My TV is currently streaming "North By Northwest." For the third time. In one day.

It's not that I don't like the Hitchcock classic. It's a great movie. I just don't need to hear the dialogue three times in a row. The first time was when I parked Dad in front of the TV to stay out of my hair while I tried to work in the home office. I checked on him a few times, but he was fast asleep. 

The second time was after he woke up and saw the picture of Cary Grant on the airplane, which is the default screen that shows up when the movie is finished. He asked me to play the movie for him. I pointed out that he had just slept through the movie, which he denied emphatically. Fine, let's hit play. No dice, because he claimed it wasn't the movie he wanted to see. He wanted to see the movie where the airplane is bearing down on Cary Grant, darn it. He wanted to see THAT VERY SCENE, and it's hard to find THAT VERY SCENE when you're randomly fast forwarding through a movie. Finally he told me to stop about 30 minutes in, and he watched the rest of the movie from there.

That's great, right? I'm out of the woods, right? No, because he wanted to watch the first 30 minutes again to see how the movie began. I duly started it over, warning him that the baseball game was going to start in 15 minutes and he'd probably want to switch channels. Sadly, the game is under a rain delay. Dad is re-watching the entire movie.

Taking care of your elderly parent is kind of like having a 140-pound toddler dropped off on your front step. The toddler looks like the man you have idolized all your life, but the brain isn't working the way it used to. Like a toddler, he sometimes can't find the right words to express what he's feeling. Like a toddler, he pounds his fist when he's frustrated. Like a toddler, he insists he's not sleepy and then insists he didn't just take a two-hour nap.

But unlike a toddler, you're not going to be able to make forward progress on things like using your words and remembering to finish drinking your milk. Instead, you're on this slippery, horrible, steep slope, where you're watching the person you love slowly lose his cognitive abilities. And you try - you try so hard to fix it. Here Dad, let's do a crossword puzzle. Hey Dad, why don't we take a walk? Dad, make sure you drink your water. It's like chasing after the waves in the ocean - each time one comes up on the sand, you know you're not going to be able to keep it on shore.

And you wonder why age has to be so, so cruel.