect has been the same. This is the only way I can communicate with my father, and I am happy with that. I am happy to learn who he is each day, and to finally speak to my father. Speak to him in a way he never spoke to me before.
Today I went to visit him. When I walked through the door he said,
“Johnny, you better watch yourself, these f------ J--- are everywhere.”
I retort, “I know, Ray. We’d better keep our guard up.”
He then settles and looks at me, “You know Johnny, I got a girl back home, Martha, she writes me almost once a day, I’m gonna marry that girl Johnny. She’s my everything. The only reason I’m trying to stay alive is for that girl. I just want to be home Johnny, I want a family with this girl, and we are gonna have a boy, I can just sense it, and he’s gonna be my everything, whether he knows it or not he’s gonna be my world.”
I tell him, “I’m missing home too, and I miss my dad most of all.”
He looks at me, and gives out a little chuckle, “Oh quit that weak talk John.”
I just smile back at him, and take a bite of his grilled cheese he hasn’t eaten for lunch yet. I ask him to tell me a story about my mother, Martha.
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe it John, she’s more beautiful than any woman a man could dream of. When I first met this girl, she was standing in an arcade up on the boardwalk on a date with another man, and he had his arm up against the game machine leaning against it right next to her like some tough guy, so I came up to him, and says ‘Is this anyway to treat a lady?’ And he’s looking back at me all gruff and tough like this wasn’t my place to be commenting. So he says nothing back, and I tell Martha she outta find a better man, someone who will treat her right. And she looks at me and says ‘Well where am I gonna find a man like that these days?’ So I looked at her, and told her that if she gave me her address and telephone number, I could show her where she could find a man like that at 6:00 tonight. So that’s what I did, John. I picked her up at 6:00 and took her out on our first date. And the sparks instantly flew.”
I had never heard this story before, I had never even heard my father talk so fondly of my mother, sure they had a healthy marriage and were together until the day that she died. But never had he expressed such love for her, such magic in their relationship, but through the hard times of Alzheimer's and my stroke, somehow out of this terrible situation a bond formed, a friendship, a time for stories to be told, history lessons to be taught, all because my father thinks I’m someone I’m not. But to me it does not matter, at least I have him and at least we are finally talking. Everyday, I go to see Ray, and everyday I learn something new. I learn about his favorite food, he use to eat before he was drafted: his mother’s meatloaf. I learn about the time that he, and his buddies pulled a prank on their 9th grade teacher by switching out his vanilla pudding for mayonnaise. And about the time that my mother, him drove up the entire coast of California together.
Everyday he revealed something, some days he would repeat the same story, but it was so amazing to hear regardless. We did this everyday for the next two months, but eventually it began to fade, he began to not even recognize me as Johnny. Now I am just a stranger.
But each day I go anyway. Each day I go to his bedside, hoping that I can hear one more story, one more time I wanted to hear him say Scott, or Johnny. Just once more. 
Some  days are harder than others, he looks so afraid, and scared, in a world he doesn’t know anymore. Filled with people he can’t recognize. Each day he is growing weaker. He will be gone anytime now, some nights I will sleep at his bedside wondering if he will make it to the morning. He wakes up in the middle of the night, scared in a dark room he can't recognize yelling through tears,
“Where am I? Help me! Help.”
He will be dead any day now, and I refuse to leave the nursing home, sleeping in the empty bed beside his. Wondering when it will be his time, and where he will be going when it is his time.
It’s a freezing winter night, and he seems worse than ever, the doctors say it’s unlikely that he will make it to morning. Tonight I don't sleep, I just sit beside his bed, and pray. At around 3:00 AM, he takes in a deep breath, and says in a whisper as he takes his last breath “I love you, but I need to go.”
And that’s it. One final breath, and I feel his soul drift away to a better place. I feel his hand in mine for the last time, hearing his voice for the last time. Though, it seems he has been gone for months, it still feels different knowing I will never see, or hear him after this. But now he is with Johnny, my mother, his family, and all his friends, perfectly healthy in a place where he is not afraid of, and in a place he can recognize. His last words will sit with me for the rest of my life. H---, I don’t know if he was saying he loves me, or Johnny, or my mother, or his mother, but he went out with love in his heart, and that’s all that i can ask for.