conversation soup • holding space

I’m holding space for my dad’s ephemeral presence in conversation.

I FaceTime with mom and dad every Saturday now, and I notice from week to week how much my dad is able to engage - or not. These days, it’s getting harder to discuss anything in depth. In the last couple years, his excellent language and comprehension skills have been eroded by Parkinson’s almost completely. He has trouble collecting his thoughts, finding the words he wants, and following a simple conversation. Connections between pieces of conversation get out of sync, and the synapses that “light up” in his mind might not match the current context.

“Let’s have some of that ham soup” he suggested suddenly one Saturday, in a loud clear voice.

Earlier mom mentioned she was simmering a soup for lunch with ham and vegetables. It’s usually just me and mom carrying on small talk in hopes that dad can follow it, though we’re not always sure. Mom was bothered that he wasn’t paying attention to me on FaceTime, but I loved witnessing how the promise of delicious soup led to such confident and clear speech … which is so rare.

I imagined the right side of his brain (representing subconscious thought) as being active and functional while the left side has less plasticity, less capacity for conscious thought. My dad was never one for small talk anyway, and his mind would have wandered during the best of times. I can relate. Parkinson’s has dramatically amplified what occurs for all of us anyway - thoughts floating in and out of consciousness - sometimes at will, sometimes spontaneously.

There’s no way I can express the loss I feel that we can no longer talk about books we’re reading, or architecture, programming, birds … what I will say is that when I am present in our conversations, then I can appreciate his own fleeting presence even more.