Notes from The Shrine, 11.8.2024: The Prime Directive

~ johnbrandall

Rough go of it in the lunch room today. All these times I've seen Helen's daughter Pat pass out drinks to the residents. I did not realize she had been asked, more than once, not to do so.

There has been—continues to be—a shortage or an understaffing of help in the lunch room. Brad is here today but was not serving the coffee, lemonade, and water like he used to. Did he ask not to, so he could have a full lunch hour to himself? Hey, fine, it's not his fault. I don't put this on him. Likewise I used to see Social Worker Natalie, Kim, Joy El, Ann—any number of other staff members serve the drinks when the residents were brought in and seated in the lunch room, usually around noon.

Their absence now is noticeable. There is a void. Instead, it will eventually be a CNA serving the drinks, or maybe it will be Brad or someone else but not until 12:30. Is this a protest of sorts? Two sides digging in, neither side believing it should be their job to do.

I notice now, too, that Pat has not been in the lunch room recently. Maybe I have just missed her, the days I've been here not matching the days she has been.

What happened today began when resident Helen asked a CNA I did not recognize—a tall young woman—for a drink or just for a cup. The CNA brusquely informed Helen that, "Hello! That is not my job. Someone who is supposed to do that will have to get you your drinks. Just have some patience."

This was at 12:20 or 12:25. Lunch seems to come out later and later. It's the creep. You don't want to be coming to a nursing home long enough to notice it, to measure it, to feel it.

I'm sitting there with my dad and Lester when the CNA so gracelessly and unnecessarily upbraids Helen. So I get up and get Helen a cup. Then I get Joyce her coffee with a cream and two sugars, which is just how she likes it. I've been in the lunch room often enough to know what longer-time residents will order. Then I get something for Donna, and then I get something for Lester. And, yes, I'm feeling pretty special, feeling pretty good about myself. Stepping in to save the day. Who else wants a lemonade? I'll serve all the drinks today, why not?

Well, this CNA wheels another resident in, sees what I'm doing, and starts in on me. "Umm, hello? What are you doing? Do you know if any of them have any allergies, or is on a thickened liquids diet?" Meaning, I shouldn't be serving drinks to the residents, not because it might make her or any other staff look bad but because I might get somebody hurt.

Heck, this wasn't the first time I had served a few cups of coffee in the lunch room. Last week OG CNA Chiquita saw me get Donna a cup of coffee and didn't say anything. I thought nothing of it at the time. All I was thinking was that I could get my idle ass up and make myself useful, if no one else was going to do it. I had never seen this CNA before and if any resident was on a special diet I would have been in a much better position to know about it than she would have been.

OG CNA LaDosha wheeled someone in a moment after the testy exchange and I asked her what the heck was going on. I said, "I've seen Pat serve drinks in this lunch room many times."

"And she's not supposed to," said LaDosha. "She's been asked not to, more than once..."


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Lemonade Lost: Notes from The Shrine, 12.30.2024

~ johnbrandall

Tea and coffee, please. And hot sauce.

Helen's daughter Pat serving a few drinks. Bob Miller, aka The Hot Sauce Guy, passed away on the 26th. He was an OG. He sat at the second-to-last table on this side of the dining room. With the late Tom Brown and with Neal, who made it out of here.

It was only during the long Covid lockdown, when residents couldn't leave their halls, that I came to learn that Bob Miller took hot sauce with every meal. He was on B hall along with my dad. By then Bob had mostly lost his voice but he never had to ask for the hot sauce, it went with saying.

There are lots of visitors today. This is the first time I've seen Pat in the lunch room in a while. The first time since I was chided for serving drinks. I wanted to ask her about it. She has also been told not to serve drinks but I guess she doesn't care, which makes me feel a little better.

I've been taking my dad to main dining as much as possible but after his near-choking incident at the Christmas Supper, I've decided I won't take him to the main/communal dining room anymore. I don't want any more scenes. Back to the Dammert dining room it is.

