Notes from The Shrine 1 

Early May 2024

My dad slowly wheeling himself away, his feet pulling, scraping along.

“Yeah, he walked him,” says a woman with glasses, another resident.  “We were down in our house.”

Mass is on the TV, in the common room of this nursing home.  Lunchmate Bob is singing along with the hymn, just the notes.

“Soft smell, the all cough coughs,” says the woman with glasses.  I do not remember her ever saying anything before.  But I do recognize her, she must eat in the assisted dining room.

“They were asking for the Christmas Day,” she says.  “I never heard that one before. Least they’ll give it to the other Christmas.  Have fun.  We had a little.”

She trails off.  I can’t follow the meaning of her words but hers is a musical nonsense language.  Lyrical and sporadic, like a strange bird.

“I throw ye in the class now!”

“Hmm?” asks Bob in reply, thinking maybe she is talking to him.

Lillian, another resident, rocks back and forth in her wheelchair.  She’s spoken to me a few times, thinks maybe I am one of hers.  A lunch will be served in the main Dammert dining room, Dammert being the name of this place, this wing of the retirement community, the last stop on the route, the end of the line.

Bob has gotten an early start on his lunch.  Someone has gotten him a bag of cookies.  Maybe his wife, who lives over in the apartments, independent.  

“I call on the on-derin,” says the woman with glasses.  

“Yeah, hmmm,” says Bob, “Mm-hmm.”

She holds her hands tight, clenched and clawed, thumb to index finger, pill-rolling.

“Hmm?” says Bob, “I can’t hear you.”

The Mayor’s mom is also a resident here.  Helen.  She fell recently, landed on her head.  She looks pretty beat up, a gash on her forehead, dark red, purple, dried blood.

“Thank you,” says Bob.  

Later, at lunch, he turns to me and holds up just the top half of a hamburger bun.  

“This is nothin but bread,” he says, and I can’t disagree.

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For most of this year, I have been visiting my dad at a nursing home near Belleville, IL. Dammert, the place he’s in, is the skilled care wing of a retirement community at Our Lady of the Snows Shrine. I have kept a journal during many of these visits. It is time for me to begin to type up these Shrine journals. They will not be posted in chronological order. I didn’t take many photos early on so some of the photos might be redundant.