The Visitor

A.J. Daulerio recalls the last times he spent with his father.

Illustration by Edith Zimmerman

My elderly parents flew cross-country to Los Angeles from Ft. Lauderdale for last Fathers’ Day and my oldest son’s birthday. It was the first time we’d seen them in 18 months, since the beginning of pandemic. My father had just turned 80. His health, since the last time I saw him in person, had abysmally declined. About a week prior to the trip my mother told me that he was “using a walker” but in my head I thought “using a walker” meant it was temporary. He had some lumbar issues, hip issues, old man issues. But from the moment he shakily stepped out of the Uber SUV I could tell he’d never walk without assistance again. 

We helped him up the steps to the house:

Right foot. 

Left foot. 

Last step, now.

You did it!

I shuffled him into the house and plopped him onto the couch while my mother hurriedly unpacked all their things, anxious for her grandchildren to get home from the babysitter’s. My father switched from the walker to a purple cane, the same one my grandmother had used. She was Greek, joyful, funny, and wise. She picked that color because she wanted everyone to know she walked slower, but she was still here to have fun. My dad was not a purple cane, here-to-have-fun guy.

I sat on the chair across from my father and he stared at me like he was eager to tell me something. 

“Do you know I’m your father?” 

I gave him a puzzled look, unsure if this was a joke.

“You … are my son.”

He raised his eyebrows to assure me that this was news he’d just found out but that it was, in fact, 100% true. 

“Do you believe that? You are my son.” He could not believe it.

About a week prior to the trip my mother told me that he was “using a walker” but in my head I thought “using a walker” meant it was temporary. He had some lumbar issues, hip issues, old man issues. But from the moment he shakily stepped out of the Uber SUV I could tell he’d never walk without assistance again. 

My mother came into the living room quickly to intervene. On the flight she’d had to remind him of who I was and why they were flying to Los Angeles to see me. My father thought the purpose of the trip was to reveal that I was his real son all along. There is no salacious paternity story or big reveal. He was just at the stage of Lewy body dementia when shit gets real spooky.

Emotionally I’d prepped for this – I was ready to feel dizzy from intense moments of either love or grief because my mother had told me that this would be the last time she’d be able to bring him out to see us. But I felt okay just then.

The prior two times they’d visited were not great. When they came in October of 2019, my father and I got into a vein-popping shouting match where I threatened to throw him off the porch deck if he didn’t stop being an asshole in front of my children. “They won’t remember!” he said. I could have choked him to death.

Amazingly, they came back again that Christmas. This time, my mom had doped him up full of beta-blockers and sedatives to keep his temper in check. He wasn’t going to ruin her Christmas. I did my part – I kept it “light and polite” as my Al-Anon sponsor suggested. My father and I kept a safe distance from each other. My parents came and went without any drama. 

But this? I wasn’t prepared for this.

“I’m your father! Do you believe it?” He accidentally dropped the cane.

This reminded me of my grandfather, my dad’s father, who had the same cursed disease.

*****

Albert Daulerio, Sr. was a gentle Italian man who worked most of his life as an insurance salesman in Northeast Philadelphia, where most of his clients were first-generation Italian immigrants who trusted him. He did okay at his job, enough to raise two kids and not want for too much in his life. He was married for almost 40 years to my grandmother, Raphaella, and he loved her more than most people love air. “I got a good one,” he’d boast. But she chain-smoked and then she got emphysema. Everyone knew the end was soon.

In 1986, when I was 12, we got the news of her death while visiting my Aunt Ann in Rhode Island. I was ill with what was originally thought to be food poisoning but later turned out to be acute appendicitis. I was hunched over the toilet when my uncle called my father at the hotel they were staying at. “I’m really sorry, Al.”

We ended up driving home that night. It was snowing, there was a huge accident on the highway, and it took us almost 10 hours to get home. My father said nothing the whole ride back. I spent most of the ride puking into a Best Western wastebasket they’d taken from the hotel. I laid back there, and when I looked up and out the window, I saw all the brake lights reflected in the falling snow. A man in the car beside us got out to see how bad the accident was. Gas had spilled. “No smoking! No smoking!” he yelled to the traffic jam behind us. I don’t know why I remember this so vividly. 