For a while I've been meaning to mention Father Maes's return to Dammert. He's been back for weeks now, after having done a brief rehab stint in Dammert early this year, right after my dad moved in. I'll never forget Father Maes finding those spots of sunlight through the skylights, or through the glass door at the end of A hall. He would sit in the beams and read, beatific. But he's slower now. He looks thin and weak. He is wheelchair-bound. He could walk or at least get around with a walker once he moved back to St Francis after his short Dammert stint. We saw him sitting outside a lot. He would always say hello.

Lester is here, awake. Susan, or Susie, is back. I haven't seen her since the last Covid lockdown. She had that catchy laugh. But she's out of sorts today. She asked where her visitors went. She wants out of the lunch room; to go see her visitors. But they don't exist. The CNAs ask her to wait until her food arrives. They'll check again to see if any visitors have arrived to see her.

The OGs still here, in this main Dammert dining room are: Helen (Pat's Mom), Helen Dooley (mayor's mom), Jackie, Tony Hill, Bob Smith (dad's first roommate), and Father Madigan. I might be missing one but that's it.

Lester's son is here. The food arrives but Susie is refusing to eat. She is on a lounge chair nowadays. I've never heard her like this. There is something wrong with her legs.

Before lunch my dad and I had a profound moment when Jack's wife stopped us as we wheeled through the main building.

"Do you remember me?" she asked my dad.

She stooped to put her hand to my father's face. I told her I remembered Jack.

"Well, everyone does," she said, "he used to scream so much."

Which he did. And I began to say, "Yes, but he also played a lovely piano."

Which he did but she did not hear me; she had already begun to move away.

I officially met Kent, Lester's son, at lunch. He is also Gretchen's son. I offered my condolences. Lester and his wife Gretchen both caught Covid in the last wave. Gretchen never recovered. Kent brought Lester in and they sat with us at the lunch table. We shook hands, or made to, across the table when I knocked over Lester's lemonade. Classic. Helen's daughter Pat went and got me a clothes protector, which did well to absorb the spill...


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Notes from The Shrine: The Return of Bob (1.8.25)

~ johnbrandall

Everyone would like some popcorn.
—Bob

Bob walked into the main Dammert lunch room today. He hasn’t been eating in this dining room for a couple of months. It’s me, Bob, Lester, and Dad all at one table. Old times and new.

The snow brightens the room. They don’t seem to be offering Bob any coffee. He was sitting in here before we were. They said he just wandered in and sat down.

Brad got me some coffee. Bob is singing. LaDosha comes in, asks about Bob, goes out.

I have a feeling Bob wandered in because of how bright it is in this room. He can’t see very well but he might have been attracted to the light.

Dirk comes in, goes out. Bob mumbles clearly about coffee. He is missing it.

“How about a couple of coffee cups?” he says. “Isn’t there a week….”

Brad is taking the drinks cart around. A wheel squeaks.

“Coffee,” Bob says. “Please bring some coffee.”

There’s a new lady. She says to the not-so-new woman next to her, “I’m a wreck.” The other lady says, “No you’re not.”

“That’s cold,” says Bob. “For the kids…”


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Notes from The Shrine : A Little More Loretta (1.3.25)

~ johnbrandall

First time seeing Dad this year. He’s been here 11 months, somehow. Loretta and her daughter talking on B hall. Loretta used to live in Seattle, in a house she never wanted to leave. Her daughter ordered pizza for the staff.

My dad is still in bed. He was asleep when I arrived but he’s been mostly awake ever since. Often with his eyes closed. He was asking me a few questions.

Loretta remains one of if not the most vocal resident here. She tells her daughter how much she loves her, more than she will ever know.

“2025?” she asks. “And where are we living? I like it here.”

Loretta would come here and walk every morning. Before she lived here. My dad would come here to walk sometimes, too. LaDosha thanks Loretta’s daughter for the pizza. I gotta get on that, ordering food for the CNAs, before it’s too late, if there is such a thing.

