Night can be the most trying time with a Parkinson’s patient since the disease can throw all kinds of obstacles in the way of a simple night’s sleep. Of course, there are the hallucinations that plague one night and day without proper medication, and as the disease progresses, the dosage of that medicine needs to be constantly adjusted. With Papa and his lightning-fast deterioration, what was an adequate dose three or even two days ago no longer has the desired effect. So Papa can spend a lot of the night talking to his hallucinatory friends, reaching for hallucinated objects, and puzzling over imagined problems. It’s hard to go to sleep like that.

Parkinson’s also affects sleep: one of the 10 early symptoms of Parkinson’s is trouble sleeping.

And so some nights at eleven, when everyone should be in bed, Papa has been lying in bed for three hours yet he’s still talking to people who are not there, reaching for things not there, looking around the room at sights only in his mind, and in worst-case scenarios, trying to get out of bed — something that would be disastrous.

The frustration we all feel about this is ineffable.