Lemonade Lost: Notes from The Shrine, 12.30.2024

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.

My dad at the potato and bacon soup, the tater tots, and the Jello. He did not eat the sloppy Joe, which I ate most of.

We did get outside earlier. It was getting breezy but it’s still mild, and muggy. For December 30th, anyway.

I wasn’t sure we were going to make it out. My dad was listless, slumped. We started down the hall to the St Francis exit but we had to turn back. He said he was in pain.

“I need to stand up,” he said.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” I said.

“It’s my butt,” he said.

I talked to his CNA, then I talked to Nurse Crystal. She said the sore he had was healed up. She asked him some questions, which he couldn’t or didn’t answer. We couldn’t really figure it out but something has him uncomfortable. Also, the right pedal on his wheelchair still won’t click into place, probably never will. Are there other pedals, I asked. The request was already in.

He was better by the time we finally did get outside. He did some of his observational.

“Look at the chairs,” he said. “The leaves. Oak leaves, I think.”

Yes, they were oak leaves piled on the ground. There was no one else out there.

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***Lester Plottner passed away today. Eventually he and my dad would be lunch mates again in the assisted-eating dining room. Lester almost always had something to say to me while he and my often silent father worked on their meals. He was 92.