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Dementia Made My Cold, Distant Father Huggable
The author of ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’ and new memoir ‘Dad, Love, Me’ on how his father’s illness changed their relationship and gave them a chance to heal
As devastating as dementia was, author Matthew Quick says his relationship with his father became gentler as the illness progressed.
Miriam Martincic
Roughly three and a half decades before my father would begin his battle with dementia, he took me to see First Blood.
It was 1982.
I was 9.
Halfway through the film, I had to pee. My father didn’t want to miss any of the action, so off I went to the men’s room by myself.
When I tried to reenter the theater, I was stopped by the usher. “This is an R-rated movie,” he said. “No children allowed.”
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Between Philadelphia Eagles football and violent cinema, watching grown men hurt each other was what my father and I did together, so I was perplexed. Finally, I said, “My dad’s in there.”
“Your father took you to this movie?”
“Yeah,” I said, and the usher followed me into the darkness.
At our row, the usher bent down and whispered, “Is this your son?” Dad barely nodded. Sylvester Stallone’s chiseled face flickered, ghostlike, in the lenses of my father’s glasses. “This is an R-rated film, sir,” the usher said, but Dad ignored him. I sat down, and the usher eventually went away.
As I grew up, Dad and I graduated from the Rambo films to Steven Seagal’s stylized violence. Whenever Seagal knocked out someone’s teeth with a pool ball or pulverized another man’s testicles, my father would squeal with delight. I enjoyed the violence too, but never as much as he did. Even though he wouldn’t say a word to me during our trips to the movies, let alone ask my opinion of what we had just watched together, I understood this was as good as it was going to get with my old man.
Like his World War II veteran father before him, Dad was a spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child type of parent. Dad never once said he loved me. He would push me away if I tried to hug him. In that way, I learned that I was bad and that men weren’t supposed to be affectionate with one another.
As I moved through my teen years, we spent less and less time together. We often argued when we were in the same room, sometimes spectacularly. I thought Dad hated me.
In my 20s and 30s, alcohol numbed my pain. I tried to earn my father’s respect via publishing and Hollywood, but my few successes only ratcheted up the tension. We drifted further apart until we were hardly speaking.
Author Matthew Quick and his wife, Alicia, now live in Beaufort, South Carolina, near his parents.
Courtesy Alicia Bessette
Around the time I got sober in 2018, my father began inviting my wife and me to watch art-house cinema with him at the historic Ambler Theater in Ambler, Pennsylvania. Back then, he and my mother lived within walking distance of the movie house. Even more shocking than the invitations were the films Dad selected: cerebral and sans alpha male heroes. Before a movie, Dad would take Alicia and me out to dinner and make polite conversation during the meal. He began using my wife’s name, being cordial to her for the first time in the 25 years he had known her. Alicia began to feel less put off by him. Whenever we left the Ambler Theater, Dad would ask, “What did you think of the movie? Did you like it?”
His renewed interest in my wife and me felt like the great miracle of my life.
Was retirement Dad’s elixir? I initially wondered.
The mental health professional I was seeing said that as I changed myself, the way I experienced others would change, too.
Next, Dad started finding beauty in everyday things. “Do you see that cloud? Wow!” he would say to me on our walks. “Look at that azalea bush! It’s so beautiful! Oh, that bird is pretty! The sun is warm on my back. I like that.”
I found myself responding in the mirroring, affirming voice I use with my young nieces and nephews: “Yes, that tree’s really tall. The flowers are so bright.”
It wasn’t long before I ginned up the courage to start throwing my arm around him, bracing myself for more rejection. But he no longer pushed me away. Sometimes he even hugged me back. Whenever he did, I’d have to blink away the shock.
When my father first said “I love you” to me, I knew that something was seriously awry. Shortly after he said the three magic words, he was officially diagnosed with dementia.
Dementia is a cruel disease. Yet it made my father kinder, occasionally grateful, more open. And so, after many years of living multiple states away, my wife and I now find ourselves residing just one block from my parents here in coastal South Carolina, where Mom and Dad retired on an island right next to downtown Beaufort.
The past three years have been a mixed bag. Some days my father is just as difficult as he ever was. Other days we’ll sing Fleetwood Mac together, or happily swim in the ocean, or collect seashells.
Last weekend, while we were walking in the sunshine, Dad said to me, “Do you know I have a son who’s a writer? Matthew lives in Hollywood, where he makes movies. You should read his books. They’re very good.”
“Do you ever tell Matthew that you’re proud of him?” I asked.
“I would if I ever saw him,” Dad said. “But he never visits.”
“What if he were here right now?” I asked. “Would you give him a hug?”
“I think I would,” Dad said. “Yes.”
I put my arm around my father, squeezed and said, “Like this?”
He nodded a few times before he smiled and replied, “That would be nice.”
During strange, wonderful moments like that, I find myself feeling overwhelmingly grateful for Dad’s dementia, my sobriety and all the healing.
After spending the majority of my life suffering the sharp pangs of father-hunger, I’m amazed by this new, fuller feeling. Sometimes I even weep with relief.
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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