Running Shoes
By Michael Smith
PROMPT—The story I told myself ...
Joan was captured; she’s been taken to an island. I can’t live without her. She’s my everything. They have made copies of her and filled the island with identical Joans all dressed in matching clothes. How will I find my Joan? I’ve lost my love.”
Dad takes a slow, labored breath. He gazes out the window of the memory care facility. I will never forget that moment when his mind drifted from the room. I don’t know where he went, but he’s missing, leaving only my memory of the moment intact.
I move closer to his bed. He turns and looks at me with a vacant stare. “The island is protected by sea creatures. No one can enter. Dragons and monsters guard the shore line 24/7. I’m so afraid.”
How should I respond? Do I tell him it’s a delusion? Will that hurt his feelings? How long must he endure this form of dementia, where terror feels real and unrelenting?
Watching him in bed, my nerves are aflame and my pulse quickens. When my aunt was diagnosed with dementia, my doctor told me that I could get my DNA tested since I now have three relatives who have suffered with it. I think about whether I want to get tested but, in that moment, I want only to run screaming from the room, crying out, “Don’t let this happen to me!”
How can I be thinking about myself when my father is unraveling in front of me? I tell myself, focus on being with Dad, but a weight is compressing my chest and restricting my breath. I don’t know how to respond to his unreal fantasies of creatures eating him, and the loss of his love partner.
I focus on him instead of thinking about my fear. I look at Dad in the eye, then glance at his arms, a series of purple bruises from elbow to wrist. I take his chapped, dried-out hand.
“It’s going to be okay, Dad. Joan won’t be taken from you. If you lose her, I will find her for you.”
Dad doesn’t respond. I let go of his chapped hand, exit the room, and strap on my running shoes to clear my mind and release the tension that has built up in my body. It’s Fall, 2019. After my ten mile run along streets filled with golden leaves that have fallen from the tree lined street, I decide to visit Joan before flying home to Sacramento.
I leave Seattle, catch the ferry, and drive across the Sound to Joan’s condo in Port Ludlow. Before dad lived in a memory care facility, before the unending nightmarish delusions and haunting demons, Joan and Dad lived in a condominium beside a quiet waterway. When visiting him, I loved watching him sit by the window overlooking the inlet as river otters played and deer grazed on the adjacent grass.
On one of my visits during the spring of 2019, watching him in his blue chair made me smile, that is, until he tried to walk. He braced his hands on the chair’s arms, pushed up, then stopped. After steadying himself with his walker, he shuffled toward the bathroom, only to collapse onto a bench twenty feet away, breathless.
I recall my dad using the bathroom and then lumbering back to his chair saying, “I’m so frustrated I can’t walk anymore. I’m going to say yes to the heart surgeon. The surgeon said he can fix my aortic stenosis. I can’t live like this.”
“But Dad, it’s so risky. You might not make it through general anesthesia.”
“I know, but I’m going to have the surgery.”
I left my father that day worried about his decision to undergo surgery but knowing it was his decision to make.
A few months later, after Dad completed all the pre-op requirements, I flew north to support Joan and my father during the heart operation.
In the hospital waiting room, Joan said, “we’ve had five good years together. Your dad promised me ten, so I’m confident he will make it through this surgery.”
“I’m so glad that you two found each another. He’s never been as happy as during his time with you. I hope you’re right.”
After a few hours of waiting, the surgeon entered the waiting room and beckoned us to a quiet corner. “The surgery went well. Your dad is in recovery. He’s going to be a new man.”
We felt enormously relieved and hugged one another before taking turns to visit my father. A day later, Joan took Dad back to the condominium and I flew home, relieved that he would soon be able to walk normally as a “new man.”
Back in Sacramento after dad’s surgery, my life returned to routine habits and I wondered once again if I should undergo genetic testing for the APOE 4 gene. The presence of that gene marker indicates risk, not destiny. I could have the gene and not get dementia. I could not have the gene and get dementia. Did I want to know? If I tested positive, would I live differently?
I was lost in thought when my cell phone rang.
“Joan, thanks for calling. How are you?”
“Not good. It’s your father.”
“What do you mean, Joan?”
“Your father isn’t well. The doctor said the heart surgery triggered vascular dementia, your dad’s A Fib and heart disease finding a new way to emerge. So, the doctor was right; your father is a changed man.
His symptoms have worsened. He can’t breathe or walk. He’s depressed. A few days ago, he woke up in the middle of the night, thrashing in bed. He was having a nightmare. Animals were trying to eat him and insects were chewing on his flesh. A few nights later, before going to bed, he tucked his belt under his pillow, the leather belt with a large turquoise stone in the silver buckle. He wants to fight off the imaginary men trying to hurt me when we sleep. I convinced him not to bring the belt to bed, but last night I woke up startled to find your dad standing next to the bed in a fighting stance, holding a large kitchen knife in his right hand, eyes fixed on an unseen attacker.”
