Tag: dad

The Originals: Notes from the Shrine, 5.9.2026

~ johnbrandall

Tom wheels his wife Anna in. I'm on the other end of the assisted-eating lunchroom with my dad. Tom has an apartment over in the Independent Living wing of the community. He might eat other meals with Anna but he doesn't eat lunch with her. I've never actually talked to Tom, never said a word to him even though he's been here since the beginning. He has taken a seat next to Anna, who warbles in her fey way. Bubbly, playful, somewhat intelligible. I thought I heard her say, "Shiny."

After a few minutes pass, Tom gets up.

"Enjoy your lunch," he says to his wife, and he leaves. He has a shirt on that looks a lot like one my dad used to wear, and which I have since appropriated. It's a dark blue plaid with yellow and orange accents. I wear it here sometimes and I wonder if Tom sees me wearing it and thinks to himself, "Hey, I've got a shirt like that."

I am deep in this world. To leave it will be like a reincarnation but some part of me will always be here—will be left behind. Am I depressed, or am I just sad and refusing to fake being in any other mindset or state? There is an answer. If I live long enough I will find it out.

I look out into the hall to see Lillian being wheeled along by someone who must be one of her sons. She's shoeless. Her shoes, it appears, were left here as a result of breakfast.

At 12:05 it's just me, my dad, and Anna in here. Oh—speak of the devil, here comes Bob being wheeled in.

"I just about...."

"Just about what?" asks the CNA who has brought him in.

"I just about stepped in a hole!" he says.

The CNA shakes her head and leaves to get someone else to bring to lunch. Bob's voice is rough, gravelly, garbled. Sister Shiny walks in, leaves something in the sink.

I used to write a lot more about this place but it's gotten hard to see the point. Anna OG, Bob OG, Sr Shiny OG. Nurse Cheryl Ragsdale is working today. She is here only part-time. I don't know if she's an OG but she's been a nurse a long time and has the stories to prove it. She worked the VA at Jefferson Barracks way back when, and those vets were known to throw punches around, even at their nurses.

Bob is slurring.

"Huh?" he says. "Talk to me."

He sounds like he's been to the dentist, like his mouth is numb. But he's still talking! Earlier my brother was telling my dad goodbye and my dad didn't say anything, he didn't even look my brother's way.

"Tomorrow, huh?" asks Bob, picking up on a conversation from the hall, thinking that the words are being directed to him.

This is why I'm in the lunch room. Panning for gold, looking for an end to this story. Except it isn't my story to write. Keep back, hold vigil, write it down...


Find the rest of the post here...

3 AM Eternal

~ johnbrandall

Just a speck of lucidity
there in the early morning
used diaper kicked to the floor
I can’t quite see him but I know
he’s there, on his final throne
in the bathroom of what
when they built the house
my parents called the maid’s
room but it was really just an
extra bedroom until my wife
and I made it into our room until
my dad couldn’t do the stairs to
their bedroom anymore so now I 
am sleeping on the couch which 
allows me to hear when he gets up
thump thump thump goes the cane
and I have to go too so I use the
small bathroom near the back door
which shares a wall with the one he’s in
and I can hear the dull porcelain sound of 
him occasionally shifting his weight until he 
is done and I am done and as I’m going back
to the couch I ask into the dim light
Are you there, Dad?  He answers with the
voice he used to have, bright and direct and
curious.  Yes, that’s a good idear—he hangs 
onto that r—Yes, I am still here, thanks for
checking on me.  Two men up early with their
prost(r)ates tinkling in the dark of December,
the flag across the lake whipping in the breeze
and kept bright by a bulb from the ground facing
up into the night and staying bright until the morning.

*This poem originally ran at Sheila-Na-Gig Online in 2024.

Fittin’ to Flake: Notes From the Shrine, June 5 & 9, 2024

~ johnbrandall

Lunch service begins at 12:28. The sound from a wheel on one of the carts holding trays echoes around the dining room.

"That's a squeaker," says Bob. Earlier he asked aloud, "Did I climb poles in Signal Hill?"

I must have said something, asked him something to prompt this rejoinder but I can't remember what. Were we talking about Signal Hill? Had I asked him about his time with the power company? Or is he carrying forward a conversation from the last time I was here?

I'm helping Bob with his food. Ketchup packets, waffle fries, mayo.

"Do you like mayo?" I ask him.

"Ketchup?" he replies. "I use that sometimes. I can eat 'em with or without."

When I pivot to talk to my dad Bob doesn't realize I am not talking to him. He is capable of responding to any statement or question. His eyesight is poor but his hearing is very good.

"This is a ketchup fry?" he asks me, holding up a fry.

He gets two sandwiches, an extra helping of food so he can put a little weight back on. He takes the slices of bread from the top and bottom of his sandwiches and eats the bread while setting the rest of the sandwich aside, for now.

