Adelaide Crows forward Ben Crocker opens up about his father’s heartbreaking Alzheimer’s battle
Crows forward Ben Crocker has watched his father, Paul, slowly deteriorate with an incurable illness over the past eight years. The resilient 23-year-old has spoken about the impact it has had on his family, and his football.
Crows
Don't miss out on the headlines from Crows. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Crows forward Ben Crocker typically spends Father’s Day having a quiet lunch in the backyard of his family’s home in Surrey Hills, Melbourne.
This Father’s Day, Crocker will be in Adelaide on standby to go home and be with his dad, Paul, who is in hospital after a setback in his battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Paul is unable to have visitors on weekends because of the coronavirus pandemic, which means his wife, Vicki, will not be able to see him or put their son on the phone.
Crocker Facetimes his dad most days, even though they have not held a proper conversation in about seven years, owing to the degenerative brain disease slowly eroding Paul’s ability to understand or communicate, to the point he can no longer talk.
It was on one of those Facetime calls a little over a week ago, when Crocker was walking into Crows training, that Vicki told him Paul was in hospital.
“She was in tears and saying Dad was really bad,” the former Collingwood player tells News Corp.
“I was on Facetime and got to look at him and it was pretty confronting.
“He just looked lifeless, he looked skinny, his eyes were closed and his mouth open.
“I didn’t say much, I just thought ‘f---, this is pretty bad’.
“He’s been in hospital before and he has no immune system, so even just a general cold can knock him around.
“Your first emotion is, ‘I’m not there to help’.
“I’m normally a pretty out there, loud guy and usually when I walk into the footy club I’ll be joking around.
“But Mum called me when I was in my car in the carpark and when I walked into the forwards room, I started bawling my eyes out.”
Crocker was initially in the room by himself.
The next person to enter was teammate Tom Lynch, who comforted him.
“He was probably the most appropriate man because our dads actually grew up together,” Crocker says of Lynch and his father, Andrew.
“I broke down for five minutes and then I trained.
“Nicksy (Crows coach Matthew Nicks) was like, ‘Do you reckon you should go home?’. But I was like, ‘Nah, I have to train – I’ve got to keep my mind busy’.
“I’m fine when I’m training but the minute I get off the training track, my first thought is ‘I wonder how Dad is’.
“Mum’s kind of said while he’s in there and if it doesn’t look like he’s going to die, you may as well finish the season because you can’t see him anyway.
“If he gets worse and it’s not looking great, I’ll be going home.”
Paul was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014, when Crocker was in Year 12.
The signs had been there 12 months earlier.
“He started doing weird things, like he’d leave me at footy training,” Crocker says.
Vicki took Paul for a brain scan, which revealed he had early onset dementia.
“I wasn’t mature enough to look at what it would mean in the future, so I didn’t care too much when I was younger,” Crocker says.
“But things gradually got worse.”
What began as seemingly simple forgetfulness soon turned to concerning behaviour.
“I lived across the road from school (Carey Baptist Grammar) and I’d come home during the day … and I’d go into the toilet and there’d be shit in the sink and on the floor,” Crocker says.
“As a 17-year-old, I was like, ‘What are you doing?’.”
Conversations eventually stopped, too.
All Paul could say was reduced to “hey mate, how are you going?”
“I haven’t had a general conversation with him since I was like 16,” Crocker says.
Music helped fill the void.
“My dad’s favourite song is Viva La Vida by Coldplay and I kid you not, I can play it any time and he just starts singing to it – doesn’t know the lyrics but just scream singing to it.
“As the months and years have gone on, the reaction gets less when you play the music.
“It’s kind of sad because you lose things that you can do with him.”
Kayo is your ticket to the 2020 Toyota AFL Premiership Season. Watch every match of every round Live & On-Demand. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >
One of those other things used to be going to the footy.
Crocker was a Collingwood supporter before he was drafted to the Magpies at pick 65 in 2015.
He would attend games with his dad and their family lived next-door to ex-Magpies captain and assistant coach Scott Burns.
Debuting for Collingwood against Carlton in Round 7, 2016 fulfilled a childhood dream.
Paul was in the changerooms that day but did not realise exactly what was going on.
And no one at Collingwood knew about Paul’s battle.
It was Burns who picked up that there was something wrong and Crocker opened up to close mates Jordan de Goey and Brayden Maynard at the start of his second season.
Later, Crocker stood up and told the club about his family’s struggles.
“I didn’t want to have to cover something up,” he says.
“The club was so good and people started to understand and ask how he is.
“There were times at Collingwood where we’d be playing a day game and I’d been up til 3.30am (the night before) with a mop and scrubber, scrubbing dad’s shit off the carpet with my mum and it sucks … but I had no option.
