We kept it a secret, but could only keep it under wraps for so long. We adult children had suspicions but dared not bring them up among ourselves or even with him. But our mother’s memory was slipping, and Dad couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge that. By the time it became undeniably evident, we had a long talk in a conversation around our campsite, where we had gathered for a family reunion near our parents’ home in northern Minnesota.

After living in Missouri, Illinois, Virginia, Hawaii, and Florida, they finally returned to live out their days near Ely, Minnesota where they both grew up, in the village of Babbit. Near the Canadian border in the Midwest, winters felt cold and harsh, especially after living in tropical climates for the years preceding their move back “home.” After World War II, Dad had gone back to college under the G.I. Bill to earn his master’s public administration at the University of Minnesota and then went to work for the U.S. Army as a civilian in what was then called “data processing.” In the mid-1970s he had taken early retirement from his final position at Ft. Shafter, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and moved to another warm climate in central Florida.

But family needs were calling, so moving up north was a no-brainer for them, where they could look after their parents and be closer to cousins and acquaintances from years gone by. In time, their parents passed on; the last one to go was Dad’s father, Jack Sr., who passed away on October 24, 1988, at ninety-seven years of age. Mom’s grandmother had passed away a few years earlier.

Things had begun to deteriorate with Mom—she would forget to turn the stove burners off, hide the kitchen utensils in her bedroom drawer, and seem disconnected in conversations. When things became more pronounced, we siblings finally brought the issue out into the open among ourselves. In those days, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s was an embarrassment, as though something was wrong with a person’s brain. Of course, that is precisely what it was, but the word “dementia” was negatively associated with insanity. Mom’s father, as it turns out, had the same symptoms and ultimately died in a vegetative state. They called it the euphemistic “hardening of the arteries.”

On a visit there in 1998, after my grandfather’s death, Dad finally leveled with me, the thing he feared the most, but we all had guessed—Mom had Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, as is often the case, that disease has two victims, the afflicted individual and the family caregiver. Dad had heroically cared for his mother-in-law and his own parents in their last years, and now he was silently caring for his wife of forty-six years as her mind was going downhill fast. He became a spent man by it all.

Then my brother Mike’s fateful phone call came in late December 1999. Dad had suddenly passed away. He was seventy-two years old and had been a smoker most of his life, and the cause of death was listed as congestive heart failure. But the burden of caring for Mom was the final weight that crushed him. But I remember the last conversation we had about God, it was just a month or so before his death. He asked me to talk about God with my sister, Beth, who was going through a major life crisis, and wanted nothing to do with God. To this day, I am amazed at all my father did in showing such practical care and concern for his loved ones, and I am inspired to follow his example. Soon the door opened for talking with Beth!