My stomach pain turned out to be a seriously inflamed appendix. We got to a hospital just in time, and it exploded on the operating table. Back then, appendixes were still carved out of you, so I have a Frankenstein-looking scar above my right hip.

The prior two times they’d visited were not great. When they came in October of 2019, my father and I got into a vein-popping shouting match where I threatened to throw him off the porch deck if he didn’t stop being an asshole in front of my children. “They won’t remember!” he said. I could have choked him to death.

My grandfather was grief-stricken for several years after my grandmother died. He moved into a small, beige apartment but would come over to our house every Sunday. One time when we drove him back there, he broke down and sobbed. “Why me!” he cried into his handkerchief. He was so lonely. He wanted to die, he said. My dad stayed focused on the road. “Why any of us?”

My father lacked the tools to show compassion.

My grandfather eventually came back to the world. He went to senior citizen dances at night and bowled almost every day. He dated one woman, Vern, for a little while, but she broke up with him because she didn’t want to be married again. She enjoyed her freedom too much, she said. He found another woman right away at one of the dances. Her name was Claire. Soon after they got together, he began to forget everything. 

It started with phone calls. He’d call at 5 a.m. thinking it was 5 p.m., that sort of thing. One time, at a family wedding, I spotted him wandering around the reception hall, searching for a bathroom. There was wall-to-wall mirroring in one of the main halls. My grandfather saw his reflection and began talking to the familiar face. “Oh, there you are!” He almost walked into the glass. I watched the whole thing, and he didn’t notice I was there. I told my dad about it, and he shrugged it off.

“He gets confused sometimes.” 

But his condition worsened quickly. There was the time he set the Tupperware on the gas stove and almost burned his apartment down. One night he got pulled over by the cops driving in the wrong direction without headlights. He wasn’t allowed to drive anymore after that. Still, he was determined to live a good life. He was in love with Claire, and he bought her a ring, and she said yes. He was so happy again, but it didn’t last. Claire and my grandfather took a vacation together to stay at another couple’s home but were asked to leave when he urinated all over their bedroom.  

Soon after that, Claire came over to our house and made my dad sit there and observe my grandfather. She wanted to show us how bad things had become. “He doesn’t know who anyone is!” She was gruff and cruel. She pointed to my dad and said, “Who’s that?” No response. She pointed to herself and said, “Do you know who I am?” He just sat there, chewing his bottom lip. He looked so old and lost.

She got up from the kitchen table and said to my father, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” She gave the ring back. That was it for Claire. It took about five years from then for my grandfather to die. He forgot how to breathe one day, and that was that.

*****

Before my parents arrived for Fathers’ Day, I had finished this little project I wanted to show my dad. I had all these old baseball cards, the ones I’d collected with him when I was a kid, and made a collage of them underneath a piece of glass on my work desk. It was a Father’s Day gift for both of us. I figured he’d get a kick out of it. 

My office is in an old converted carriage house in the backyard. You walk out of the kitchen and it’s right there. It’s not a far walk to get to it, but it was difficult for my father to navigate the small brick stoop. So my mother and I did the walking routine again: 

Right Foot. 

Left foot. 

Big step. 

Good. 

They both sat down on my cheap, red chaise lounge and my mother came over and looked at the table, marveling at all the old cards. “There’s Ollie Brown. Larry Bowa. Dick Allen – Albert, come take a look!” He didn’t get up. He fiddled with the purple cane, and stared at the carpet, lost in the red and black. When my mother sat back down next to him he looked over at me again, with that same urgency he had on the couch when he first came in. 

“Do you know I’m your father?”

“Albert, he knows that.” 

“He knows he’s my son?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why doesn’t he live with us?”

“He lived with us a long time. Now he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.”

“What!”

“Yes. He’s not a child anymore.”

“What! How old is he?”

“He’s 47!”

“No!”

“Yes. He’s 47, and he has three children. He lives in Los Angeles now.”

“That can’t be right.”

He paused. He looked at me. Then he looked at my mom. Then he looked down at the carpet again.

“But I want him to come home with us.”

