Someone comes along to measure my dad for compression stockings. His feet are so swollen. X-X-L.
We’re on A Hall in Dammert. Early spring of 2024. Fellow resident Ron is talking about his old job, radiology. He’s having a better day, maybe his best since the meds got switched, since he got off track. It’s a surprise to see him outside of his room, to see him anywhere but in that recliner.
Bob comes out of his room, across the hall from my dad’s. He’s looking for his wife.
“Have you seen her? Has she come down yet? She’s up on the fourth floor, in the tower. She’ll be down. Mrs. Lanaghan.”
At first I thought he was crazy but later on I would learn that his wife does live on the fourth floor, of what’s called The Tower. It’s part of the independent living wing of this retirement community at The Shrine in Belleville, IL.
“My friend Bob lost his statistics,” my dad tells me.
“His what?”
“His statistics. He didn’t have them for days. They found them in somebody else’s room. He couldn’t see for days.”
“Oh, his glasses,” I say. His spectacles.
We go to lunch. Bob’s at the lunch table.
“I look around at these two guys,” he says, “And I wonder, ‘Are they ever gonna be included in something as big as this?'”
The food arrives and Bob looks my way.
“I don’t really want this,” he says, and starts laughing.
I take this opportunity to ask him about his tattoo. Was it from his military days? He doesn’t answer the question. It’s the only time he’s ever seemed to evade a question, or appearing to do so. He starts talking about his son fixing up houses. “They were small hands but many,” he says. Then, “That’s one thing I like about this place. It’s clean.”
I listen to lunch room sounds. One of the CNAs is encouraging one of three Helens (in this case, the mayor’s mother) to eat her food. Helen replies in her soft-spoken manner, “I’d better not. I don’t want to throw up here. Everyone will look at me.” The only thing she eats is the ice cream.
Then, a commotion from out in the hall, a racket.
“What the…?!” Bob exclaims. “It sounded like about two or three horses or something.” Then he sneezes. “Oooh, that one came out fast,” he says.
Bob ate the garlic bread, a little bit of pasta, and the ice cream. “Ice cream’s ice cream,” he says. “But this is pretty good.”
I went over to the main dining room and got a plate of my own. Pizza spaghetti they call it. I ate everything on the plate save one pepperoni. My dad ate everything except one slice of zucchini. It’s the Patsy Cline CD playing today. Bob knows these lyrics, some of them. He sings along. When the last song on the CD stops playing he says, “So there.”
Genevieve, the 98-year-old woman hunched over in her usual windbreaker outfit makes her way out by taking tiny steps with her dangling wheelchair feet, quiet as a cloud except when she catches one of the CNAs on her way out and asks for a Honey Nut Cheerios to go.
“We enjoyed lunch with you, Bob,” my dad tells his lunch mate.
“When was that?” asks Bob.
“Today,” says dad.
“Oh, ha. Ha ha. Thank you, thank you very much,” says Bob.
But we don’t get going just yet. It’s quiet now in the lunch room. The sound of wind chimes comes from outside, past the glass. My dad is starting to doze off. Bob is picking at his teeth, wiping clean the glasses he lost for a few days last week.
“I think I’m gonna go downstairs,” Bob says. “I don’t know if I’ve been down there. I thought I had. I’ll probably make a new, or I don’t know. As far as I knew, we hadn’t used that, or we wished it away. I’m goin’ downstairs. Anybody left? Hello, hello. I’m goin’ down.”
I encounter Lillian in the hallway for the first time.
“Rob?”
“John.”
“What?”
“John.”
“Pat?”
“No. My name?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“John.”
“John. OK. I’m Lillian. Have you heard of me?”
“No.”
“Well, you will be,” she says. “They’re gonna try to get you wrapped up in another one of their schemes.”
“OK….”
“Well, but anyway, you look great!”
“OK, thanks, you too,” I say.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Yeah. See you next time, Lillian.”
Sitting in the activity room aka the tv room aka The Bird Room. It’s a bingo day, led by Brad. My dad is playing, something he rarely did. Maybe this was the last time. Bob had a card in front of him, and he must have been playing because he had a small bag of popcorn, which he acquired as a result of winning a round.
“These are dry,” he says to anyone listening. “Very dry. I need a drink after this.” He chuckles. “Better get some water,” he says, then he offers the popcorn to the room.
“I was in Korea,” he starts saying to me. “We met this little old woman. She made us lunch. I wasn’t sure what it was going to taste like. She was happy to see us. I don’t have much to give you, I told her.”
His wife stopped by for a visit. Of course she wants to see her husband but it’s a double-edged sword.
“I don’t have much more time and then I gotta go,” she says.
“Where you gonna go?”
“Back to where I belong.”
