Isak, thank you for your kind words. Dad is now 98 and last Oct, I placed him in a nearby assisted living center. His path is declining, the sketches he could do when I wrote this piece are now out of his reach, He continues to paint once a week at his senior center’s watercolor group, though I have changed him to acrylics. The watercolors are just to difficult to execute; he was having difficulty painting inside the lines he drew and then scratching away his mistakes with his pocket knife. With the acrylics he can paint over prior efforts giving him more than one attempt.

Sadly his drafting skills have fallen off the table, what used to be interesting and actually artful distortions are now disjointed and disconnected from his subjects. This could still be interesting but he really wants to hit his old realism and gets discouraged, not to mention that concentration quickly wears him out. I would be interested in the meds your grandmother used. He has had a couple of disturbing incidents, trying to leave the facility, agitated responses to caregivers and staff, things that will land him in a lockdown unit if we can’t curtail them.

Dementia is the cruelest condition. I have to admit, I am bone weary of dealing with it. Moving him out has helped somewhat but I still have the daily worry of another trouble call from the facility, and he is highly and daily dependent on me emotionally. Thanks again for your Support, John