My father was trapped in a loop, time-traveling back and forth, unable to stop the machine from flipping the years on him. It was as if each time he moved to another room, he’d wake up from a coma. He chewed his bottom lip the same way my grandfather did at the dinner table that day when Claire gave back his engagement ring.

Daddy, I thought. My poor Daddy wants me to come home.

But I kept it together. Light and polite.

I had a Father’s Day card for him on my desk. It was blue and green and in big gold letters, said “Best Dad Ever.” I was going to write a long, thoughtful message to him, full of forgiveness and amends. I was gonna put this fat old resentment to rest finally. I wanted this Father’s Day to be special for him since it would probably be the last one he’d remember. 

My father was trapped in a loop, time-traveling back and forth, unable to stop the machine from flipping the years on him. It was as if each time he moved to another room, he’d wake up from a coma. He chewed his bottom lip the same way my grandfather did at the dinner table that day when Claire gave back his engagement ring.

“The babies will be home soon.” My mother smiled so big her eyes opened up like flowers. My father struggled to get up. I extended my hand and instructed him to grab it, and he looked up at me. 

“You’re my son!” 

My mother grabbed his arm and coached him on how to push himself up.

“Nose to toes, Albert.” 

He grunted.

“Nose to toes.”

*****

A couple months before my parents arrived, I received an awful email from my old friend, Jim, the gist of it: “I’m having the largest tumor removed from my brain on Thursday. Keep our family in your thoughts.”

Jim is about a year older than me. We worked together at a restaurant in the drab Philly suburbs for a couple of years after college. He helped me try new things and helped me not be afraid of them. He changed my life in so many ways.

When I got the email I immediately became overly emotional and nostalgic and sent him a happy memory about a vacation we’d taken together to Cat Island in 2001, where we jumped off a cliff together. First, we climbed up some craggy-ass mountain in cheap flip-flops. It was about a 40-foot jump into sparkling blue water above an underwater cave. Jim peaked out over the edge and said “It’s high!” He was reconsidering. I chose not to look down at all and I ran to the edge and just jumped.

This is not like me. I’ve walked down black diamond ski slopes and stepped out of lines on amusement park rides and water slides. But I jumped off this cliff and kept my eyes open the whole time. I did it twice. Bruised my ribs the second time down, but I had cold beers on the boat ride back and I was pulsating with aliveness. It was just an amazing day.

He wrote me back that it was nice to relive that memory, and that he’d recently thought of that trip, actually. Coconut-cracking. Palapas. The barracudas that menacingly watched us when we swam.

“I've always admired you for leaping. I think I worry too much about nailing the landing instead of enjoying the trip.”

He started the next paragraph with, “And here we are.” It jolted me back to the present. We were cliff-jumping in Cat Island and now he was scheduled for brain surgery Thursday to cut out the biggest tumor in order to (possibly) save his life. Twenty-five years and five children between us and here we were. Time travels fast, even with the memory intact. I tried to think of an appropriate response. My keystrokes were very loud. “Talk to you soon,” was all I could come up with. 

*****

The trip didn’t get easier or more joyful once my children got home. The last time my parents were here there were only two of them, now there were three. They’d never met the third one. My father forgot he even existed.

And there was also our dog. The dog and my father were both frightened and annoyed by one another the whole time. He would get up and the dog would bark loudly as if he were an intruder.  My father would freeze and hold up his hands like a gun had been pulled on him. Sometimes my dad would try to wave the cane at the dog to keep him away. “He won’t eat you. I promise.” I could tell he was not convinced.

I had a Father’s Day card for him on my desk. It was blue and green and in big gold letters, said “Best Dad Ever.” I was going to write a long, thoughtful message to him, full of forgiveness and amends. I was gonna put this fat old resentment to rest finally. I wanted this Father’s Day to be special for him since it would probably be the last one he’d remember.

My dad couldn’t keep up with all the commotion. Still, my oldest, almost-four-year-old son wanted to show Grandpa the goldfinches outside, and my dad wanted to go. I again helped him out of the kitchen onto the small brick stoop. My son darted towards the feeder, the finches noisily scattered. My father got startled, and then he lurched back.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“I’m falling, I’m falling, Jesus Christ I’m falling.” 

