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The day my father retired at 65 and came to my workplace at 67. A story of an occupational therapist son pulling his father back from the threshold of dementia

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2026年5月12日 23:05

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Prologue

It was a summer afternoon.

In the parking lot of the special nursing home, my father was washing a day service shuttle bus. Drenched in sweat, he was silently spraying water with a hose and scrubbing the vehicle body with a sponge.

I happened to be passing by outside during a break in my functional training duties and saw him from a distance.

I didn't call out to him. My father was at work. I was in the middle of my own work. I just stopped for a moment and looked at his back.

—Two years ago, I could not have imagined this sight.

That father of mine, who had retired, sat on the sofa at home, and slept with the TV left on, was now silently washing a car all by himself under the scorching summer sun.

I returned to my post without saying a word.

This is the story of those two years.

Chapter 1: My father's work that I don't know

To be honest, I don't really know what kind of work my father did at Panasonic.

I have never even asked what department he was in or what his position was. My father rarely talked about work at home, and I never tried to ask.

I think this perfectly reflects the distance between my father and me.

I didn't really like my father. That had been the case ever since I was a child.

My father was short-tempered and would get extremely angry if he was displeased at home. He was a person who only saw things in black and white. There were days when we would try to go out to eat, but if we couldn't decide on a restaurant, he would fly into a rage, saying, "I'm not going anymore," and we wouldn't eat anything at all that day.

My mother couldn't drive, so while my father was in a bad mood, my mother would have no choice but to go buy bento boxes nearby, and my mother and I would eat together. Even if we bought food for him, my father wouldn't eat it.

I think he was a person with a strong tendency toward what is now called "fukihara"—bad mood harassment.

The atmosphere in the house was determined solely by my father's mood.

As a sensitive person, I absorbed all of that atmosphere. You could say I grew up reading my father's facial expressions. That is why I hated my father.

However, my father also had a kind side.

If I asked him to take me somewhere because of an urgent matter, he would basically take me without showing any displeasure. And on my final day of my first year as a working adult, when I quit the workplace where I had been verbally abused every night until 11 PM, my father spoke desperately to the administrative director on my behalf. I am still grateful for that even now.

He had unpleasant parts, and he had good parts.

But for a sensitive person like me, when you put it all together, he was someone who could be summed up by the word "difficult." That was what my father was to me.

And now, I am working at the same workplace as that father.

Chapter 2: 65 years old, the day of retirement

My father retired from Panasonic at the age of 65.

When his retirement was decided, my father did not seem to have any anxiety.

He did not have a look of "what should I do now?" On the contrary, he was calm. My father was originally the type of person who was not good at just sitting around. Even when he was at home, he would polish his car until it was clean or grow flowers in the garden. He liked dogwood trees, and I often saw him taking care of them when they were in season.

For the first few months after retiring, my father did gardening, tinkered with his car, and went for walks. Perhaps he also felt a sense of liberation from being "free."

But looking back now, I think.

For my father, who was a workaholic, the time during the day on weekdays when he had "nothing to do" must have been longer than I could imagine.

I think there was probably something that the word "boredom" was not enough to describe.

My mother still works full-time. My father is the only one at home.

At first, he managed somehow. He would go for walks during the day. He would take care of the garden. It seemed like he was trying to create a routine in his own way.

The problems started to become visible after that.

Chapter 3: Two years of doing nothing

From 65 to 67 years old.

During these two years, my father gradually changed.

Although he used to go for walks at first, the time he spent inside the house gradually became longer. Sitting in a massage chair, watching baseball on TV, and falling asleep before he knew it. Such scenes became more frequent.

My father was someone who cared quite a bit about his appearance. So, I don't think there were any changes that made him look 'sloppy' on the outside. He also didn't get angry at my wife or daughter—his granddaughter.

But I felt that his facial expressions had become less varied.

Then, he became hard of hearing. I don't remember exactly when this started. But by the time I noticed, he couldn't hear me unless I said things several times.

My wife also pointed out that his irritability while driving had increased. My father, who was short-tempered to begin with, became even more easily frustrated behind the wheel.

Each of these was a trivial change.

If one were to say, 'Everyone gets like that when they get old,' it was the kind of thing that could be dismissed that way.

So, I don't think I felt anything in particular.

