Dad was adamant. He was waiting for his medical degree to come from the University of Minnesota and wondered why it was taking so long. I did what I usually did, and waited a few days to see if this episode of delusionary thinking would pass. It did not. So, I went to my computer and designed a medical degree with my dad’s name on it, scribbled some “signatures” on the bottom, put it in a mailing envelope and brought it to him, in the nursing home, the following day. He was delighted.
I added it to the other awards and degrees hanging on the wall; the entomology “degree,” his legitimate college degree, some other earned awards, an “award” for helping direct Lawrence Welk’s band. The wall was cluttered with the real and the fake, but I knew I would need to find room for more. Dad’s brain would tell him he had earned something and eventually I would need to produce it.
Dad had, indeed, gone to medical school at the University of Minnesota, but that was before World War II. He took some time off to be an archaeologist and then the war broke out. During maneuvers in the Mohave Desert, Dad passed out from the heat. He smacked his head against the baked desert floor and sustained a closed head injury. He was in a coma for months and had to learn to walk and talk again. He succeeded, and stayed in the army until the war ended, but kept Stateside and trained as a sanitarian.
Dad became director of Sanitation for the city of Fargo, meanwhile raising a family and, like so many returning soldiers, he went back to school. He attended school at night and worked during the day. I remember going to his college graduation. I was 14. Dad continued taking any graduate classes that would help his work or simply because they interested him, and he became very successful in the world of public heath.
As Dad aged, fluid started building up behind the scar tissue in his brain. He had surgery to drain that fluid, but the surgery backfired and he came out of it totally demented – and bonded with a voice in his head we came to call Herman.
That is when reality changed for all of us.