Why I Walk...
My father, Tim "The Ice Man" Barber, sadly battled Lewy Body Dementia for the last several years of his life until he passed away in 2017.
While we knew there were signs of some memory issues for a number of years, we didn't get the chance to have a true diagnosis until roughly 10 days before my father passed away, which in hindsight I'm happy we at least had an answer to what was truly going on. It's hard to watch someone slowly forget a whole lifetime of their own.
After spending a good 10 days with my father in the hospital trying to figure out what the next steps of action were, but as the days went the answer was getting a little more definitive for us once we had a diagnosis and knew what options we had, even though pretty minimal at that point, we knew it was just waiting for when he was ready to, as he would put it, go home.
The day before he passed, I had left to go on vacation, with my now wife Nat and her family, to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, that morning I stopped by the hospital once more to say goodbye, and it was hard because I knew that that would be the last time I would see my father. After spending July 8th in Gettysburg and making to where we were staying on the 9th, I was exhausted and ended up taking a nap. While I was in a deep sleep I heard my father say "Ian.." which woke me right up. My father usually would do that followed with "wake up and go to sleep" but as soon as I sat up in the bed, my phone rang and it was my ma telling me my father had just passed. I will have to say it gave me some level of comfort to have heard my father say my name once more because the disease had gotten him to a point where he wasn't able to fully recognize who I was or my name which was difficult at the time. So hearing my father say my name once more gave me the the comfort of know he was back, and he was finally ok once again.
I walk with hundreds of other families not only to honor my father, but to show other families that they are not alone in this fight! Thank you to everyone who has made contributions for my team in these #Walk2EndAlz events in memory of my father.
Thank you dad for teaching me so much in life and doing all you could for our family. I love you with all my heart and I will always miss you and think of you and remember all the good times we had together.
Tim "The Ice Man" Barber
June 3, 1952-July 9, 2017
"The Ice Man cometh" home...
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