——It was my wife who first noticed the changes.

Chapter 4: 'Father, I think your cognitive function might be declining'

I think it was one day when I returned from work. At home, my wife suddenly said that.

'Lately, your father has become hard of hearing, and I wonder if his cognitive function is declining?'

My wife is a physical therapist, and even after becoming a full-time housewife, her observational skills remained sharp. She had more opportunities to interact with my father than I did. The frequency with which she took our daughter to visit my parents' home was also overwhelmingly higher than mine.

That wife of mine said it clearly.

To write honestly, I didn't feel anything in particular at that time.

It was a feeling of 'Hmm, I see.' I wasn't shaken, nor did I deny it. No sense of urgency welled up either.

This might be heartless as a son.

But perhaps, in my mind, the psychological distance between my father and me caused that. Ever since I was a child, there had always been an invisible wall between my father and me. For me, who was never comfortable with my father, it was difficult to accept his condition as if it were my own.

However, my perspective as an OT had begun to stir elsewhere.

It is true that my father is at risk for disuse syndrome and social isolation. He has lost his role, his interactions with people have decreased, and the time he spends at home has increased. These are typical risk factors for dementia.

But a diagnosis hasn't been made. It might be transient. There is a possibility of MCI—mild cognitive impairment—but whether he is at the entrance to that or has already passed through it, I couldn't tell just by looking from the outside.

Above all, it was difficult to tell my father about it.

He is a man of high pride. If his own son were to say, "You might have dementia," he would absolutely deny it. He might even get furious.

That is why I decided to wait and see for a while.

As an OT for 16 years, I have seen many cases of dementia progression in my clients. I know that there are cases where early intervention can prevent or at least delay it.

Even so, I did not take action regarding my father for some time.

—The catalyst for action came from elsewhere.

Chapter 5: "Are you looking for work?"

It was truly in a fleeting moment.

I believe it was when I stopped by my parents' house. While having a casual conversation with my father, I asked him this:

"Are you looking for work?"

Actually, this was not the first time I had asked that.

I had asked the same thing about a year ago. At that time, my father replied, "I'm looking to see if there's a car wash job at a Toyota dealership." I thought that sounded just like him. A job where you work with your hands. A job you can do silently on your own. It would surely suit him.

However, that conversation did not progress from there. My father just said he was "looking," but there was no sign of him actually taking action.

And then a year passed.

In the meantime, a development had occurred at my workplace. Someone of a similar age was scheduled to retire, and we were going to be recruiting for their replacement.

When I heard the details of the job, I thought:

—Couldn't my father do this?

Driving for day service, washing vehicles, weeding around the facility, simple repairs. These are all tasks that can be done silently on one's own. It suits my father's personality.

To be honest, I had no conflict about it within myself.

How my father feels about "working at his son's workplace" is his own issue. How "introducing my father to the workplace" looks to my colleagues is also something I cannot control regardless of how much I think about it. My father and I are not in the same department, and we would not be directly involved in each other's work. Although we are family, we are strangers in the workplace.

This might be a way of thinking that I naturally acquired after reading Adlerian psychology for 13 years.

Separation of tasks.

My father's tasks, my tasks, and the workplace's tasks are all separate things.

All I can do is present options to my father. Whether he accepts them or not is for him to decide.

That is why I asked, "Are you looking for work?"

I asked with the intention of introducing him to my workplace.

My father's reply was his usual voice.

"Yeah. Slowly but surely."

It wasn't a special tone. He wasn't excited, nor did he seem uninterested. That's the kind of person my father is. He doesn't let his emotions fluctuate much.

But I felt a little bit of positivity contained within that "slowly but surely."

When I talked about my workplace, my father was reasonably interested. The workplace also said, "Let's have an interview," and things progressed smoothly.

It was decided smoothly.

Chapter 6: My father's first day at work

I remember the day my father went to work for the first time.

He was wearing a suit for the first time in a while. He looked a little nervous. A man who had worked in a suit until he was 65 was putting his arms through the sleeves again after a two-year break. That sight was a little fresh even to me, his son.

I didn't say anything in particular to my father that day.

At the workplace, my father and I are strangers. There is no point in making him nervous by talking to him. I did my work, and my father began his.

