Tag: Dammert Belleville

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...


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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..."


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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...


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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...


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