We are in the Dammert assisted-eating dining room. Marilyn is here, and Bob, and Anna, and others. Marilyn has taken up something of a supervisory role among her fellow residents.
“What’s she doing?” she asks Bob, who is seated across from her today, not his usual spot.
“Who?” he says. Of course he can’t see anything.
“The woman at the table behind you,” says Marilyn, “with what looks like a skinny chicken with no fur.”
I am not sure what Marilyn is looking at. I could not see who she was seeing. Maybe it was Donna with the baby doll.
A CNA brings another resident in. Anna tries to get her attention.
“Will you come over here?” asks Anna. “You’re so biiiig.”
“You know what I want?” asks Bob, in his general way. “How about a, how about a….”
He trails off; never finishes the sentence. He takes a drink from an empty cup.
Sister Caroline is at the table with Anna. Sister Caroline’s mouth is always moving, testing the shape or the sounds of words she rarely says out loud. Anna warbles on in her fey way, wren-like: bubbly, chipper, persistent.
“Hey. She gave up all that stuff. I don’t know what,” says Bob.
At the table with me and my dad are Lillian and Jackie. OGs all around.
“And it’s not necessarily good,” says Lillian, “but it’t better than nothing.”
A CNA comes along to put Bob’s clothing protector on him.
“Doctor?” he says to the CNA. “Oh no. You’re not the doctor. You got your hands on me. Oh yeah. You put your hands on me. Talkin’ water.”
The CNA goes out to get another resident to bring in. Bob is still talking to them, to anyone.
“Need some water,” says Bob. “Water. Shit.”
It seems Marilyn found her way out of Dammert this morning. She wheeled herself all the way over to the main entrance. I saw a CNA wheeling her through the main dining room, from the direction of the main entrance. I thought maybe Marilyn had been getting her hair done. Now I’m starting to put it together.
Lillian is looking at me.
“You want me to read or do you want to read?” she asks. I don’t say anything.
“We’ll let it through, OK,” she continues. “Are you in any of the services?”
I shake my head.
“I’m in the military,” she says. “The ones after me, buying them up. I’m Lillian. Whisham. My husband’s in the Navy.”
“Hi, Lillian,” I say.
Anna is suddenly audible again from across the room.
“I’m having trouble with the,” she begins, “I have to have them. They have to go around here,” she says.
“Hello there,” says Bob. “Hello, hello, hello.”
“Hello hello hello to you, too,” says Marilyn, who is still pretty with it.
A CNA wheels Ron in. He appears to be fast asleep.
“Honey?” asks Bob.
“They may have more than one honey here,” says Marilyn, “you better decide which one you want.”
“I don’t have any,” replies Bob.
Sister Shiny comes in and starts dishing drinks. She asks Ron if he wants coffee. He says nothing. Diane appears.
“Bob, coffee?” asks Sister Shiny.
“Iced tea,” he asks for, surprisingly. “I don’t think we have any luck with that. Hey, do me a favor. What do you want?”
Sister Shiny pours him lemonade and moves on.
“You really weren’t supposed to have board board board a bound,” says Lillian. Earlier, she was saying that someone had “good lemon.”
One CNA tells another that Marilyn tried to run away this morning.
“Is that true?” the CNA asks Marilyn.
“What?” says Marilyn.
“That you were running away.”
“That is not true,” says Marilyn, “I wasn’t running anywhere.”
“Water who?” asks Bob.
“Is it cold?” Jackie asks me, then looks out the window. “It looks cold.”
It is cloudy and breezy out there. A tree shakes. But it’s not cold.
“It’s actually pretty nice out,” I tell her.
“Which one is yours?” asks Lillian, holding up a cup. I hold up my own cup.
“Well, there’s nothin’ easy’s gonna be on this trip,” says Bob. “It ain’t gonna happen.
My dad crushed the lemonade Sister Shiny served him. I pour him a little more of the almond-coconut protein and fiber shake I brought him. He had most of it earlier, outside, after knocking back a small Diet Pepsi. My brother was here. We talked birds and baseball. My dad said almost nothing. We sat outside the St. Francis Center entrance, under the birches. They were dropping catkins. My dad picked one up that had fallen into his lap and slowly crumbled it to pieces. A Northern House Wren was singing. Cardinals crisscrossed the street. Titmice sang.
It’s a Sunday.
“I went and sit,” says Anna.
Bob coughs.
“Take a deep breath and hold it for a second,” Marilyn advises him. “Then let it out and try to relax.”
Marilyn has terrible arthritis that reduces her hands to frozen knots or club fists from which partially agile thumbs allow her to do a little bit of work.
“Are we still waiting for someone?” she asks.
—Robert Lanaghan (Bob) passed away on June 1, 2026. Marilyn is also now deceased. I never knew Marilyn’s last name. She really did seem to care about her fellow residents.
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