I don't know exactly how my colleagues welcomed my father. We were in different departments, so I wasn't there.

However, I think the office staff treated my father with care. They were considerate so that my father could learn the work smoothly.

I don't think my father was the type to learn things particularly quickly. But he silently learned each task one by one.

For the first few weeks, I watched my father from a distance.

Even when we passed each other at work, we only exchanged greetings. My father didn't treat me as his 'son,' and I didn't treat him as my 'father.' We were just colleagues, exchanging indifferent greetings. That was all.

It was a strange feeling.

The father I felt 'uncomfortable' with at home became an 'older colleague working at the same facility' at work. The sense of distance was completely different from when we were at home.

My father was easier for me to interact with at work.

Perhaps this, too, is an extension of the separation of tasks.

Chapter 7: Father's Work

My father's job duties were as follows.

Day service transportation. In the morning, he would pick up users from their homes and bring them to the facility. In the evening, he would take them back home.

Washing the facility's vehicles. Three to four vehicles a day.

Weeding around the facility.

Simple repairs. If someone said a door was hard to open, he would take his tools and go adjust it. When staff consulted him about something being broken, he would go check it and fix it.

His repair skills probably didn't come only from his time at Panasonic.

Before working at Panasonic, my father worked at a sheet metal shop. Sheet metal work is a profession specializing in repairing and painting car bodies and processing metal. It involves tasks like hammering out dents in cars from accidents to restore their original shape or repainting them—work that involves handling metal with one's hands.

My mother was a Panasonic employee at the time and apparently visited Panasonic in connection with sheet metal work. That is where they met. And at one point, my father was headhunted by a high-ranking person at Panasonic and moved there—that is the story passed down in our family.

In other words, my father had been someone whose job was to 'fix things with his hands' since he was young.

That experience is now being put to use at the special nursing home.

Adjusting doors, simple machine repairs, vehicle maintenance. I think it's fair to call it a craftsman's spirit. He silently focuses on one task. He doesn't cut corners. He works until he is satisfied.

He washes cars outside in both summer and winter.

Even in the scorching heat of nearly 40 degrees Celsius, or on a midwinter morning when frost has settled, my father continues to work silently. He doesn't complain. He works without resting so much that the office staff, unable to watch, repeatedly tell him, 'You should take a break.'

This was what my 67-year-old father looked like.

There are times when he looks like a completely different person from the father I knew, who used to sit in the massage chair at home and fall asleep.

Chapter 8: "Please tell your father"

After about three months, my father began to be able to move like his old self.

There were more situations where he was relied upon at work. Younger staff—or rather, there were only staff younger than my father—would ask him, "Could you fix this for us?" or consult him, saying, "Something is wrong with this part of the car." My father handled each request one by one.

Even watching from a distance, I could see my father was full of life.

This was the moment I felt that "my father had returned."

One day, a staff member at the day service center said this to me.

"He always keeps the cars sparkling clean, which is a huge help. Please tell your father that."

The gratitude was being conveyed through me, his son.

Honestly, I thought to myself:

—They should just tell him directly.

He would probably be happier if they did.

But I think the staff members were being considerate, too. To my father, the staff are younger employees at his new workplace. Perhaps it feels a bit embarrassing for them to say "thank you" directly. That is why they were delivering their words of gratitude through me, his son.

I think this is also a sign of my father's character, or perhaps his position at the workplace.

He is recognized by the staff as "someone who always does his work carefully."

—My father, who was "incompetent" at home, is needed by someone at work.

That fact was, to me as his son, a little strange and a little happy.

Chapter 9: My father at work and me as his son

At work, I do not treat my father any differently.

I don't call him "Father." I rarely even call him by his surname. Because our work paths are different, there are few situations where we interact professionally.

When we pass each other, I greet him properly.

"Good work," or "Excuse me for leaving early."

That is all.

I treat every staff member from the same position. I don't give my father special treatment because he is my father. I don't keep my distance because he is my father, either. I treat him with respect as a senior staff member. That is all.

Perhaps my father, too, is not trying to treat me as his "son." At the workplace, he behaves properly as "one of the staff members."

I think this is a comfortable distance for both of us.

The "father and son" relationship at home and the "colleagues" relationship at work are completely different things.