Bob has lost some weight in recent months. Twenty pounds. That explains the double burger he gets on cheeseburger days, the extra grilled cheese. Losing weight, losing his sight. He wants to go with her but he can’t. His wife is here, then she’s gone. And he doesn’t understand. My phone lights up. Text from my wife. I can go back to her. I can go.
Two bingo wins for dad. Two small bags of chips. Now he’s ready in the bathroom. I got him in there, pantsed him. Drops falling to the floor. Bob has five kids, he’s a great-grandpa by now.
Seeing my dad stand up for the first time in two months, to watch him walk a little, the physical therapist with one hand on the thick canvas strap around his back the other hand toting a wheelchair behind her for when he tires.
Another therapist working with Jack, another of my dad’s fellow A Hall residents. Even seeing Jack walk feels good, a man about whom I know nothing except for the trademark hoarseness of his voice, every word a struggle, just like every step for dad is a workout. Jack’s wife also lives in an apartment over in the apartments.
I get up and go over to Ron who is looking lost sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of A hall.
“Where’s my room?” he asks me.
I point.
“Back there?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t remember anymore.”
I know he doesn’t remember but I don’t say anything. I just look back at him, look him in the eyes and nod.
“How did I get out here?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I haven’t been here that long.”
“And I was just sitting out here?”
“Yeah. They probably brought you out for lunch.”
The lunch tray was there on a table next to him.
“Oh, I don’t want it,” he says, and makes his way back to his room in the corner.
March 26, 2024. Dad refused to work with the physical therapist this morning. According to Stephanie, he said he had no energy and no inclination. She saw me wheeling him around and pulled me aside. She whispered the word of depression. His mood has dropped, there’s no doubt about it. Perhaps he will end up going on meds. Maybe they will help.
Ron is also having a bad morning, it appears, based on the way he is talking to the nurse’s assistant. She’s nice about it. As Ron’s door closes, Bob walkers out of his.
“Everybody was going,” he says, “too much noise, State Police.”
Bob took a header since the last time I was here. Wasn’t using his walker, went down right on his forehead. There’s a bloodstain showing through the bandage. It’s the shape of Australia, the color of dark red wine. He says it’s not the only bump he has on his nonagenarian head. He shares an anecdote about playing golf with his son. Then he tells me about losing his car. “The wife got that,” he says. When the sound of a country music song playing on one of the resident’s TVs, Bob starts air fiddling. He says he wishes he would have loved to learn how to play the fiddle for real.
I want to tell my dad that he and I can go outside for a little while after lunch but Bob can’t leave Dammert so I keep my mouth shut, I keep it shut and wait. Bob has a cough. “Where did that come from?” he asks when he starts coughing. “That was a dandy cough.”
It’s Easter. My dad tells me he needs to get to the toilet. I’m not supposed to be helping him do that but I never can say no so we are racing to the bathroom in his room just as someone dressed as the Easter Bunny tries to enter the room behind us. The walker PT was trying to get my dad to use is blocking our way as I’m trying to get him out of his wheelchair and into the bathroom. I’m gagging as I’m trying to get his pants and his diaper down, the oblivious Easter Bunny still hot on our tail, not seeming to grasp the gravity of the situation, wishing us a Happy Easter before clearing out of the room.
The next time I come back I find my dad in his wheelchair sitting on A Hall outside of his room.
He looks at me, looks over toward his room, and tells me, “I just took a dump in there.”
Bob comes out of his room and says, “The thing about this room is there’s so much light I can’t even see what’s right in front of me.”
Maybe it’s the skylights letting in the sun. The blood spot on the bandage has grown. Now it’s the size and shape of Russia, full of prisoners, clean of dissidents reaching for what’s not on the table.
We make our way to lunch, which is always slower on a Saturday. One of the Sisters who lives in St. Francis, aka assisted living stops and puts her hand on my arm.
“You’ve been faithful in coming here,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Is that your dad?”
“Yes.”
“Keep up the good work.”
Tears, tears.
Lunch is Chicken Florentine, spinach, a roll, pudding with cherries, and some kind of soup.
“I can’t hardly see,” says Bob.
Music from the CD player. When your luck is back to zero, get your chin up off the floor….
“May I have some butter and jelly?” another resident asks a CNA. She can do the butter but there ain’t no jelly at lunchtime.
The Sister told me, “I’m a Sister. My sister was a Sister. She was here. She was in very bad health, confined to a bed. She was blind. She had a muscle disease all her life but it didn’t get bad until the end. She bled to death. You want them to stay but it can be a relief when they’re gone.” Tears, tears.
The bandage is no longer sticking on one side but Bob doesn’t let it bother him. He’s tucking in to lunch, hunched over, seeing his food with his mouth.
“He’s gone,” he says, “Doc. He’s up in a tree, I’ll betcha.”
Dad belts out a hefty sneeze, his trademark. The music stops. Bob exclaims, “OK!” Then he chuckles and licks his fingers.
