Slowly Disappearing

I'm not sure if this quite hits the brief, but I've just read the JC ‘Clarity Cut Poetry Contest #2’ brief on a persona poem here, and this popped into my mind.

To clarify, although I know a few people going through (or have gone through) this kind of thing, my Dad is fit and well and this is firmly me adapting to a persona of someone in this situation:

I sit and hold his hand,
this man I've known for all these years,
who raised and taught and nurtured me,
who took away my fears.

Yet something's taken part of him,
he doesn't know me now.
When I speak to him of my childhood
he just furrows his brow.

Until recently, there would be times,
when he seemed just as of old.
We would speak of films and football,
he'd recall the tales I told.

The last few weeks, though, have been hard,
he just can't remember me.
I talk of Mum, of both his grandkids,
but he's in nineteen sixty-three.

I hear tales of long-dead relatives,
as though he's just met them for a drink,
but if I ask him what he's done today,
he'll just sit and stare, and blink.

No more hands upon the shoulder
no more 'how's it going son?'
He stares through me,  with glassy-eyes,
talks of races long since run.

The affliction slowly eating up
his memories and mind,
the most recent ones devoured,
the past won't be far behind.

Soon before the end comes,
and it's what makes me most sad,
there will sit a husk, a shell
of what was once my Dad.

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