I had a banana that Dad was surprisingly interested in. Where did I get it? Was it my lunch? He said he was very happy I had it. That was a strange thing for him to say. He is lying there, no lights on in here but for sun through the blinds. He has his left index finger to his lips, rubbing it along them…


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Notes from the Shrine, 9.18.2024: One for Jack

~ johnbrandall

Jack died, while I was away. It's been seventeen days since I've been here. Carol also died, Carol Ann Baltosciewicz, but the name alone does not tell me who that is, was.

My dad is in bed. He was in the bathroom when I got here. Dirk was helping him with his business in there.

Jack was 94. He was a presence here. His straining voice. His love for his wife, Margaret, who lives in the apartment wing of the retirement community. They were married 65 years. Don't you go through that door now, Jack. I can hear one or more CNAs telling him that in the lunchroom. Don't you go through that door. But he would. The back door that led to the main dining hall, where he knew his wife would be eating.

I'm in my dad's room on B Hall. Rudy catches Tony getting into something he shouldn't and intervenes. Tony flintstones himself out of his room, and out of B hall, headed to the Bird Room or maybe an early lunch. An OG, Tony has always carried himself with such a pleasant, warm vibe but I guess we all get into a little trouble now and then.

Physical therapist Stephanie is sitting at one of the tables on B hall. Making notes. It's Stephanie, and Brad, who I remember taking Jack into the break room so he could play the piano that sits in there otherwise untouched. Jack played the piano well, all the way to the end. He had a full, white head of hair. He managed still to somehow look so tanned. He got outside here and there, must have. I only remember seeing him out in the courtyard a couple of times. He would try to talk, get agitated. Then Margaret would usher him inside...


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Coffee for Loretta: Notes from the Shrine, 8.16.2024

~ johnbrandall

My dad's feet are really swollen. Purple. He's got some sort of sock on, except they don't cover the most part of his feet. They're like something a gymnast would wear—ankle wraps.

But he looks alright. He's got the cradle/holster thing under him, the red, yellow, green, blue loops sticking out at four corners. I've never seen it under him before so maybe they are using a different crane than what Taylor used on him Wednesday.

Loretta is here on B Hall. She's nice. I heard her talking to one of Phyllis Nester's daughters one day. Ann. Their families were friends. They went to Michigan together. Went swimming, played tennis, enjoyed the air. Those were fond memories.

Director of Nursing Rose came in and put one pillow under his feet, to get them off the floor. I added one more. His bed is stripped of its sheets. The housekeeper whose name I don't know (not Peggy) swept in here earlier. Now she's cleaning the bathroom. If I wrote a book about this experience it would be called, The Shrine: One Year in the Hell of a Good Nursing Home.

I smell coffee from the hall. I'd love some. I didn't get any made before I left. My mom had some left in the pot at the house but I forgot to take some.

Lunch is here. Pasta, veggies, garlic bread. It smelled good. I'm sure it is. I'll never know. It'll be better than my Cucumber Worry sandwich. Side salad with egg wedge. Tapioca. I wonder who, if anyone, is eating in the main dining room. Who's allowed in there. Me?

I don't know what my objective is here today; how long I'll stay. I don't even want to go back to Rockingham. Maybe I won't stay. If so I wouldn't see my brother, but he hasn't come into the house this week anyway.

To leave Rockingham out of the day I'd have had to come over here at 8 or so. Do 8:30 to 11:30, then get back to University City to get Hugo walked and fed. That would have been fine, really. But I figured preparing to cook a meal tonight for my sick mother was the right thing to do. To make the effort. I guess my effort is not effortless enough...


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Notes From the Shrine: Your Dark Glasses Are Now Ready

~ johnbrandall

Peggy cleans the bathroom next. Mom sends another text telling me to open the blinds, if I haven’t yet. Dad rips into another blustery hacking cough.

