Polly O'Callaghan

Father and daughter dementia journey - part 1

I picked up my phone the other day and rang my dad — first checking I still had the right number saved, because he’s moved four times in the last twelve months.

Three aged care homes. A hospital ward in between. All in a single year.

Fortunately, perhaps, he doesn’t really understand how often he’s moved or why. There are fleeting moments of awareness, but for most of his waking hours, it’s beyond his comprehension.

These days our phone calls are short. And they’ve changed so drastically in the past year that sometimes I struggle to recognise them as conversations at all. We went from him asking why he was in a “home” and when he could leave, to once having deep chats about parenting, birth order, climate change, and memories of travelling to Australia for my wedding in 2015 — and now to conversations that don’t anchor to anything real or current. Even those earlier calls, looking back, were already a far cry from how we used to talk.

Dad and I loved getting philosophical. But we also loved being silly. One of the last times I remember that silliness was over a year ago, laughing about my son Noah — his namesake — with the same thick mop of curly hair and the same mischievous streak.

So much has changed. And it keeps changing every time I speak to him.

It started with reminders about Karl’s name. The kids’ ages. And now I honestly believe he would struggle to remember mine.

During our last visit in April, he didn’t recognise me. I had prepared myself for that possibility. It lasted seconds — but it’s something I’ll carry forever. If I visited now, I wonder if it would last the whole day.

When we talk, we still begin like any father and daughter:

“Hello dad, it’s me.”
“Hello darling — it’s so lovely to hear your voice. It lifts me to hear your voice.”

And then the conversation drifts into whatever moment he’s living inside. Last time he was apologising for something he couldn’t explain, desperate for forgiveness for a hurt that didn’t exist. I kept telling him he had nothing to be sorry for, trying to soothe a pain that belonged to a memory I couldn’t see.

Another time he thought he was speaking to a little-girl version of me after working late. Another time he was back in his childhood, in wartime Britain. If you remove the heartbreak of losing our shared timeline — father and daughter slipping out of sync — there is something strangely fascinating in hearing these fragments of a long, humbly blessed life.

We’ve all seen dementia from the outside. We understand the idea of forgetfulness. But living alongside it is harder to describe. I’m going to try to journal this journey — partly in case it helps someone else, but mostly to help me understand how to keep finding my dad in this constantly shifting landscape.

Because in many ways, I feel like I’ve already lost him.

These words are part of my grieving. And in the blogs that follow, I’ll try to talk honestly about the many ways I’ve been saying goodbye over the past few years.