Humor and Heartbreak

Toward the end of his life, my dad struggled with dementia. One of the last times I spoke with him was by phone. I asked how he was doing, and he said he was pressed for time: “I can’t talk right now, we have a lot of guests here.” In the background, I heard his wife admonish him: “No, Al, you’re hallucinating.” Embarrassed, he said, in an expression of his own internal logic, “Oh, they aren’t people. They’re hallucinations.” I wasn’t sure how to respond, but managed, “I’m sorry, Dad.” He answered, “No worries, they’re all nice people.”

There’s a humor to that, and heartbreak. I was never able to express with any clarity the bewilderment I felt. I tended to avoid the reality of his condition, considering it yet another aspect of his decline. His form of dementia was fast-moving, and we were spared the years of agony others watch their loved ones pass through.

My dad died at the age of 91, on his birthday. He never did like to celebrate it and expressed more annoyance on that day than joy. It was as if he’d carefully timed his exit. By then, he was confusing his sons for his brothers and seemed to have a sense of coming full circle. Among his last words were, “I’m going home.”

In this issue, Phil Ryan, Tricycle’s executive editor, did what I wasn’t ever able to do. In a moving account (“Old Friend”), he writes of his own father’s descent into frontotemporal dementia. Reading the essay, I was able to process what had happened in a way I couldn’t in real time. The best narrative writing can do that. The piece elicited in me a natural empathy, and also allowed me to receive empathy in a way that until then I hadn’t been able to.

I can’t say our experiences are the same—as Phil pointed out to me, every dementia is as unique as the mind it destroys—but it’s rare that something so difficult is portrayed with such wisdom and grace—and even humor.

I met Phil in 1996, when we hired him as an intern. He was just out of college, and I was in my mid-30s. And it’s pretty amazing that we’re still working together. It’s also gratifying to have him as a peer, and someone I learn from, after so many years of my playing the elder. (I did that poorly, as he might tell you.)

More recently, along with the Tricycle staff, we partnered to launch a Substack to reach new audiences interested in helpful ways to navigate the ambiguities of everyday life. When considering a piece, one basic question we ask is this: Would a Buddhist send it to a non-Buddhist friend, and would that friend find it helpful? As Mary Talbot, Tricycle’s former executive editor, puts it, “News you can use.”

I’m always ambivalent about instrumentalizing the teachings. But the alleviation of suffering is a core tenet in Buddhism, and freedom from it, however that’s understood, is its ultimate goal. If we are able to help those who will never read a Buddhist text or join a sangha, that’s fine. We’re not in the conversion business; we’re here to offer teachings that help us to find our way in this world with some degree of dignity and acceptance.

–James Shaheen

Editor-in-Chief