I want to know what else is going on in the rest of this place. Dammert. Has anyone died recently? The last five days? How bad is this Covid outbreak? How many staff are sick? But I won’t or can’t venture out.

Peggy is mopping the bathroom floor. CNA Taylor is out in the hall. Her and Rachel. That’s a good duo. He’s in good hands. It was bleak in here Monday. Thin. There was a puddle of piss on the floor when I got here, under his wheelchair. His pants were wet. I took it up with a towel.

Taylor checks in. She tells my dad she’s going to get him up when the floor is dry. Peggy is mopping the rest of the room, where the puddle was the other day, then where the cranberry juice was spilled. She mops with a slight bleach solution. Fine. The floor is clean.

Taylor asks him how he feels. He says, “OK.” But you sound terrible, she says. Peggy interjects, “A lot better than he did, though.” She says this as much to me as to anyone, and it makes me feel pretty good. Peggy is really nice. She has red hair. For a while I had forgotten her name.

I’m in my N-95 mask with blue disposable gloves on. My exhalation fogs up my glasses. My hands sweat. I would love a cup of coffee.

The stingray documentary has been over for a while. Now it’s Christianne Amanpour hosting a world news program.

“Is Netanyahu ready for a deal now?” she asks her guest.

I had gotten a book out of my bag, an old book that belonged to my dad called Zen Buddhism. I’ve had it for three years. That’s the last time he was home, in Ludlow, Massachusetts. His cousin Anna now lives in the house he grew up in, what I used to know as my grandpa’s house. His name was the same as mine except for the middle name. His was Beresford, after a Lord in England. Mine is Brian, after my dad.

Anna had a box of his books that had been sitting in the basement of that house, basically forever. I remember her telling me about books of his, boxes. Was I interested in them. I couldn’t really muster the energy to get excited about them. I was sitting out by my great aunt Elsie’s pool enjoying some downtime during what was a challenging trip. It was June 2021. There was a party for Elsie’s birthday. My brother and I had driven my dad out to New England, in what would be his last Buick…


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Notes from The Shrine, 8.7.24: A Bear Came Over the Tracks

~ johnbrandall

Outside in the courtyard at Shrine with my dad. Brad had a mask on but no-one said anything to me about any new Covid restrictions. Within ten seconds of my clapping his shoulder to announce my arrival, Dad asked me to take him outside.

The lawn crew is edging walkways and borders.

”Where are we, the Shrine?” he asks.

”Where do you think we are?” I say.

“I think we’re there. I’m just guessing.”

The edger drones on, throttling up and down, back and forth, in and out, left to right. My dad’s eyes are blue, red, and watery.

”You want to go out there even with that lawn equipment going?”

A rhetorical question he does not answer.

It’s cooler. Way cooler. The two-cycle engine quiets for a moment, just a moment. And the rest of the soundscape steps slowly out from wherever it was hiding. The whir of crickets. Voices from inside.

”You’re not gonna see much in the sky,” he says, “ A few birds, that’s it.”

There’s the song sparrow, reeling off its spell. Nothing happens. They’ll be back to mow, and then again to blow. Maybe we’ll be at lunch by then.

The sky is cloudy. It might not even be eighty degrees, a stunning turn of events. Church bells. I’d go to that mass sometime. There are people in there who know me. Maybe they don’t know my name but they know my face and they know I’m here for my dad. That’s all I know to feel welcome. That is enough. Knowing more would break the spell. Question me, question them. See ya in another life, brutha.

”You want anything to read?”

”No, I just like to enjoy it out here,” he says, “I got papers in there I read.”