Even now at home, the atmosphere becomes heavy on days when my father is in a bad mood. It's not as bad as when I was a child, but I still react a little sensitively to that atmosphere.

But at work, that kind of atmosphere is not brought in. As a staff member, my father is polite and works in a calm, detached manner. I match that and treat him as a colleague.

A time when I can take off the label of "Father" and see him as an individual human being.

I think that is the mysterious part of the space that is a workplace.

Chapter 10: What has become visible now, one year later

A year has passed since my father was re-employed.

What is my father's condition now?

There are no particular signs of a decline in cognitive function. His facial expressions have softened. My wife has also been saying this recently.

"Lately, your father's expressions have softened. He doesn't get angry anymore."

It seems my father doesn't complain to my mother as much either. His mood-based harassment has decreased. My mother still works full-time, and my father spends more time at home. Even so, the atmosphere at home is calmer than before.

And my daughter—my father's granddaughter—has also recently started to open up to him.

Before, she used to say, "I don't like Grandpa because he's scary." I think she, in her own way as a child, sensed my father's grumpy atmosphere. I was the same when I was a child.

But things are different lately. On weekends, my daughter goes to visit her grandparents' house by herself. She does crafts and bakes sweets with her grandmother. My father, her grandfather, is there too, and a natural interaction has blossomed between my daughter and him.

I think my daughter opened up to him because my father's expression changed.

——What was going on with my father during those two years?

Looking back calmly as an OT, it is highly likely that it was not dementia.

It might have been closer to "Social Frailty." Social frailty is a state where physical and mental functions decline due to the loss of social roles and human connections. It is a reversible state that exists before dementia.

Or perhaps a state called "pseudodementia." This refers to symptoms resembling dementia that appear temporarily due to depression or environmental factors. If the cause is resolved, the symptoms improve.

In my father's case, the decline in cognitive function was not that noticeable, so social frailty fits better.

He lost his role, his interactions with people decreased, and the time he spent at home increased—as a result, his expressions became dull, he became hard of hearing, and his irritability increased.

Conversely, it was a state that could be reversed if he regained his role and connections with people.

That is my father now.

Chapter 11: The question of "What if I hadn't introduced him?"

"If you hadn't introduced him to that job back then, what do you think would have happened to your father now?"

This is a question I have thought about myself.

But to answer honestly, I don't know.

It's just a guess, and there's no point in guessing.

I am me, and my father is my father.

Whether my father develops dementia or not is his own challenge. It's not something I can decide.

All I could do was present an option. I asked, "Are you looking for work?" and introduced him to my workplace. That's all.

My father accepted that, and he is still working healthily today.

That is all.

I do not think that "I saved my father."

Accepting the referral was my father's own decision, and adjusting to the workplace over three months was his own effort. Washing the car alone in silence under the scorching summer sun is his own will. Being relied upon by younger staff is due to his own character and work ethic.

I only provided the opportunity.

It was my father who moved forward from there.

This also comes back to the topic of separating tasks.

I cannot save my father's life. My father's life belongs to him.

But I was able to offer him options.

I think that was enough.

Epilogue

Today, my father is washing the car in the parking lot of the special nursing home again.

As I go around the facility for my functional training rounds, I glance out the window. My father is hunched over, moving his sponge in silence.

I never call him "Dad."

If we pass each other, I just say, "Thank you for your hard work." That is all.

When I go home, there are still days when my father is in a bad mood. I am still a bit sensitive to that atmosphere. Our relationship hasn't changed perfectly. The distance that has existed since I was a child still lingers faintly between my 67-year-old father and my 38-year-old self.

Even so.

I know the sight of my father washing the car alone in silence, under the scorching summer sun and on frosty winter mornings.

I hear the staff saying, "It's a big help that the car is always sparkling clean."

I watch my daughter go to visit her grandfather at his house by herself, calling him "Jijji."

This is enough.

My father has a role, is needed by someone, and is living at his own pace.

As his son, I am able to witness that up close.

I never thought the day would come when I would be involved with my father, whom I was never good with, in this way.

But now, I think.

No matter how old people get, they can take on new roles. They can build new relationships in new places. Someone who might have been standing at the threshold of dementia can sometimes come back to life.

The catalyst for that is often, unexpectedly, a simple word.