“Hon, come here.”

Victor was in the kitchen looking toward the backyard. He pointed. “What’s in the bird feeder?”

It was April, and Papa had been living with us for over two months. In that time we had met with four or five different agencies on aging, senior services, visiting nurses, and two new physicians.  Resources seemed plenty but not one had provided support yet.  Lots of info, little action.  But they all agreed- there is some stage of dementia at play here.

I stared hard at the cylindrical feeder swaying in the spring wind.  To help Papa feel adjusted and structured, one case manager suggested we find small, manageable duties he could perform around the house. “Assimilating into your family and being of purpose will be important to his mental state. It might help with the depression to feel a valuable part of the family.”

Easier said than done.  Every task we started, was more difficult than the last. Loading the dishwasher resulted in broken glasses. Unloading the dishwasher created a treasure hunt. We finally found that filling the bird feeder was pretty indestructible. So for two weeks, Papa had been bringing in the feeder to the garage, opening the clear Rubbermaid bin of seed that sits right next to the back door and scooping it in, filling the feeder to the top.

But this morning, inexplicably, something had been different. Some synapse, that had been happily firing along the same line for 14 days, decided to detour left and propel Benny beyond the back door to the heavy, bright yellow bin across the other side of the garage, and to fill the feeder to the brim with kitty litter.