When it's grim, it's grim. Why stay alive long enough to live this life?

I had my most unpleasant moment so far with one of the CNAs on A Hall right before we came into lunch. As I was changing my dad. She apologized for not being able to help when I was asking for attention but she said that they were short, and told me, "I just changed him a little while ago." Her budget's drained but he's paying $8500 a month. Saturdays and Sundays should cost less. If only I could wish for it to be over.

Out in the hall outside the lunch room, I heard her tell her comrade, "I'm fittin' to flake."

Yo-yo told her, "No you're not. You got this. Bourbon after work..."


Read the full post here...

One Side But Not the Other: Notes from The Shrine, 5.25.2024

~ johnbrandall

My dad and I were headed out of Dammert, intending to sit a little longer outside when we saw Lillian making her way back from the Dammert dining room. She said hello to us, or to me.

"So you're still in high school then?" she asked me, not for the first time.

"I must look youthful today," I said, knowing I didn't. "I'm way past high school. I'm in my forties."

"Do you know how far we have to go down the hall to get downtown?" she asked.

"I think you've got to go pretty far."

"I haven't gone shopping in so long," she said.

I didn't reply but she continued.

"I'm in school, too," she said. "Some of my students, when they get a free ride, boy it really makes my blood pressure go up to here."

She raised her hand, palm down, up to the top of her forehead. Of course I didn't mention that I was one of those students who got a free ride, thanks to my parents, to my dad and to his clients, thanks to the stock market.

We continued on. We saw Sister Therese-Ann again, exchanging nods and smiles. We saw her earlier in the lunch room. She introduced herself to me and my dad a few weeks ago. She seems to like to visit with people in the lunch room, to drop by and say hello, ask a few questions...


For the rest of the post, click here...

Better than Better than Before: Notes from the Shrine, 9.1.24

~ johnbrandall

And just like that the fence goes on, one hand clapping. The sound of no sound, the nothingness that was already here. Which we define or can't define or are defined by for our short while.

I'm back at The Shrine, Sunday late morning, a pleasant breeze in the shade a little ways down from the St. Francis Center entrance. My mom and my brother were already here with my dad outside when I arrived. They left a few minutes ago.

Randalls getting rowdy outside St Francis Center on a Sunday morning, 9.1.2024

I clipped my dad's fingernails. They had gotten long, and were quite dirty. He was doing the clipping initially but he has always cut his nails so short. So it was not a surprise when he snipped a bit of cuticle or underbed—something that wasn't nail.

I took over the task. They're not as short as he wants them to be; not as short as he would've done them himself, back when. But they're better than they were before and that will have to do. That seems to be the offer on the table when it comes to the work I do. Like the concrete patio/stoop patching I did out at Farm earlier this week. Egads, was that really earlier this week? It wasn't perfection.

I made one rookie mistake that I should not have made: smoothing the concrete with a sponge before it had set up enough, resulting in the removal of the topmost 3/16 of an inch or so, sponging away too much sand and cement, leaving the gravel loose and in need of removal, meaning ultimately the new surface was not as smooth and even as it could have been, should have been. B told me by text, "I'm sure it's better than before." And, yes, it is. But I want better than better than before...


To read the rest of this post, click here...

Dr. Diet: Notes From the Shrine, 8.12.2025

~ johnbrandall

Dateline Shrine. Dad looked out of it when I got here, this slim version of him. Two hundred pounds, maybe.

"Do you want to go outside?" I asked him.

"What's outside?" he replied.

It's the same thing he said to me the other day. I wheeled him out of Dammert, through the break room, and down the long hallway to St. Francis and the exit there. But first we stopped to get a soda.

"You want a Diet Coke?" I asked him. "Diet Dr. Pepper?"

"I'll take somethin'," he replied.

We sat down at the chairs and tables outside St. Francis.

"How'd you guys know where to go this mornin'?" he asked me.

"Huh?"

"How'd you guys know where to go?"

"Who's 'you guys'?"

"Anybody who's going over there," he said.

There is some sort of event going on at the Retirement Community today, maybe that's what he was talking about. It might be Mary Crowe's visitation.

He takes his first sip of the Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar.

"Oh, man," he says.

He can still relish a soda. Seventy-five cents from the vending machine in the break room. He had a roll of quarters in one of his drawers in the house, quarters wrapped in plastic, from the bank. It'd been in there for years. One day a few months ago I saw it in there and I knew what I would do with those quarters...


Read the full post here...

Notes from The Shrine, 11.8.2024: The Prime Directive

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

Rough go of it in the lunch room today. All these times I've seen Helen's daughter Pat pass out drinks to the residents. I did not realize she had been asked, more than once, not to do so.

