9.20.2024
I ran around this place this morning. Went back to Rockingham, showered.
My dad had a shower of his own this morning. He was in bed when I arrived at Dammert. I sat in his new recliner awhile. They got him up—that guy whose name is Rudy or Glen and another CNA, I don’t know her name. She’s a taller woman. They hoyered him out of bed and into his chair. It can be easier for two people. Glen/Rudy had a way of positioning the chair perpendicular to the lift. It made sense. But he wanted to tilt the chair back and it wasn’t tilting. After that, I took my dad out into the courtyard where he crushed some shrimp cocktail.
“Is that your dad?” asked one of the custodians while I was wheeling my dad down the corridor past main dining.
I nodded.
“You look just like him,” she said. “Now I can see how handsome he must have been when he was younger.”
I thanked her. It’s a very nice thing to say.
We have finished lunch in the main dining room. I had the burger and fries. Pretty good. I don’t think we’ve eaten in the main dining hall since…before I went to Tijuana? Mid-July? I don’t think I made it in there between getting back from Tijuana and the Covid restrictions taking hold. More than two months!
Now that Bob is no longer at the lunch table—he was moved to the smaller, assisted-eating Dammert dining room—I will probably try to eat in the main, community-wide dining room with dad as much as possible.
We’re outside again, this time at the St. Francis entrance. Egads, it’s warm. The air is mostly still. There is only the slightest breeze.
There is something of a dump here at Shrine. Down a hill. I’ve had a sense of it before. One of the maintenance guys, maybe the maintenance boss, the guy who drives the tractor, just dropped some sort of metal tub or cylinder over there. Grease? A degreaser? Who knows. He had it in the payload of the tractor as he slowly wheeled his way over there. When he drove away the metal tub was nowhere in sight, i.e. down the hill.
My dad is extremely quiet. Even when he is awake he says nothing. Never asks a question. He did agree with my assessment that it was warm out here. I could go for a nap myself. I’m trying to make it another half an hour here, then I’ll go back to the house.
This is the way it always was. Always has been. I was always here, with Dad. Or I always was going to be here. Comes along now some son picking up his mom at St. Francis. She needs a hand. He doesn’t have the kindest manner but at least he is here.
9.30.2024
After four days away, I am back at The Shrine with Dad. September 30, end of a month.
We’re out on Porcupine Hill, the weather is pleasant, late morning. Chickadees flit around. Cumulus humilis clouds drift across the sky. Sounds trickle uphill from the palette factory down below, unseen.
Father Maes is out here.
“I guess I’ll watch the leaves fall, too,” he says to us as he walkers out. He was in Dammert for some rehab earlier this year. I remember seeing him sit and read under the light of a skylight. Now he’s back in his right place in St. Francis Center. He is a peaceful soul. He’s awaiting a delivery, he says.
My brother was here yesterday but my dad does not remember it. There is some solace knowing he probably doesn’t miss me when I’m gone. Was I just here or have I not been here in two weeks? It doesn’t seem to matter to him. The last time I was here—Wednesday—he asked me to take him back inside after we had been sitting here outside for a mere 45 minutes.
“That’s about enough for me,” he said.
In all these Shrine/Dammert visits, he’s never asked to go back inside, no matter how long we’ve been outside, no matter the weather. He never complained about or commented upon the heat and humidity out here at any time this summer. The only time he ever wanted to go inside was so he could go to the bathroom, and it was always implied that he would be ready to come back outside once a CNA could put him on and he could do his business.
Here comes the delivery Father Maes said he was waiting for. It’s another, younger priest carrying a rosary pouch.
“Is that my Mach 34?” asks Father Maes, standing up against his walker.
“There is no Mach 34,” says the younger Father. “How about a Mach 3? Sit down, we’ll visit a minute.”
I am not trying to eavesdrop but my dad and I aren’t conversing so what else is there to do? Father Maes and the younger clergyman are talking about pawpaw, the tree fruit. They are native to Missouri; supposed to taste like a custardy banana. I’ve never had one before. I’ve looked for them. Now they’re saying something about somebody making a pawpaw pie.
I’ve asked my dad several questions. He offers a brief answer but then he sandbags. “XYZ, etc, but what do I know?”
A breeze, my dad dozing. Because I don’t have a tractor anymore. This pen is on the skids. At some point, darn darn this pen. The old darned man, this old darned pen. Pen fail. I like it when it writes well but it’s not working. I cannot write through when there is no—
New pen. Butterflies and baseball and breeze. Leaves of the river birch holding onto green here at the care facility. Asphalt crew out patching potholes, filling holes in the road with the rock-and-oil equivalent of duct tape. Does my dad hate his life? I ask him how he is doing. He says the real answer inwardly to himself, then tells me he’s doing OK.
