Tag: Lillian

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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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...


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Those of Us Who Remain: Notes from The Shrine, 8.31.2024

~ johnbrandall

I was refreshing myself on the names of some of the Dammert residents. I forgot one lady's name. Crikey. I want to call her Loretta but that's not right. I know Loretta. And I know this woman whose name I forgot. She's also an OG, been here since the beginning. Speaks to me sometimes. She has once or twice asked me, "Are you one of mine?" Lorraine? No, not quite. I sat in the Bird Room one time and listened to her try to get a few other ladies interested in making a K-Mart run. "The prices are very reasonable," she said. "It's just down the road." Actually, there did used to be a K-Mart just down the road.

More than once this woman has insisted that I must be in school. "So you're in school, then?" she'd say. And I'd say no, I'm past that. "Really?" she would say, raising an eyebrow, giving me a very skeptical look. She is the only person who has ever labeled me as being "successful." And she has told me that I "look good." Early on she stopped me and asked me, "Do you know who I am?" I said no. "Well, you will," she said, "and watch out because they'll try to get you in on one of their schemes." Now I cannot remember her name and that vexes me.*

The storms of life. An excellent Randy Travis album. And a way to describe what the last few years have felt like. I know I've got it pretty good. But I'm still just a tumbleweed. Driftwood. A passing satellite. Whatever that was that flew over us at camp on the last night outside Tijuana, a chunk of space junk falling out of orbit. Smoking, burning, succumbing to gravity, soon to be wreckage...


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