There has been—continues to be—a shortage or an understaffing of help in the lunch room. Brad is here today but was not serving the coffee, lemonade, and water like he used to. Did he ask not to, so he could have a full lunch hour to himself? Hey, fine, it's not his fault. I don't put this on him. Likewise I used to see Social Worker Natalie, Kim, Joy El, Ann—any number of other staff members serve the drinks when the residents were brought in and seated in the lunch room, usually around noon.

Their absence now is noticeable. There is a void. Instead, it will eventually be a CNA serving the drinks, or maybe it will be Brad or someone else but not until 12:30. Is this a protest of sorts? Two sides digging in, neither side believing it should be their job to do.

I notice now, too, that Pat has not been in the lunch room recently. Maybe I have just missed her, the days I've been here not matching the days she has been.

What happened today began when resident Helen asked a CNA I did not recognize—a tall young woman—for a drink or just for a cup. The CNA brusquely informed Helen that, "Hello! That is not my job. Someone who is supposed to do that will have to get you your drinks. Just have some patience."

This was at 12:20 or 12:25. Lunch seems to come out later and later. It's the creep. You don't want to be coming to a nursing home long enough to notice it, to measure it, to feel it.

I'm sitting there with my dad and Lester when the CNA so gracelessly and unnecessarily upbraids Helen. So I get up and get Helen a cup. Then I get Joyce her coffee with a cream and two sugars, which is just how she likes it. I've been in the lunch room often enough to know what longer-time residents will order. Then I get something for Donna, and then I get something for Lester. And, yes, I'm feeling pretty special, feeling pretty good about myself. Stepping in to save the day. Who else wants a lemonade? I'll serve all the drinks today, why not?

Well, this CNA wheels another resident in, sees what I'm doing, and starts in on me. "Umm, hello? What are you doing? Do you know if any of them have any allergies, or is on a thickened liquids diet?" Meaning, I shouldn't be serving drinks to the residents, not because it might make her or any other staff look bad but because I might get somebody hurt.

Heck, this wasn't the first time I had served a few cups of coffee in the lunch room. Last week OG CNA Chiquita saw me get Donna a cup of coffee and didn't say anything. I thought nothing of it at the time. All I was thinking was that I could get my idle ass up and make myself useful, if no one else was going to do it. I had never seen this CNA before and if any resident was on a special diet I would have been in a much better position to know about it than she would have been.

OG CNA LaDosha wheeled someone in a moment after the testy exchange and I asked her what the heck was going on. I said, "I've seen Pat serve drinks in this lunch room many times."

"And she's not supposed to," said LaDosha. "She's been asked not to, more than once..."


Follow this link to read the full post...

Notes from The Shrine: The Return of Bob (1.8.25)

~ johnbrandall

Everyone would like some popcorn.
—Bob

Bob walked into the main Dammert lunch room today. He hasn’t been eating in this dining room for a couple of months. It’s me, Bob, Lester, and Dad all at one table. Old times and new.

The snow brightens the room. They don’t seem to be offering Bob any coffee. He was sitting in here before we were. They said he just wandered in and sat down.

Brad got me some coffee. Bob is singing. LaDosha comes in, asks about Bob, goes out.

I have a feeling Bob wandered in because of how bright it is in this room. He can’t see very well but he might have been attracted to the light.

Dirk comes in, goes out. Bob mumbles clearly about coffee. He is missing it.

“How about a couple of coffee cups?” he says. “Isn’t there a week….”

Brad is taking the drinks cart around. A wheel squeaks.

“Coffee,” Bob says. “Please bring some coffee.”

There’s a new lady. She says to the not-so-new woman next to her, “I’m a wreck.” The other lady says, “No you’re not.”

“That’s cold,” says Bob. “For the kids…”


Read the full post…

Notes from The Shrine : A Little More Loretta (1.3.25)

~ johnbrandall

First time seeing Dad this year. He’s been here 11 months, somehow. Loretta and her daughter talking on B hall. Loretta used to live in Seattle, in a house she never wanted to leave. Her daughter ordered pizza for the staff.

My dad is still in bed. He was asleep when I arrived but he’s been mostly awake ever since. Often with his eyes closed. He was asking me a few questions.

Loretta remains one of if not the most vocal resident here. She tells her daughter how much she loves her, more than she will ever know.

“2025?” she asks. “And where are we living? I like it here.”

Loretta would come here and walk every morning. Before she lived here. My dad would come here to walk sometimes, too. LaDosha thanks Loretta’s daughter for the pizza. I gotta get on that, ordering food for the CNAs, before it’s too late, if there is such a thing.

I had a banana that Dad was surprisingly interested in. Where did I get it? Was it my lunch? He said he was very happy I had it. That was a strange thing for him to say. He is lying there, no lights on in here but for sun through the blinds. He has his left index finger to his lips, rubbing it along them…


Read the full post…

Coffee for Loretta: Notes from the Shrine, 8.16.2024

~ johnbrandall

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...


Read the full post here...