Is that the problem? Trying not too hard but too much? I could have been at home all day today. Could have read, gotten into my notebooks. Instead? I loaded up the car.
Tennis racquet (for tomorrow with my brother), old Eddie Bauer duffel with clothes for staying overnight, backpack with laptop, Dad’s iPad. A notebook, a couple other books, if I were to try to work at Rockingham later—it’s not as easy as it used to be. My Shrine bag and fanny pack, the Rtic cooler with lettuce and other salad ingredients, two avocados, a dozen shrimp for Dad to eat. After driving over from Missouri, I made fresh cocktail sauce in the Rockingham kitchen after I tersely asked my Covid-stricken mom to let me do what I needed to do in response to her telling me, “I’m worried about you.”
I also had cucumbers, an apple (for Hugo the dog), ice packs, and the last of the chicken salad—the last of what I had at home, anyway. Mom still had some of what I brought her on Wednesday in the fridge. As I write, at the Shrine, Dad is eating the peach I brought him on Wednesday. It is now Friday.
My unpacking continued. There was my joint-rolling bag, Hugo himself, and what I call The Belleville Box, replete with this and that and topped off with Dad’s clean clothes bag (which I had left in the car Wednesday), kibble, alcohol for the Rockingham bar (a handle of Maker’s Mark, a liter of tequila minus a few ounces I drank yesterday), gloves, a dishtowel, paper towels, the house key, a garage clicker, a bag of cookies I got from the Best Western in San Diego (for being a loyal Best Western Rewards member), some Sedge Hammer herbicide to spray the sedge grass that grows among the “rip-rap” along the lake, Hugo’s meds, a box of pasta, one can each of pumpkin and soft dog food in case I needed to make more food for Hugo, which while driving over I realized I did need to do because I forgot to put the container of his already-mixed food in the cooler before I left.
Hugo was at my feet every time I was turning around, unloading everything I brought, trying to figure out what I was going to do for lunch. Did I have anything for lunch, she asked, and I said yes, I did have something, but I wasn’t sure what. One of the avocados? Some of the pineapple she had in the fridge? I tried a few pieces, but no, it was going. Some of the rest of the chicken salad I had brought on Wednesday? No, she was going to clean up all of what remained for her lunch. By default that left the baguette I brought, and the cukes from our garden. I’m slicing the bread when she tells me she’s worried about me.
And I’m thinking, “What!? Did she just say that to me?” Yes, I was pressing to get ready to go back to the Covid Ward also known as Dammert aka the Skilled Care wing of the retirement community known as Benedictine at The Shrine in Belleville, Illinois, USA. Going to the Shrine to keep my dad company as he worked his way back from the literal brink of death a week prior, sick with Covid and pneumonia, Covid which my mother also then contracted. My wife was in California, I had no lunch, and always-hungry Hugo was eager at my feet while my recovering mother sat at the kitchen table and gawked at my discombobulation. The harder I try, the worse the result. I was just out of town but now I needed to get away from all of this again. Six days in San Diego/Tijuana was a great release, a relief, a reset—but it wasn’t enough. As soon as I got back, Covid moved in and occupied a field already rife with complication.
I spoke with the two CNAs assigned to B hall today, Rachel and LaDosha. These women represent two of the many pillars of my dad’s care regimen lo this last half a year. He’s doing better, they say. But they have been using the “Hoyer” on him. The Hoyer is what, when it was used on his roommate Bob S, I called “The Crane.” A hoisting device, a lift. I can’t quite tell how it works, or what it runs on. A slim battery. To lift my dad’s ~230 lbs? As I write my hands are sweating in these plastic gloves, and there is condensation on the near side of my glasses, a masked given.
LaDosha got him out of bed on Saturday, when they realized he had Covid. He was about to do a header, she said. Got him up like she normally would, for a transfer to his wheel chair but he couldn’t stand up, he was falling forward. LaDosha, of Marissa, is not a small woman. She used all her weight to push him back into bed. He hasn’t been able to stand since. Just about a full week now.
He’s on Pavlovid, the antiviral. Rachel says he’s past the worst of the Covid. It’s the pneumonia that’s going to take longer, and the more you’re in bed the worse it’ll be, so the push is to get him up every day. Rachel and LaDosha are both OGs, here from the beginning. I thank them and sing here my praise.
My dad ate all but three of the shrimp. There’s some cocktail sauce left. I’ll finish it up when he gets his lunch.
The outbreak has worsened.
“Is it more than six?” I asked LaDosha.
“Double that and add a few more,” she said.
I noticed when I came in: the Bird Room dark; the doors to each hall shut. The residents sequestered to their respective halls: A, B, or C. They will not be going to the lunch rooms; they will eat at the tables in their halls. Damn. I’ll be limited to who I might see coming or going.
The shutdown will last for two weeks at least. That’s going to be hard. I miss Bob Lanaghan already. My dad moved from his room on A hall to this private/solo room on B hall that used to be Judith Tomlinson’s. It’s a nice big room. I like the privacy but I’d be getting to hear a lot of whatever Bob might be saying if Dad were still on A Hall. You can’t have it all.
