The Beginning
It’s the beginning of a new reality. Of course, every day is the beginning of a new reality. Every second. Every millisecond. We will never be as young as we are in this moment. And we will never again have this moment — to despise, to enjoy, to exalt, to remember. Take your pick.
The moments with my dad are measured. Of course, they always were. But, we’ve entered a new phase where that fact is more… evident… than before. I fear that this is the beginning of the end of his life. Which of course is just a new beginning again.
I just came from Piedmont Gardens skilled nursing where my dad now lives. I finished moving him there last weekend, the fifth time I’ve moved my dad. Each time, he has a smaller space. Each time, he is further winnowed of his possessions. Which may be appropriate. We don’t need stuff where we’re eventually going, after all.
My son and his girlfriend helped me clear out the old room at The Grove Dementia Unit. We carted my dad’s favorite things to his new half-room in skilled nursing. Five or six possessions and a handful of clothing would fit.
We hung the portrait of his four kids, painted in oils when I was ten years old by a woman named Stella in Orinda, on the wall across from his bed. We lined up his beautiful Japanese doll, his childhood teddy bear, and a heavy, chipped toy soldier on the shelf beneath the window.
He shares a small room — just big enough for two hospital beds and two small dressers — with a 104-year-old Asian man who spits up a lot (who looked adorable in an argyle sweater today).
When I got there tonight, it was dinner. I went to the dining room first. My dad wasn’t in his customary place by the window. I scanned the room. He was nowhere to be found. I turned on my heel and headed to his new room.
He was lying down. He appeared to be asleep. His dinner had been delivered on a tray. I greeted him, touched him. One of the Ethiopian aides entered the room. “Very sleepy today! Very sleepy,” she said.
The floor nurse whose intelligence I question entered. We have a language barrier, but I don’t think that’s the problem. She seems a little afraid, furtive, and afflicted with that face-saving quality some cultures have, where you pretend to know the answer when you don’t.
I asked her, as I’ve done before, “Is he on pain meds?” She looks slightly confused. “Has he been given pain meds?” I ask again.
“Not on my shift, not since I’ve been here,” comes the answer.
“How about before that?” I ask. “Earlier today. Has he had any pain meds today at all?”
Around and around we go. They throw some acronym at me which means something like, ‘only when indicated.’
“Right,” I say. “Was it indicated today?”
Finally I’m told, no, he’s had no pain meds today. Of course, I have no idea if that’s true.
Earlier today, I had a similar roundabout conversation with physical therapy. At first, “Tony” from PT was prickly with me. Maybe he sensed the tension in my voice. Maybe he felt attacked.
We both carefully, slowly, and in concert left our opposing corners and came forward. He remembered his training. He became sweet. I found myself fighting the feeling I was being patronized.
I tried to assume the voice and carriage (even though he couldn’t see me) of a daughter who understood, who was not in denial, who was not being blindsided, who did not have to be handled with kid gloves.
He explained Medicare had stopped paying because my father was not “progressing.”
Of course, I knew all this. I had filed the appeal last weekend. And gotten the rejection of the appeal within 24 hours.
I said, yes, but I didn’t know that meant you’d stop physical therapy. I was told it would go to “private pay,” not that it would end.
Whatever, I said. It’s fine for it to go to private pay. It doesn’t matter. But you can’t just let him moulder in bed. Obviously.
Tony was appropriately apologetic that I hadn’t been notified, etcetera, etcetera, yadda, yadda.
I said, I’d at least like to know where PT left off with him. Was he able to stand on his feet? Walk at all? (He’d broken his hip for a second time, in two places, in late November.) We agreed I’d come in Monday at noon. And Friday, we’d have a private pay $180 physical therapy session.
So. Tonight. My dad has a deep cough in his chest. It’s thick and voluminous. He barely has enough energy to clear it. At one point, he spit into a stack of wadded up toilet paper I held out for him.
He didn’t see me. He didn’t try. His eyes were vacant. Closed much of the time. Looking the wrong way the rest.
I fed him. The food was decent tonight. A dry-rubbed, fragrant chicken leg. Clam chowder. Lentils. A roll. Chocolate cake dusted with powdered sugar. Apple juice.
I began with the apple juice. I brought the straw to his lips. He was unable to navigate that. The straw stayed hollow. I didn’t feel it swell, or cool. I turned the straw over and began feeding him sips by blocking the top, forming a vacuum, and delivering that tiny sip to his mouth, waiting, open, like a baby bird.
He roused himself a little. We began on the dinner. I cut his chicken. Fed him about half. Fed him the clam chowder. Fed him the lentils. When he wanted another bite, he’d make to feed himself with his hands. He made it easy for me. I’d simply follow the motion. His tongue was cracked and dry. I made a mental note to check what that means later.