“Oh my God, Joan, I’m so sorry to hear this. I will fly up tomorrow and help you take the next step.”
Going to sleep that night, I used my CPAP machine. My sleep apnea has abated, but I’ve read that keeping high oxygen levels flowing to your brain helps prevent dementia. I tell people I’m a vegetarian to prevent animal cruelty, save the planet, and enhance my health. I never say the real reason.
I’m an avid runner. Several marathons and many half-marathons under my belt, I tell the world I exercise diligently to stay healthy, and that’s true, but it’s only a partial truth. I’m trying to outrun what stalks my family. I run hard because I remember visiting my grandmother in her care facility and seeing the white, cloth belts tying her to the silver bars on the side of her bed. I entered her room and said, “Hi grandma. How are you feeling today?”
“Who are you?” she shouted. She thrust upward trying to see the stranger’s face, the constraints adding to her agitation. Hearing her screaming voice sent a searing pain into my abdomen. She didn’t recognize me even though she has seen my face for decades.
Early the next morning before flying to Seattle to see my father, I ran my usual six-mile circuit. My feet were striking the pavement as images flooded my mind: my grandmother’s constraints; demons occupying my father’s mind; stories of my aunt’s dementia told by my cousins.
My pulse quickened, as did my pace. I enjoyed running the tree lined streets of the neighborhood but my thoughts drifted to financial ruin. A good memory care facility can cost $10,000 a month. I start doing the math in my head. How many years can that be sustained? Will we be able to pay for dad’s care, my care? Will we be able to leave anything for our children and grandchildren? Is my energy from the adrenaline of running or the adrenaline of fear?
Joan met me in Seattle and we visited two care facilities, made a decision, and packed my father’s clothes for the move from the condominium in the Sound to the Seattle based memory care facility. Seated with the intake coordinator, we reviewed the dozens of medications now prescribed and the coordinator explained that the facility is always locked to ensure my father’s safety.
A month after his placement, I flew to Seattle to check on my father since he had been admitted to the emergency room four times in the past two weeks. The nurse explained that he became catatonic because of the medicines for his psychosis and was sleeping all day. His former 200 pound frame withered to 150 pounds. The facility reduced his meds but, while more active, he began entering the adjacent rooms of female patients to hold their hands.
The memory care nurse showed me to his room. As I moved to his bedside, he looked agitated and anxious. He gripped the bars on his bed, his muscles tense. He described the army ready to attack him on the hills outside his room, fear in his eyes, but I looked through the window to the tree covered hillside and saw only beauty. My dad’s worst fear, becoming his mother, becoming his older sister, was now his reality.
I took his hand and helped him to the bathroom to brush his teeth. After he brushed, he tried to screw the toothpaste cap onto the top of the toothbrush.
As I chatted with my father, assuring him of my love and telling him stories of good times we had together, I thought about dementia as dying twice, first mentally, then physically. In the memory care facility, I am not in the presence of my father, only his pulsating body, struggling for breath and trying to conquer the demons that occupy his mind. Is it wrong for me to wish that he go gently into the night?
I hugged my father but struggled to let go. I cried. Dad cried. Dad had enough awareness to understand that he is trapped in a dysfunctional body and cannot get out. I looked at him in the eye and said goodbye. I left the memory care facility having experienced his first death.
A few weeks later, Joan called with the news. My father died of pneumonia, his second death. In early March 2020, the doctors did not list the cause of death as COVID. My heart stopped and I felt a searing pain jolt my body. I fought for breath. I felt my face tighten as I fended off tears.
“Dad, you were a good father and a good friend. I will miss you. May you be free from fear.”
The tears flowed as I strapped on my running shoes and stepped outside. My breath steadied as my feet began their familiar rhythm. I don’t know what waits for me years from now—what genes, what fate—but I know this: today, I can move. Today, I can run. Today, I can remember the father I loved.
Michael Smith is a co-founder of the Lozano Smith law firm. Mike is an education lawyer and a professor of education law. Mike is also an avid cyclist, outdoor enthusiast, and introspective writer. As a believer in a religion of kindness, Mike’s writing explores universal themes of personal growth on the journey toward self-acceptance. Mike’s story, “A Morning Run,” was published in the Fall 2025 Rathalla Review, a journal associated with Philadelphia’s Rosemont College. Michael retired last year and began writing creative non-fiction stories based on lived experiences. He wrote this story about his father's death while doing a meditation on grief. It turned about to be the story he tells himself about his fear of dementia, as much as his grief over the loss of his father. Michael writes from Sacramento, CA.