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.
Pasta bake. That’s what they call it. I also brought my mom some pizza on Wednesday. She said how good it was. Deep dish from Jet’s. Before she left, Brook had gone to get the pizza, and the chicken salad, credit to her. I have brought my mom the food; I visited her mid-week; I’m the only one who’s seen my dad this week (four times), and she is somehow worried about me? I am flabbergasted. I don’t have a job but this is work and I am feeling the stress. I got up at 4:30 and went for a long run. I am doing what I have set out to do. What is it that I am supposed to be doing differently? I don’t get it. Should I take myself to the remove of another city like my sister? Should I get a “real job” to make money I don’t need? This is exactly what I am supposed to be doing. Why try to knock me off this track?
He is drinking water from the big-gulp plastic jug each resident has. With a straw. He tends not to drink much water. Never much at a time, not that I see. He used to drink a full glass with every meal. With his worthless pills.
A guest comes into B Hall. Someone’s daughter. Tanned and masked. I don’t know her. I can’t see where she’s sitting. I am gathering most of this by voice. She’s talking to Loretta. Loretta seemed not to know her. Someone silent is her mother. I’ll figure it out. She does sound like Ann Nester, through the mask.
Helen is also on this hall. Two of the three Helens, in fact. The one I’m talking about is one of the first residents I remember interacting with here, back in February. She was at the back of the main lunch room moaning. Help me, help me, she plead. Something was wrong with her hand. It was riddled with arthritis. I told her there was nothing I could do.
Carol is the guest’s name, and there’s a reason she sounds like Ann—because she is another one of Phyllis Nester’s daughters. Rachel was happy to see Carol walk in; to be with her mother and keep her alert for lunch. Phyllis is in one of the lounge chairs, aka hospice. Years ago my brother and I took tennis lessons from Phyllis’s son, Greg. He is here on a regular basis. In slides and short socks, he gets her outside, pushes that lounge chair out the Dammert entrance and down the gravelly access road.
Helen is now moaning again about her hand. Same lament as six months ago. Loretta now seems to know Carol. Sounds like Phyllis is eating, which is always good. Eating too much will kill you but eating a little will keep you alive.
It’s one o’clock. Time for me to go eat something. Try that sandwich….
He was slumped over in his chair when I came back in after a trip to my car. As I came into B Hall Loretta was referring to her napkin as being “raunchy.”
“Your mom and me have been friends for a long time,” she was telling Carol. She then offered her nail polish to Carol, who politely declined while at the same time telling Loretta how much she liked her nails.
It’s warm out there. Plenty of clouds in the sky. Cumulus humilis. Less humid than it was earlier, much less.
I ate the three shrimp my dad didn’t. Then the last of the buffalo chicken salad, with a few crackers. I ate most of the cucumber sandwich but it wasn’t very good. Boring.
I wanted to floss but I couldn’t find floss in the Subaru. I keep some in the console, always. Except for today. I don’t know where it went. I have a container of floss in my fanny pack, and I have used it several times sitting outside with my dad after lunch but I’m not going to floss in here now because I’m supposed to keep my mask on. There must be some floss somewhere in the Subaru. I might have dropped it in the Belleville Box and forgotten to take it out. I did use one of the floss picks I had in the car. It’s better than nothing.
Carol leaves. Loretta was harkening back. SLU High, brothers, or a young man from each of the two families. Someone named AJ. Someone who she says people didn’t always like because he could be kind of gruff, maybe her husband. Carol’s dad being friends with both, with everyone.
My dad starts to wheel himself a little ways. I ask him where he’s going. I know he knows I know. I ask him if he can put himself on. He nods. I doubt he can. And I can’t help him. I wouldn’t try right now even if the staff were OK with me trying to, which they’re not. He needs the Hoyer. I tell him he’s got to wait and he damns me with a shake of the head, closed eyes, his face dropping down.
I think they are coming around to put him on, eventually. I hear Rachel say she has three yet to get on the potty and they are all going to need the Lift. I hope he can sleep it away.
“Loretta Roberts,” I hear Loretta telling someone. She has made a call and ordered a coffee with Sweet & Low. Has she called the kitchen? “Do you see my order history?” she asks. “What is the type of coffee I last ordered?”
She is spacing, talking to an imaginary person about getting that coffee. The nurses tell her there is no coffee until dinner.
“Hello?” she is back on the phone. “Do you have an order for Loretta Keeley?” She spells it out. “Yes or no?”
There is no phone to her ear. She is riffing. She wants one cup of really good coffee with Sweet & Low in it. And she wants to have it in Palatine.
“Alright? Where can I pick it up? And how much is it? Thank you.”
My dad has nodded off. Not entirely. He is pill-rolling a wad of tissue. Loretta is still seeking that java.
“Where else,” she wonders aloud, “could Loretta Keeley pick up a cup of coffee?”
Postscript, 10.28.2025.
RIP Loretta Keeley Roberts, obituary can be found here.
RIP Phyllis Nester, obituary can be found here.
RIP Hugo, who died two months ago. I have not written his obituary—yet.
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