Glimpses

I keep getting glimpses of my Dad.

• The raised eyebrows that say "Hello".
• The "Ooh!" when I hold his warm hand with my cold just-arrived-from-outside one.
• The smile that Parkinson's Disease took away, but somehow a blood clot in his brain has given us back.
• The fidgeting and trying-to-get-comfortable that have become so familiar, courtesy of Parkinson's. Thanks to that blood clot, it's now halved: his left half.
• Sharing a laugh. There's no way of knowing if he gets the joke, or if he's laughing because we're laughing. It doesn't matter: we find the same things funny, so he'd be laughing anyway.
• The moments when he clearly finds the whole thing ridiculous. His chuckle or his sigh when he gives up trying to tell us whatever he's trying to tell us.

They are just glimpses. Like when you catch sight for just a moment of someone familiar in a crowd. Their posture; their profile; their gait. Whatever it is that makes you know it's them.

This blood clot - this stroke - has taken so much of him. But we still have glimpses, and glimpses are enough for it to be him.

This is my Dad.