Are you here today

On the way I'm driving up to you. Like you, I also really enjoy driving, so the long way from home to the nursing home does´nt bother me. I like the last part of the ride. The roads here are very nostalgic to me. When I was younger we used to drive around in this area, often with no other purpose than to talk. You get great talks while in a car, you often said. You were right, we really did. That´s why we as often as possible hit the road and talked about everything from your career to my new crush, for 21 years.

Shortly after my 21st birthday nine years ago, my father Henning Peter Thorsted got a brain injury and became one of the approximately 15,000 Danes who each year suffer from a sudden brain injury. He fell on his way home from the local pub. The pubs were not a place, he visited often, but when he did, he did not settle with just a few drinks. The doctors thought it was because he was so drunk,  that the fall injuried him so badly. A natural reaction when falling is to use the hands in the fall. My dad did not do that, and therefore he hit the ground hard, which led to bleedings in his brain.The bleedings were in the part of the brain called the frontal lobes. Physically, my father does not have many problems from the brain injury. But the facial expressions are not the same, he can use his body as before, but everything is a lot slower and has to be done in small increments. It is more on the mental level that the brain damage has clearly affected. He has trouble concentrating and is not good at taking initiatives. This applies to both the initiative to ask questions and to do something such as going for a walk. Deep feelings, he can no longer express. Sometimes he says things that are not true, - that his mother has been dug up and is alive again. It is often when he has not been resting, the incoherent speech occurs. He does not have much understanding of his condition, but for us around him, it is very clear that his personality has changed in many ways.

Despite the fact that I have visited you every second weekend since you and my mother split when I was little, I knew very few children in the city you lived in. There was no reason to find someone to play with, when I could be with you instead. Before you got sick, you were the most important person in my life. Besides being my confidant who I could talk to about everything and who always tried to understand me, you were also the epitome of comfort for me.
I still miss a lot, the person you were before you fell. I have not come to a point where I can talk about how you were before the accident without starting to cry. I think it has to do with the fact that  I never allowed myself to grieve: You are still here, so it is hard to allow myself to grieve over the person you are not anymore. Or maybe I should say the person you are not so often. Some days the old personality comes back, then you ask me questions about my life, give me good advice and tell stories in the most vivid way. Although I really appreciate these moments, they are hard, because they make me miss the person you once were, so much.

I like to drive, yet I don´t often come and visit you. Before the accident, you often claimed that you were just nearby, and therefore often came on a visit no matter where in the country I lived. I unfortunately do not visit you often because it is difficult for me. It reminds me of who you are no longer, and it makes me miss the person you were before even more. On the other hand, it reminds me also that you are still here, then I feel guilty about not doing as much for you as you have done for me throughout my whole life.

You have been ill for some years now, but it is as if I still don´t  know you. I'm still surprised that you have other priorities now. For instance, you are now stubborn, which was not a part of you before you became ill. At the same time there are also many qualities you still have. Your ironic humor is intact, and you often make me laugh. It's not just your priorities that have changed, so has our relationship. Now it's me who reminds you to put on your winter jacket, and you who resists.

On the way While I am driving for so long, I think of how you are doing today. Will I be greeted by a man who asks about how I feel and has been waiting for me to come so we can take a little trip away from the care home's trivialities? Or would you lie in your bed, talk to the dogs under the bed, which have long been dead, and not have energy for anything but lie there.

It amazes me that after so many years there have been so many great positive changes over the past year. You have been much more attentive, and it is rare that there is a day when you become incoherent and say something that does not have basis in reality. Previously, the communication had been one-way, but last year you asked me a lot about my life. But I am not quite sure that this is consistent. Maybe I have just been lucky and visited  you on really good days when there were no dogs under your bed, or it this an improvement in your condition that will last.

On the way I swing the car in front of the nursing home and think about how our day together will be. You were my best friend, I am pleased when in flashes I see you again.