Short Story Review || Daddy (2016)
"A woman struggles to understand why her elderly father has begun to spontaneously teleport."
: 🌕 : SPOILER ALERT : 🌕 :
Not only in dreams does the mind wander. Free to make believe whatever one so pleases, the psyche maneuvers through wavelengths of cultural markers of good behaviour & suppressed memories of tender interactions. Each influence on the person strives to be brought to the forefront, each aspect lending itself to the cause of creating the individual who dreams.
“It hurt me to lose my father to that tumultuous time.”
Wilson introduces the reader to a situation in which one character dreams soundly while her father, a man in the late stages of Dementia, wanders the conscious world. I listened to this story as I fought against my dearly beloved insomnia. On nights when I become exasperated & even sometimes, during the eves in which I solemnly pray that I will meet the Sandman in a timely fashion, I find that audiobooks have a gentle way of weaving through the stress of wakefulness, allowing my mind to work through its restlessness by forming images of the imaginary.
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This fiction was odd in that I could picture what was happening, could imagine the characters, the hospital bed, & the torment of a phone wringing late into the night but, I found myself more often than not questioning what the author was trying to convey.
I will certainly admit that my mind craved slumber & thus, I felt particularly perturbed by the father’s jaunts down the laneways in the evenings, during which he was unfazed by my personal demon. This stark difference led me to wonder if a person would choose to become lost in their memories, so much so that they had the power to physically return to the location where they bloomed.
In actuality, this question oversimplifies the plight of a person living with Dementia. I shouldn’t want my comments to seem void of empathy for the individual who is legitimately lost in their own mind. Rather, my question arose because the father in this story found no solace in returning to the places he had once been & for anyone with a “healthy” mind, namely one not plagued by such an ailment as Dementia, this course of action would feel particularly frustrating.
For the patriarch, his travels brought him to a place where he felt he was meant to be. During one sequence, he tells his daughter that he has returned home to look for his wife & his other daughter—both of whom have since passed away. This instance might bring readers a pang. So many people wish to go back to places, spaces, & people but are not able to do so. Although this man was not technically going back in time, due to the parameters of his illness, he felt that he had.
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Will readers feel that this offered the character comfort? Knowing as one might that for a person living with Dementia, the world becomes worse than darkness, it is cruel & surly, a brusque despair which cannot be fathomed with hands or wit; to wither behind the veil of the person one once was is a fate heinous in every sense of the word.
Perhaps one might be inclined to forgive the father for his sudden magic teleportation abilities. It seems that in the darkness, he has found, unbeknownst to him, the final light which might guide him through the concluding chapter.
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All this being said, one might also read this story & feel that it approaches a delicate subject matter without the gumption to describe the pain experienced by each character. The daughter cannot share her grief with anyone, her father doesn’t remember that his child & his wife have died & who could bear the burden of reminding him, during his few moments of lucidity?
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Ultimately, I appreciated this short story for what it was; a different way to process the passing on of a person one loves & a flower garden alongside the roadway leading to a certain end. I cannot fault the narrator or the background characters for their panic & annoyance, neither can I flounce in the face of such a situation that I experienced quite differently.
Perhaps, had the person I once knew been given the chance to come around to those places they held dear, the demise of their person might not have felt like such a catastrophic loss to humanity. I cannot say for certain, as this fiction will never allow reality to mirror the hope it fosters.
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While there are positive aspects to the shortly tuned melody of this tale, I also felt that its sudden end was too crass. The reader is not given any indication as to what comes next, or where the daughter will go now that she is left to come to terms with the fact that her father teleports to different locations.
It might have eased the story to its decided conclusion to give the daughter a deeper understanding of herself & her life, living with a person who has Dementia. The reader does not know how she feels or what any of this is doing to her person, to her life. One is left to assume.
With further care given to the incorporation of depth regarding the characters, particularly the daughter, this story would have felt like the despairing truth that it hides, one that reveals the earnest reality to its readers; no amount of fiction will see the lost mind found, no words will poise the winded tongue to song once more.
If you would like to listen to this story, please visit this link — « Daddy » by Damion Wilson
C. 💌