I feel especially connected to my father in the moments when I get him to smile, and that tends to happen when he comes to greet me, when I arrive at the home. It also sometimes happens when he shares his jokes with me. His sense of humor is pretty incoherent, but it’s still there.
I can perceive how strong my father’s need to communicate is. To a great extent, he’s aware of his cognitive deterioration; he knows he has difficulty expressing himself and that it’s an effort for everyone else to understand him. My tactic is to be especially attentive to everything he says. He sees the effort, and appreciates it, which helps take the conversation that much further. Knowing what he likes and his points of view also helps me immensely. Thanks to that, starting from words that don’t seem to be coherent, I manage to get what he’s saying and maintain a certain level of dialogue.
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