He wasn’t falling, more like sinking, or leaning back, the way someone would ease into a backstroke or a baptism until he finally let go and just laid down on the brick.

“Just lay there. Stay down there as long as you want,” I said. I smiled and rubbed his shoulder as he groaned and shuddered.

This moment of calm compassion was new for me. I have inherited my father’s defect that when someone we love is in peril, our first response is to yell obscenities at them.

A perfect example of this was Christmas Eve ‘87: We were house-hopping all night, and we’d just finished our second stop at my Uncle Jim’s. He lived on the top floor of a condo, and his staircase was steep and carpeted. My mother held a nut-covered holiday cheese log in one hand and the twinkly-light-covered banister in the other. Her high heel got stuck in the carpet, her hand slipped off the banister, and down she went. She thudded all the way. If I didn't see her bouncing body in her big white coat, I would have assumed someone had dropped a bank safe down the stairs. 

My father, distracted and stressed out and carrying armfuls of presents, turned around and saw my mother, dazed and red-faced at the bottom of the stairs.

“What the hell are you doing!”

Somehow she’d held on to the cheese log. He helped her up, but not before he made her feel dumb one more time.

“Jesus Christ, Pat. Pay attention!”

She was fine, save for a big purple grapefruit-sized bruise on her hip. 

I do this to my kids now, too. They jump on the couches, climb on the window sills, or stick their fingers in drawers and between doors and if they get hurt, I yell at them.

“Jesus Christ. Toldja!”

I hate this about myself. Why isn’t my first instinct to help? Why wasn’t his first instinct to help? We were both so afraid of the things we couldn’t control.

“I’m gonna pull you up,” I said. “The only thing you need to do is grab onto the door.” 

My father weighed 230 pounds then. When I lifted him off the brick, his pants fell below his waist, his shirt pulled up, and his belly splashed out. He was not hurt in the fall, but when I finally got him inside, he acted as if he’d just been tossed out of an airplane. 

Instead of a hug, we did an awkward biker handshake. I squeezed his shoulder one more time. “Goodbye, Dad.” It’s weird to say goodbye to someone – or a version of someone – probably forever, especially when the other person has no idea that’s the case.

Unfortunately, that first day was probably the best of the three-day visit. His brain was constantly attacked by overstimulation. He was confused and afraid. He struggled to find the bathroom and wet himself several times. The shower was a long walk and he had to do more stairs to get to it. He’d wake up in the morning, forget where he was, and wander out to the living room in his underwear only to be greeted by an angry dog or a strange baby who would latch on to his thigh. He would tremble and call for my mother to help him. 

It was cruel to bring him here without extra assistance, a part-time nurse’s aid, or just an extra set of hands. I was not prepared for this. 

*****

And two days later, they were ready to leave. I helped my dad climb into another SUV.  I hugged my mother and promised we’d see her soon. Then I looked at my father – my poor exhausted, disoriented father. He wore a surgical mask crookedly below his nose. His eyes were bright and smiling, though. He was already buckled in and had shut the door, but he reached his hand out the window. Instead of a hug, we did an awkward biker handshake. I squeezed his shoulder one more time.

“Goodbye, Dad.”

It’s weird to say goodbye to someone – or a version of someone – probably forever, especially when the other person has no idea that’s the case. I walked back up the front door and planned to watch their car drive away, but it was already gone. I expected this to be more momentous. I thought I’d feel different. A heavy loss. Or love.

Fourteen months later, I went to visit them in Florida in late August and he didn’t remember me at all. But I came back in December and once, for a magical two minutes, he knew exactly who I was and even told me he loved me. He died of Covid six weeks later, in early January.  I flew down there just in time to watch his final breaths and say goodbye forever again one last time. 

The Father’s Day card is still in my desk. In it I wrote, “Dear Dad, I have let it go. Good luck on your journey. Get home safe. Love, Your Son.” I was at a loss for words when I wrote that, plus I am terrible at endings, but when I look at it now, I think it’s perfect. 

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*A version of this essay was originally published on The Small Bow, Daulerio’s excellent newsletter about recovery and mental health. I recommend subscribing, and supporting it if you can.