Mike Bayles

Breakfast at the Good Hope Home Mike Bayles

Breakfast at The Good Hope Home blends prose and poetry to describe the changes a young adult male faces after his father with Alzheimer's disease is placed under a nursing home's care. As the disease progresses, he loses the father he has known, getting discouraged when his father becomes unresponsive. With staff encouragement, he continues to visit and tried to find meaning, desperately hoping his words reach something deep inside of his father, who is staring up at the ceiling.



With his father in the nursing home, the life he has known at home disintegrates. The neglected house needs repair and must be sold to cover expenses. He must help his mother who cannot accept the consequences of the disease. He must cope with the situation of his father becoming a child to him while working a job as a child welfare worker, and he finds his own place to live.



Through verse and vignettes, Breakfast at The Good Hope Home describes the father's decline from an able-minded person to one who needs constant care while the son helplessly watches him decline. In the end, he learns to let go lovingly, and although he has expected his father's death for years, the loss of his father's physical presence comes as a shock. He is drawn to his mother by the grief they share and by a promise he made to his father, finding relief in a final conversation.



Breakfast at The Good Hope Home blends prose and poetry to describe the changes a young adult male faces after his father with Alzheimer's disease is placed under a nursing home's care. As the disease progresses, he loses the father he has known, getting discouraged when his father becomes unresponsive. With staff encouragement, he continues to visit and tried to find meaning, desperately hoping his words reach something deep inside of his father, who is staring up at the ceiling.



With his father in the nursing home, the life he has known at home disintegrates. The neglected house needs repair and must be sold to cover expenses. He must help his mother who cannot accept the consequences of the disease. He must cope with the situation of his father becoming a child to him while working a job as a child welfare worker, and he finds his own place to live.



Through verse and vignettes, Breakfast at The Good Hope Home describes the father's decline from an able-minded person to one who needs constant care while the son helplessly watches him decline. In the end, he learns to let go lovingly, and although he has expected his father's death for years, the loss of his father's physical presence comes as a shock. He is drawn to his mother by the grief they share and by a promise he made to his father, finding relief in a final conversation.