On Saturday 19th March myself and my son James took Dan to Barton Aerodrome, I figured there is a restraunt at the Aerodrome so we could have lunch, and then watch some of the light aircraft and helicopters landing as well as taking off, something Dan really likes to do. Even though his mind is slowly deteriorating he loves to look around, watch people and absorb his surroundings, sadly by tea time he’ll of forgotten most of what he has seen, but who cares he’s had fun and seen stuff. So we set off from home around 1pm think we had travelled less than 2 miles and Dan was asleep, us James nodded off so quite ride for me!
Once we arrived at the Aerodrome, parked the car I could already see his eyes scanning around him, we got out the car into quite a brisk cool wind but bright sunshine, Dan said straightaway he was cold so I asked if he would like his hat and scarf on? Which he replied “No thank you Paul its quite warm” yep it was a hand on head moment lol to cold to hot? You’ve got to love him. We wandered over to a vacant table, very quickly observing that a children’s birthday party was taking place, a Mazda car with Rusteze stickers all over it to resemble Lightening Mcqueen from the Disney “Cars” movie’s (tacky) also someone in a spiderman costume with a small beer belly was running around! Dan laughed when he saw him asking why someone was in a swimming costume? A swimming costume priceless, me and James just laughed at his comment, only Dan could think that up haha. Once I’d got him seated and James was OK I went to the kiosk to grab Dan a milky coffee and me and James a Diet Coke, also to see about food, unfortunately they said they weren’t serving till after 3pm, which was to late for us.
Dan spotted the air ambulance helicopter taking off, he was pretty chuffed when he saw it, then followed a small white propeller plane landing, it took a while for Dan to spot it but when he did, again he was really happy kept saying “look Paul there” and “James do you see it over there James” really nice to see him enjoying himself, and interacting with us, we took a stroll over to the fence as we noticed the pleasure flight helicopter was about to land, we got very close, Dan watched intently as passengers got on board, as the propeller spun quicker Dan’s smile got wider, then it lifted into the air, Dan never took his eyes off the helicopter until it became a dot in the sky.
From there we strolled towards the control tower I chatted with Dan asking him if he knew what various things around him were? Some things he was great with but other things he wasn’t, which was OK he knew some stuff which was fine with me, when we reached the end of the path at the fence we stopped and looked at the parked aircraft, Dan really enjoyed looking at them and asking different things about what he could see, he started asking if he could go up in a helicopter or an aeroplane, Dan said how amazing it would be to go up in one of them, and how much he loves flying? This became a topic he didn’t drop, continually mentioning about going flying as we walked back to the car, so once he was comfortable in his seat and James was strapped in, I quickly went to the Heli center to grab a priceless and to ask if Dan would be able to have a flight, which “yay” he can go up something I will figure out on a later date.
I spoke to my fiancée on the phone, she told me that she was walking the dogs staying with us in Sankey Valley Park and there was a restaurant called The Maltings, (another story) which would be ideal for dinner for us all. So our next journey began we set off for dinner and guess what? Dan fell asleep like clockwork, another day another adventure, this cruel awful disease had stolen his memory of the day by teatime, and sadly had no recollection where he had been or what he had been doing, its so hard to understand how the brain works, and difficult to comprehend how somebody can have no recollection of what they had done just a few hours earlier, i even understand how people can feel frustrated in this scenario, but for us we just take him from one day to the next along with the carers, for Dan on saturday all he remembered was he wants to fly and spread his wings.
Life Through Ordinary Eyes 