George S. Burt

Dad recovered from his bladder infection enough to leave the hospital for the nursing home, and then recovered enough to go home.

He was home two days and then when I arrived to help my mother get him up, found him on the floor. We could not between us get him into his wheelchair, so we finally called 911.

All we thought Dad needed was fore three or four burly EMTs to hoist him into his chair, but as they checked him out, they found more problems and took him to a hospital (one which was closer than his last one, but not as nice).

They had been in the process of moving from their hobby farm into town, but this latest crisis and Dad's further deterioration inspired them to move up the schedule.

It should be easier for Mom to take care of him in town, and emergency response will be faster. It will be easier for me, since instead of a half-hour drive to help get him up in the morning, it will be just a ten-minute bicycle ride. I am looking forward to having an excuse for a bicycle commute -- nothing puts me in a better mood for work.

Still, two hospitals and two homes within the span of a week is a lot for a failing old man to deal with. And Dad is going downhill all the time. There is less of him each day.

Part of the reason Mom finally bought a place in town was that Dad no longer recognized the view out the window as his own land, bought with his own earnings. The property, and the cash value of it (as real estate and as standing timber) had been a source of satisfaction to him, but if he didn't even know what it was, there was not much point in staying there.

Last week, I helped him out of bed and steadied his walker on the way to take a shower. Today, I gave him a bed bath and helped him transfer to a recliner, and in the evening back into bed. Soon, I expect, he won't get out of bed at all.

I'd been warned that it would be a very difficult experience for me, the first time my father didn't recognize me. That hasn't happened yet (though he has been a bit hazy on how he is related to me), but the other day something arguably worse happened: he asked me where he was and what the date was. When I told him, he smiled and said, "So I am George Burt!"

Well, at least he was pleased by the knowledge. And well he should be.

You could do a lot worse than to be George Sherwin Burt, and have lived his life these past eighty years.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Do what you can."\\