Remember back when my parents said they saw a panther, from the St Francis entrance? They said they saw a panther go through some grass, at the edge of the back parking lot, and into the woods. I thought it must have been a dog, or possibly a bobcat…


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El Refugio: Tijuana Mission Trip, July 2025

~ johnbrandall

The drive to the site yesterday was memorable. Through El Niño and Ojo de Agua, where we saw two houses we built, one last year and one the year before that. Bustling, this city. The Ojo de Agua road heads south and eventually makes an intersection with Highway 2. Busy intersection. There is a traffic light but the light seemed only to heighten the chaos. I was making a right on a green. A semi coming through from across the freeway must have had a green yield for its left-hand turn but this truck was bound and determined to make its left, oncoming traffic be darned. It was a free-for-all. We headed west/southwest on the highway for perhaps ten miles before preparing to take a left against/across the traffic coming the other way on what, at that spot, was a three-lane highway, with some cars traveling at about 50 mph. As is custom in Tijuana, some of the cars coming the opposite way see that traffic needs to turn and they stop so the turning traffic can get across the road. Two out of three oncoming lanes had vehicles pausing to let me turn, but one lane was still thrumming through at full speed. So the cars that wait out of courtesy get a hat tip from me but unless all of the traffic is going to wait, the partial courtesy is pointless. I waited a bit until I knew I could make it across regardless of whether oncoming traffic was going to stop or not. I floored it across the three lanes only to have to stop pretty quickly because there were all kinds of semis and other trucks stacked up at the mouth of the road we were turning onto, the surface of which was dirt and rough. There are basically no rules for driving in Tijuana except one: don't screw up. Luckily, I was not the only person uncomfortable with the idea of making this turn again, which we didn't. Our Amor rep Davíd took us to the site by way of another route the rest of the week—a route which was longer but also new, to me, and quite picturesque in the way Tijuana can be, reminiscent of an old dusty town in Italy I might visit some day next decade.

The troubling left hand turn behind us, we took the dirt road into the neighborhood of El Refugio. Which is absolutely booming. Huge factories, one after another. Maquiladoras: factories in Mexico run by a company from another country which will export the product out of Mexico to the U.S. and beyond. We started to climb the dirt road first around and then up and behind a huge long metal-roofed plant run by a company called Watkins Wellness, which an internet search indicated was in the business of making hot tubs.

Past the hot tub factory and climbing through a network of dirt roads cut into a towering hillside replete with pockets of construction, it was like the early days terraforming the surface of Mars. Climbing, turning, twisting, dry dirt roads that were actually pretty smooth, scrubland all around us, not quite the desert, not quite Sonoran. We kicked up dust, the van wearing it like a sheen. But as we got up higher into the hillside the view turned panoramic, looking west, north, east, the city of Tijuana one big factory chugging along in the dusty sunlight. City to the north below us, a quarry underneath our feet. Earth moving machines, Caterpillars, bulldozers, backhoes, jackhammers, hulking water trucks. Houses being built all around us, not densely but here and there as far as you could see. Terraces, steps, plumes of dust, roads being dug out of the hills. Not mining in space but mining for space. The city must grow, it will go where it will, into the hills, carve out a new neighborhood. Groundbreaking, small crews at work on some of the nascent buildings, others project on hold without anyone around, abandoned, for now. Some of the houses you'd be happy to live in in America, others more basic, others only half-done with cinder block walls. No cookie-cutter houses here, not an America-style development but much more diverse, each lot according to its own budget, its own schedule...


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Notes from the Shrine: January & February

~ johnbrandall

2.28.25

Last day of February and a beauty. Warm and windy, blend me some of that balm.

He's taking a shower. Or getting a bath. Per Karin. She saw me coming and intercepted. Not just to tell me about the shower but to tell me that, "He's more confused than usual today." She wanted to let me know so I wasn't blindsided.

Many of the days he's been here he's been confused so this should be interesting. Not a surprise to hear, per a text from my mom, and another a couple of days before that.

I haven't seen him in six days. I went to Farm this week. Two nights and a whole lot of bliss. Last time I saw him I wrote nothing. This writing, I fear, has gotten redundant.

I hear him moaning...

Farm, 2.24.25

They wheel him in.

"They got me, John," he tells me in a high-pitched voice. "They're gonna put me down. I been up too much."

"You know where you are?" I ask him.

"Dammert."