My dad is looking at me.
“Spinach?” I say.
“It’s OK,” he says. “You want it?”
“Not really.”
A bit of spinach is on the second knuckle of his left hand, remnant of the hearty sneeze. Memories, memories, memories of you…
“Well, he’s probably up a tree someplace,” says Bob.
“Who’s that?”
“Doc. He likes to do that.”
Lunch room sounds. Kenny, Jack, and Brian. Father Somebody. The former mayor of Granite City. Then he had a stroke two months later. “Hey, Kenny, are you sleeping over there?” The Shrine, yeah. Everybody wants to go to The Shrine. Someone says, “I’m staying late tonight because there’s church at seven.”
Jack and his straining voice. I’ve seen him play the piano with one hand but every word is a strain and a struggle. OK, please, would you please take Jack—
The next time I get there my dad’s slumped in his wheelchair sitting on A Hall, outside his room. His eyes are red and watery, looking like he hasn’t slept much. I just touch his shoulder and he lets out a contented grunt.
Bob comes walking out of his room.
“Was somebody out here talking about Rock Island?” he asks.
“I don’t know, Bob,” I say.
“I was born in Rock Island,” he says.
He does not have his walker. Nor does he have his glasses on.
“Where’s your walker, Bob?” I say.
“Well….”
“I went to high school with someone from Rock Island,” I say.
“Yeah? My dad was the, he had a Sears & Roebuck there.”
“Your dad did?”
“Yes.”
I tell Bob I also know some people from Moline. The Quad Cities, I say. He goes, Oh, yeah, Davenport….
We go to lunch. Bob is across the table, talking about going across the street while also singing along to the songs of Henry Mancini. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” comes on, and Bob is a fan. His wife comes into the lunchroom. “Hey, babe,” he says to her. Judith is sitting at the first table, with her signature headphones on. Brad is doing drink service. Bob’s wife leaves. He picks up an egg roll from his plate.
“This one hasn’t been touched,” he says, holding it out to me. “If you want it, it’s yours.”
In the back of the lunch room another Helen is struggling with her hand. She’s not always in the main Dammert dining room. She’s often in the other Dammert dining room, assisted eating. “Help me, help me,” she softly coos her plea. Bob is tapping his hands on the table.
“Doc, up in the tree, about thirty feet,” he says.
“He climbs it?” I ask.
“I don’t know how he gets up there,” he says, before complaining about it getting too dark in the lunchroom and making his way out. Except he turns the wrong way out of the lunch room and sets off an alarm.
CNA Rachel intercepts him. “Turn around Bob,” she says, “you’re going the wrong way.”
“I am?” he says. “I’ll be darned.”
She guides him back down the hall but he decides he wants another cup of coffee so he comes right back into the lunchroom a minute later.
“Can I get a cup of coffee?”
“Bob, lunch is over.”
“How about a cup of coffee?”
“There is no more coffee, Bob. We’re out. You drank it all.”
“Shit,” he says, “you can come up with a better one than that.”
Laughs, laughs.
It’s a quarter til noon and I’m outside with my dad. The skin on his hands is suddenly crepey, like a date missing some of its filling. I have asked him twice if he needs to go back to his room before lunch. He doesn’t answer. Is he still breathing? Is this is how it’s going to end? He nods off when I’ve got him outside? He nods off and never comes back? I wheel him back into Dammert and tell the nurses, “He’s dead.” The leg was blanket, the sheet was ankle.
I get up from my seat and ask him a third time. He stirs. He doesn’t need to go back to his room. A small plane flies overhead. It’s from the small airport over in Cahokia/Sauget. It used to be called Parks.
“You remember Parks?” I ask him.
“Yeah.”
“You remember the restaurant there?”
“Yeah! I sure do. That was a good time.”
That was as emphatic as he had been all day, maybe in a few visits. I ask if he remembers the name of the restaurant but he has already dozed off again. The restaurant was called Oliver’s. I never even went but he and my mom would go there to eat. My dad liked to watch the planes land. A couple of years ago, long before Dammert, back when he could still get out a little, my dad was asking us to take him to Oliver’s. We looked it up but it was too late. The place had already been closed for a year or two.
Bob was talking to no one in particular when we got to lunch.
“That spot out in the corner of the driveway, with your feet,” he said. “Well, I gotta go to the store, the one downstairs. I don’t want to say goodbye but it might be one or two of us disappear.”
Jack was trying to get out by way of the back dining room door, which opens into the main dining hall, where his wife Peggy was no doubt having lunch.
“But my wife,” Jack insisted hoarsely. “My wife!”
Someone else was coughing, coughing. Bob walkered back out of the lunchroom, turned right, and set off the alarm. Turn around Bob, yelled one of the CNAs, and he did.
Meanwhile, Jack was still trying to get out the back to see his wife, throwing a proper fit.
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