\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been through a lot,\u201d Kim says. \u201cWhat he\u2019s been able to accomplish, in terms of his education and ultimately his professional life, was nothing short of remarkable.\u201d Still, Kim says he \u201cclashed a lot\u201d with his father: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to expect someone who didn\u2019t have parents to be able to know how to be a dad,\u201d he adds. \u201cI can\u2019t say he was always what I had hoped. We\u2019ve had a hard, hard time getting along with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet his father was there a year ago\u2014with Kim\u2019s mother, wife, and kids\u2014as Kim was sworn in as the first Korean American senator in the nation\u2019s history. At the appointment where Kim\u2019s father was officially diagnosed, the doctor asked his father what Kim did for a living. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d the elder Kim replied.<\/p>\n
His father didn\u2019t remember what he himself did either. \u201cMy father was a geneticist, a medical researcher who spent his life trying to cure cancer and Alzheimer\u2019s,\u201d Kim said in his Senate speech. \u201cAnd now, as I was there witnessing Alzheimer\u2019s erase from my father\u2019s memory any recollection of his efforts to erase Alzheimer\u2019s from our world, I couldn\u2019t help but feel that Alzheimer\u2019s had won.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim says his father has been losing his ability to speak English. While heading to a recent doctor\u2019s visit, Kim struggled to explain the concept of a seatbelt to his father. He knows things will get worse. It feels, Kim says, like a dark version of his early days as a parent. \u201cIt feels like I\u2019m in the trenches again, but this one doesn\u2019t have a happy ending,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s in the trenches again, but everything\u2019s going in the wrong direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
That pain is unique in its particulars because of the nature of Kim\u2019s work\u2014scheduling his father\u2019s appointments around votes, scrambling from doctors\u2019 offices to the Senate floor. But it is surely recognizable, in broad strokes, to millions of Americans. Over the last decade, the number of family caregivers has increased by 45%, according to a report this year by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving<\/a>. \u201cOver that period,\u201d NAC president Jason Resendez<\/strong> tells me, \u201cwe\u2019ve seen caregiving become more intense, more complex, and it\u2019s lasting for longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n