Notes from the Shrine, 9.18.2024: One for Jack

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.

My dad has some sort of wound on his bottom. A boil, perhaps. He says the word, then forgets it.

“What’s it called?” he asks. “What do I have? I got so many problems I can’t even remember them all.”

A doctor is coming at 11:30 to look at it. That’s why he’s back in bed. It’s 11:02. Otherwise I’d have him outside. I’m sitting in a new chair my mom bought for him. A lift chair, a recliner. He says he hasn’t used it. I’m not sure what the deal is.

Therapist Debbie has arrived to do some physical therapy work with Joyce. Debbie is the therapist who was working with my dad the day when he said Paul Schuler didn’t belong here. Dad was all worked up, accusing Schuler of something stretching back to the days when he was mayor of Granite City. I asked my sister to look into it. She didn’t find anything. I was writing down everything my dad was saying but I couldn’t make any sense of it. Some kind of political gripe, it appears. My dad could be like that. Whatever happened to Schuler, as a resident of Dammert? I saw him over in assisted living, at St. Francis, after he moved out of Dammert. But come to think of it, I haven’t seen him in months. He moved somewhere else or moved on altogether.*

Jack had, on the whole, been quieter. Of course, Jack was sequestered on A hall during the weeks-long Covid lockdown that began in August. My dad was locked down first in his room and then was restricted to B hall, to which he had moved from A Hall at the end of July. Maybe Jack was hollering on A hall during the lockdown and I just didn’t hear it. I do now seem to recall hearing that Jack was struggling big-time with the Covid restrictions because it meant he could not see his wife. I remember him hoarsely screaming one time, demanding to use the phone so he could call Margaret because he needed to tell her he loved her. Nurse Karin kindly said how sweet that was but he was still not allowed to use the phone; Margaret would come by later on to see him.

Dad says he doesn’t remember eating in the main dining hall with me last week. I ask him if he wants to join me in there for lunch on Friday and he says yes, so I’ll go get that reservation made.

The physical therapy is for the residents’ benefit but many of them don’t want to do it. The last person I remember really getting into the PT, really engaging the process was Jack. Maybe that’s why, maybe that’s how he lived to be 94.

Jack was never in the Hoyer. If you can’t avoid the nursing home, you still want to avoid the Hoyer. Stephanie continues to work with Joyce out in the hall. As encouragement, Stephanie says to Joyce, “You have to work really hard so they don’t have to use the Hoyer.” The crane, the lift, the cradle, the harness, the contraption.

My dad is awake but his eyes are closed. He has his right index finger to his lips, parallel. The Helen who lives with Phyllis Nester is having a bad morning. Was nauseous and has now been vomiting.

CNA Dirk came in. Lunch time is approaching. He’s going to get my dad up and ready for lunch. Dirk is nice.

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No Bob Lanaghan at lunch. Earlier, I walked down A hall just to confirm that Bob is still around. After Covid August you can’t be too sure. He wasn’t in his bed but maybe he was kicked back in one of his two recliners.

Father Volk, by the way, is still around. An OG who along with Bob L was one of my dad’d first two lunch mates, Father Norm Volk now takes his meals in the assisted eating dining room, a smaller dining room in Dammert where residents receive some kind of help to eat. Maybe they’ve moved Bob L in there too now, on account of his being unable to see.

I was sitting here thinking about having the last half of my dad’s garlic bread until he hacked up some remnants of his Covid pneumonia. Whatever he hacked up he fished from his mouth and wiped on his plate not far from the bread. Looked like a small clam. I gagged. Now I’m trying not to look at it. And there’s no way I’m touching that bread. Dad gave me one of his beef ravioli a few minutes ago, and that will have to do.

Shaking hands, bad hands, forks that can’t do what a knife can. Bibs. Food to the floor, peas. Coughing. Hacking. 12:45. When the lunch room simmers down. Throat clearing, light chatter of silverware. Food ignored, passed on, cold. Dessert, mandarin oranges that no one seems to want. In chairs, or with walkers, they push away from the table. Slow accordion music, a soundtrack from. Can you take me back to my room? Dirk says he cannot. He is the only one in the lunchroom and he can’t leave when other people are still eating.

Folded napkin undrunk coffee teeth to pick laughter from somewhere down the hall. The music ends. The numbers are down. RIP Judith Tomlinson, Ken Bassler, Jack Wottowa. Where Jack was, that room, totally empty and no one else has yet joined Robert Smith in my dad’s old room. Robert Smith coughs on cue and I wheel my dad back.

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*Link to Jack Wottowa’s obituary, here.

*And, by the way, according to the last tidbit I could find online, former Dammert resident, former mayor of Granite City Paul Schuler is alive and well, having celebrated his 94th birthday earlier this year.