"You lookin out the window," I ask him.

He nods.

"Birds," he says. Rubbing his index fingers together, hands clasped, lying in bed now. Karin and another nurse laid him down, with the Hoyer. I could see his red and purple bottom. The other nurse put some cream on him. I'm not sure what her name is. She's not new but newer. Hell of a nurse. Dresses nice sometimes. My dad seems content but he is looking past me, out into the beyond.

"Anything new?" I ask him. "Anything going on?"

But he doesn't answer; just taps his fingers together. Is it Morse Code? Tap tap tap, tap tap dash.

"You hungry?"

No answer. Then he says I already asked him that, which maybe I did.

Now I hear the hairdresser reaming out the nurse for giving someone a shower. The hairdresser is upset because she just did this lady's hair and her family is coming to see her. Cringe. Bless these nurses. They work on behalf of God. Who could ever fault them for keeping the residents clean? Who cares about what their hair looks like.

I turn on the TV. My dad says something about me watching the stock market channel but they don't have it here. A shame. I find PBS Create, for a cooking show, which is what I watched here one recent Saturday for three hours, my dad in bed the whole time. It's peaceful with the sound off. A beeping somewhere in the background on this hall, not insistent, a slow pulse.

I had him up in the solarium 2.14.25, the only time we've ever been up there.

I know he wants me to stop asking questions but I don't know how else to talk to him, and this is all of him I have left. I ask him if he remembers his career, what he used to do.

"I used to, I used to...." he says.

I ask him if he remembers using his phone. He used to use it a lot. He doesn't remember doing that. Printing articles, I tell him, sending them out to people through the postal service, sending out lots of emails. He claims he never really sent out much.

He watches the cooking show intently, left index finger to his lips, rubbing slowly back and forth.

"You know how long you been here, in Dammert?"

"A couple weeks, " I think.

Which might be correct, if dating back only to his trip to the hospital on February 2nd, Groundhog Day, my sister's birthday, a day I was headed to Farm when my mom texted to say he was in the hospital with an illness.

I ask him if he's been having any dreams or premonitions. It's not the first time I've asked him about dreams. I've been having some strange ones. Strong and vivid. Odd. One last night that didn't feel like mine. About a kid worried about his gambling debt. I thought about it and told this kid that he might not have to pay the debt because he was a minor and never should have been allowed to place the bet anyway. Unclean hands on the other side, laches; other party estopped from collecting. I don't know who this kid was. And, no, I don't think he was me. B mentioned crazy dreams the same morning I woke up after some doozies Monday night at Farm. After feeling like it had been a while since I remembered any dreams at all. Stopped writing them down. This is as close as I'll get.

Footprints of a dream

The TV transfixes him. I don't know what else to do. I'll go out and get my salad out of the car whenever his food arrives. Could be half an hour, easy.

I listed to voices from the hall. Evelyn's daughter. Or granddaughter, who knows. I only had one interaction with Evelyn. Her chair was at a chokepoint in the hall. I wanted to move her. Asked nicely then just tried to wheel her a few feet but she put her foot down, literally.

"No," she said, "I don't think so. I'll stay right here."

Another time she didn't want CNAs to take her out of the lunch room. I look back and my dad has fallen asleep, his left index finger still trying to stay awake, to stay up, still pointing.

Evelyn played basketball in college. My dad snaps back, left hand back up to his face. It's her granddaughter that's visiting her, pretty sure. How am I the age of so many grand-kids here?

Earlier I asked him how he felt, overall.

"I feel good," he said.

It might be Evelyn who'd had her hair done—yesterday!—and then got the shower today. A whole $28 down the drain. The shower my dad got seemed to have revived him, definitely worth $28 to me.

Evelyn still has some lucidity. She still talks. I mean, I'd take pure gibberish from my dad. I'd take nonsense, non sequitur, monolog. Anything not hateful, anything not ugly. He said something to the nurses when they wheeled him in after his shower but I couldn't hear it.


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