I shared with him the news of Kris Kristofferson passing away, news that managed to get through to him, stung him. I told him that a famous country music singer had passed away. I wanted him to come up with the name. I said, “This guy was a country singer, an actor, and more than anything this guy was known as a songwriter.” And he got it.
It occurs to me that my poems need to be fuller. Or I have confused length with volume, or mass. Or density. Low plane overhead. Mouse Lady—Ellie—is sitting a few feet away. Hasn’t said a word. She was there, then she wasn’t. Her husband passed away. When? Before the last Tucson trip. She gets up, goes away again. Is she lonely? Does she think we’re in her spot? Does she remember me? How did I forget her?
Purling sound from this outdoor fountain. Blue Jay searching, looking for an echo. Half an hour until lunch. My father’s head bowed in nap. His right eye not quite rid of the pink. A therapist somewhere is looking for him, wanting to do the bends. Engine blast with fuel and air. The breeze finds a new channel.
If my dad were no longer on this planet, what would I be doing? Would I be outside, where a chickadee’s calls compete with back-up beepers and other audible incantations of diesel? Patching, dumping, tamping, stomping, chugging, sifting, treading, clanging, churning, and wheeling while I’m wishing it were waning.
Don’t begrudge, don’t throw sludge. Learn how to love that back-up beeper.
No, never!
That is the only way out and you know it.
I’m still looking for another way.
I know you are.
But there is only one way and I know you know that.
Maybe you’re wrong.
You say that despite all of the evidence to the contrary, all your failed days?
Ice Cream Cake candy imparting kindly. It’s a notebook on a nice day kind of a breeze. A little extra inspiration, an alternative fuel. If I were not here I might be sending poems out. Or working on poems. Going through notebooks. Maybe.
A nuthatch makes its quarking sound. Nasaly. I’m in search of good news, of acceptance. I had at my peak for the year 31 outstanding submissions. If I can’t get at least one poem accepted out of that parcel, then forget it. I’ll be upset, hurt, embarrassed, discouraged, depressed, confused, reckless, searching, livid, defeated. I know my poems are not anything special. I wish I could write better poems. I work at it, though not exhaustively. Reading helps. I’ve gotten lazy about reading.
Tomorrow I’m going back to Farm to mow, weed-eat, prepare for Farm Party. And to read and write.
Mouse Lady returns, tries to slide through behind me, bumps my chair slightly. She sits in one of the chairs at the other end of this small patio. The breeze blows steady for twenty seconds.
New faces in the lunchroom. Genevieve turns 100 tomorrow. She’s still showing up, feeding herself. And asking for ice cream—real ice cream, not the sherbet they served today. You can’t get that past Gen. The main course was McRib. Dad wouldn’t eat all of it. I ate the rest. It was just OK. We were never a McRib household.
A woman-who-works-here’s mom is one of the new faces. Her mother must’ve been over in St. Francis before making the Dammert transition. I used to see them together at a lunch table in the main dining room. I recognized the woman as someone who worked here; she has an office near the front of the main building. But I didn’t realize that one of the people at lunch with her was her mom. Now I can see the resemblance.
All of the new faces are women. There is a Dolores. A Rosalie? Rosalie had gotten mad at someone this morning. Then she was crying today at lunch, feeling bad about getting mad but more than that she seemed to be cognizant of being in Dammert, too aware of what that means. And it has brought her down.
Jimmy Carter will be 100 tomorrow. Brad pointed out the upcoming birthdays for tomorrow, October 1. Jimmy and Genevieve. The new woman, Rosalie, maybe that is not her name at all, brightened up for a moment to say about Jimmy Carter that, “He did a lot of good for a lot of people.” No one who’s ever been President has lived to be 100.
My dad, by the way, is back in his room. Dirk wheeled him out of the lunch and I followed them to B Hall. There is someone here to look at my dad’s behind. Now I hear someone say my mother’s name. Is she here now?
Another one of the new faces was at the table with the Mayor’s Mom (Helen Dooley), Sister Elizabeth, and Sister Justina. This woman has a cute and funny voice and might be of Polish ancestry? The social worker Julia sat beside her to do an intake exam. At one point this new woman, the Polish woman, had to make a sentence including these three words: sock, glue, bed.
CNA Dirk now opens the door and comes out of my dad’s room. He tells me the boil is now half the size it used to be.
*Father Maes passed away in April 2025. You can find his obituary here.
*Sister Hedwig Neff aka “The Polish Woman” passed away in September 2025. You can find her obituary here.
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