“You just learn to get used to it.
“If there’s one positive, when I have a kid, changing nappies won’t be an issue for me.”
When COVID-19 struck earlier this year, Crocker relished the chance to move back in with his parents and was again helping care for Paul.
“I’d just sit in the backyard with dad,” he says.
“You’re not communicating with him, you’re just there with him.”
Crocker has not seen his family in person since rejoining Crows training in May – the longest he has ever been away.
“When you’re in Melbourne (looking after him) every day, you’re like, ‘I need a break’, but now that I’m not there, I kind of miss doing that stuff,” he says.
Paul has full-time carers each day from 8am to 5pm then Crocker’s older brother, Sam, and Vicki look after him at night.
Crocker says his mum has been unbelievable for his dad, who she has been married to for 35 years.
They met at the Albion Hotel in South Melbourne – a pub now part-owned by Crocker’s former Magpies teammate Dane Swan.
“It’s funny because I go there all the time,” Crocker says.
Crocker had never lived out of home until he joined the Crows via last year’s rookie draft after Collingwood delisted him.
Vicki told him he needed to take the opportunity in Adelaide and felt Paul would think the same, if he could understand the situation.
Ex-Magpies teammate turned Port Adelaide development coach Tyson Goldsack, his partner Chelsea and daughters Harriet, 3, and Cleo, 1, have become Crocker’s new second family.
“(Goldsack) is one of the best people you’d ever meet, so I never felt uncomfortable being here,” he says.
“It’s only when this stuff (Paul hospitalised) occurs that I am.”
Crocker says his dad’s deteriorating health has affected his form this year.
He has played seven games – all losses – but has been dropped again.
Out of contract at the end of the season, Crocker is fighting for his career under trying personal circumstances.
“I haven’t been playing great but last week he was sick and it’s so hard to focus on footy when you feel guilty for not being at home,” he says.
“The club has been really good and understanding.
“I feel like I’m definitely in the best 22, I’ve just got to find a way to be more consistent and stay in the team.”
Telling his new Crows teammates of his dad’s health battle soon after joining the club was cathartic.
“I’m so comfortable with it – it’s my life … and I’m not embarrassed by it anymore,” says Crocker.
It also ensured they could not judge him based simply on his heavily-tattooed appearance.
“If you looked at me as a person, you’d probably think ‘this kid’s a scumbag’,” he says.
“My mum hates my tattoos.
“But I enjoy that when people get to know me, they realise, ‘He’s not what you think he is’.”
Crocker has several tattoos honouring his parents: the word “family” on his left wrist and “first” on his right, a V and P for Vicki and Paul near his wrist, and an incorrect date of their wedding anniversary on his left bicep.
“They were married on the 17th of March, 1984 but I’ve got that they were married in February,” he says with a laugh.
“Mum was on the phone one day and she’s given me the wrong date.”
Crocker plans to get it altered but not before getting other sentimental tattoos.
“I’m going to get Viva La Vida on my wrist.”
Crocker’s grandfather – Paul’s dad – died of Alzheimer’s about four years ago.
The threat of potentially being diagnosed with the disease himself later in life is not worrying Crocker now, as he maintains a positive mindset.
Even though Alzheimer’s has a life expectancy of 10 years and Paul is eight years in, Crocker tends to only think about the future when he is at mates’ weddings.
“You have the thought, ‘Dad’s not going to be around for that stuff’,” he says.
“When I have kids, he’s not going to be around.
“The reality is the time we have left is not going to be too much longer so you want to do as much as you can.”
Crocker does not feel sorry for himself despite going through “stuff that very rarely a 22 or 23-year-old would”.
“It builds such a resilience in life and you figure out what’s important, what you should value, what you shouldn’t value,” he says.
Enduring what they have has brought Crocker closer with his mum.
MORE AFL NEWS:
Melbourne star Jack Viney opens up on life in the footy hub as a new dad
Messenger’s top 10 players in division one of the Adelaide Footy League for 2020
Travis Tuck opens up about the pain of his brother’s death and his message to all young men
They text every day, speak several times a week and Crocker admires what she is dealing with.
So when Crocker calls her on Sunday, it will not just be for Father’s Day but out of habit.
“(Father’s Day) is not something I’ll dwell on all day but it’s something I’ll think about that it’d be nice to be home with Dad,” he says.
Vicki will call Crocker again on Monday when she makes her daily one-hour visit to see Paul in hospital.
“I don’t talk to him (on Facetime), it’s purely for me and my own comfort to see his face,” says Crocker, who keeps a photo of him and his dad in his room in Adelaide.
“Seeing his face makes it all a lot easier.”