About halfway through dinner, my dad suddenly seemed to hear my voice. He startled slightly and turned his eyes to me. They widened. Focused. I became aware as I have many times that our eyes are the exact same color. He chuckled. “Great that you still have the necklace,” he said.
That was the bone he threw me. The one lucid thing he said. Yes, I still have the necklace. The thick, shining, heavy, sinuous, elegant 22-karat gold necklace he’d bought my mom in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in the mid-70s, the necklace he’d taken from my mother’s neck on her deathbed (after she’d passed) and fastened to mine. That necklace. Which I’ve worn ever since. For 22 years now. That thousand dollar (by weight) hunk of gold.
I wore a tee shirt and sweater that set it off, as I often did, and he’d noticed.
He started to fall “asleep” as we finished dinner. He managed half the chocolate cake. He coughed. I brought him tea.
I watched as he struggled to clear his chest. I know what it means. I know how dangerous it is. Don’t forget, I watched poor Colleen die of suffocation as her lungs filled with fluid a few years back when the doctors ran out of places to plunge a tube to any longer drain them, when they were honeycombed with chambers too tight to any longer clear.
My dad fell asleep again. Or whatever that thing is that looks like sleep.
I asked if he’d like me to read a poem before I left.
I said, do you want me to read to you? He managed to mumble, okay.
He was in poetry club the last few years. He has many poetry books tagged with all manner of multi-colored post-its. I grabbed the first one and opened it randomly.
It was a poem by Roethke about a boy feeling like he’s in the clasp of death as he waltzes with his alcoholic father who bangs him into things and scrapes him against his belt, but the boy holds on for dear life. Because he loves his father.
I was a little disconcerted by that one. I flipped to the very next one. I read it aloud (without skimming it first). That one was about a funeral and was more macabre with every line. I tried more poems. Each poem I flipped to was about death, either fully or partially.
How stupid, I thought. Poets in those days thought they had to write about death to be profound. I hate Roethke, I thought. What an idiot, I thought.
I shut the book in frustration. My father appeared to be asleep. I watched him for a while.
I left. I walked in the middle of the street, defiantly. A car was trying to do a three-point turn. I ignored it, walking right behind, daring them to back into me. I sashayed along, ignoring my wincy ankle.
Lucky for me, the wine bar was having a tasting of Spanish wines. That meant I got to have conversations about slatey soils in Spain, cheap rents in Spain, unemployed youth living with their parents in Spain.
I got to sample a brand new varietal who’s name starts with “g.” I got to try a Chardonnay by a guy with 18 different grapes growing on his two-century old family land. And to think about moving to Spain. Living there. And why not?
Why not indeed.
After wine tasting, I wandered into Spectator Books next door, on Piedmont Avenue, where my dad used to take the kids and buy them books, before his dementia got too bad.
I browsed the titles, scanning for great used cookbooks as is my wont. A little girl and a man who appeared to be her father were in my row. The father passed me by. The girl lingered. She said, “Dad? Who’s the cursed child?” She was reading from the cover of a Harry Potter book. Her father sighed, exasperated. He returned rapidly, jerkily.
“I don’t know. I don’t know who the cursed child is. What are you talking about?” Impatience rose from him like steam. He looked at the book. “It’s just… I don’t know.” He stalked off, back to his favored shelf. The girl melted away, around the corner.
I felt for her. I felt the tatters of her self-esteem, flying in the wind. I hated the dad. I snuck a look at his face. Late 30s. Curly dark hair. Smooth skin. Cool, inscrutable eyes.
He must have felt my brief gaze. When the girl, predictably, called him again a few seconds later, he went more quietly.
Somehow, surprisingly, I spotted on a shelf the Vincent Price cookbook — some kind of re-issue of this relatively obscure tome, all glossy and modern-looking. What a shock.
This was one of my mother’s cookbook bibles. I have the version they had from the mid-sixties, with my dad’s hand-lettered wine list in the back, detailing notes on the wines they’d tried when they were young and beautiful.
I picked up the book. I thought about the way my dad’s poetry book had presented me with poem after poem about death. I thought, ruefully — watch me open this book to my father’s prime rib, or the dark mocha cake my mother made for each of our birthdays every year. How funny would that be? (I laughed at myself inwardly. I scoffed.)
I opened the book. Randomly. There, facing me, on a bright new glossy page (an exact facsimile of the page in the old tattered book I have at home, except mine is splattered by years of use), was my father’s favorite all-time meal, the one my mother made every year till she couldn’t anymore. Prime rib of beef. Vincent and Mary Price’s prime rib of beef.
The recipe I never made my dad. The recipe I always meant to make my dad.
