Black Bugs

I had driven at least fifteen miles toward home in silence before I realized there was no music. On the way to the nursing home to see my dad yesterday morning, I had played one of my hand-mixed CDs. There was Percy Sledge, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, the Hollies, the Mamas and the Papas, all of them singing songs from my late teens and early twenties. Now that I noticed it as I drove home to Greensboro, the silence was uncomfortable, oppressive. So I turned on the CD player: James Taylor sang "Carolina in my mind," and then the late but beautiful Minnie Ripperton began to sing "Loving you." I had to turn it off and finish the trip home in silence. I've made this trip almost 14 times in the last 2 weeks, but I never needed the quiet until yesterday.

Two weeks ago today, I received a call from the assisted living center where my dad, who will be 87 in September, lives. They told me that he had been sent to the hospital Emergency Room after taking a bad fall. I called Van, my cousin, Dad's nephew, who went straight to the hospital. By the time I got there, they had decided to admit Dad. He didn't look like a man who had fallen. He looked like a man who had been bludgeoned violently by a madman. There were cuts, scrapes, scratches, and bruises all over him, and he was completely disoriented. He has dementia anyway, but he was totally out of it that day.

Dad spent four days in the hospital and then was discharged to a skilled nursing home. Highgrove, the assisted living center, will hold his room for a total of 30 days. So for a while he can go to Avante for rehabilitation, which he desperately needed, for he couldn't even sit up on his own. He seemed to me months from being able to get in and out of bed on his own or taking himself to the bathroom. And he was totally incontinent. He was as weak as a spaghetti noodle. At Avante he will have physical therapy every day. They will try to build his strength back.

Avante is just across the street and down the block from the hospital, so I walked over to do the paperwork. There was more paperwork than in my last mortgage. But I met the admissions director, who was very kind to me, and the social worker, who took me to her office so that she could learn a bit about Dad. She, too, was kind and gentle with me, a nervous daughter. When I first turned from the public areas to walk with her down the hallway past the rooms of residents and patients, my first vision took my breath away. There down both sides of the hall, all the way down the left, all the way down the right, were black faux-leather wheelchairs, each with a resident sitting in it. A few residents were trying to make their way up or down the hall, but most of the others were just sitting there. Many were resting their heads on their chests; some had their eyes closed and their mouths open. From the opening at the head of the hall, where I got my first glimpse, the black chairs looked like big black bugs crawling along the baseboard. It was to me a most distressing sight.

The next day, my father was transferred by ambulance from the hospital to the nursing home. I had gotten seven days' of clothing from Highgrove, and I had bought him some new socks and underwear, and new trousers in a much smaller size. He has lost so much weight, his pants were just barely hanging on him. And a new, smaller belt. He was okay for shirts, shoes, pajamas, robe. I tried so hard to think of everything he'd need and to move it from Highgrove to Avante or to buy it new. They placed Dad in a bed in a room he shares with a much younger gentleman. They brought his meals to his room and he ate on the over-the-bed tray for a few days. And he wore pajamas for one day.

Then came Day Two. When I arrived, I walked through the lobby as always, seeing the nice and friendly people, making my way to the wards. I turned onto B, which is Dad's. And there he was. In a black bug. I'm so sorry to have to say that my first emotion was grief that my Dad was one of the ones out there in the hall just sitting in a wheelchair doing nothing. It was only my second thought to be happy that he had been given a good bath and a shave and dressed in street clothes. All I could see was how skinny he is, and the black bug. My heart broke. But I was able to shift my consciousness to focus on his gains. He was sitting up; he was dressed, even though he was having to wear Depends. But think about it. His life is out of his own hands now. Someone else wakes him up, picks out the day's clothing, helps him bathe and dress. The home serves the breakfast that it serves. Then he is told he cannot lie down but must sit up. Someone else decides when he goes to lunch, to bed, everything. The only decision he gets to make all day is what he's going to think about as he sits in his black bug.

I took him for a walk, pushing his wheelchair everywhere we could go. Finally we went back to his room. He was always begging to go back to bed, but his nurse would tell him NO. She said he had to sit up a while to get stronger. If he just lay in bed, he'd never get stronger, never get to go back to Highgrove, where he had a private room and his own furniture and was teacher's pet. It shocked me when he told me he couldn't remember Highgrove, so the next morning I called Tammy, the administrator there, and she offered to go visit him at Avante, to cheer him up, to jog his memory, and to motivate him.

He was giving up. The fight was going out of him. He was still taking his meals in bed. Each day his eyes were red and swollen from crying, and he begged anyone who came to see him to please take him with them when they left. He asked me, "Why can't I just go live with you til I die?" I tried to explain that my bedrooms are upstairs and he can't even walk to the bathroom, much less up a flight of stairs. I didn't remind him that he bought his long-term-care insurance so that I would never have to "take care of" him. I didn't remind him that I have a mother, too. Those of you who read my post about my shaky relationship with my dad, about his abuse of my mother and me, will understand that I cannot wipe and bathe this man. My mind, which is bent, would break. If you'd like to read that post, you can find it at http://measuredcoffeespoons.blogspot.com/2011/02/have-you-got-any-news.html.

I saw him again yesterday. I go as frequently as I can. Yesterday I gussied up in white cropped pants, a red silk shell, and a matching red long-sleeved blouse (it was a cool day). And my red wedge sandals. I wore all this red because I wanted to cheer Dad up and I wanted to play up the beautiful new earrings that Carol gave me when we went for our Buddhist chanting meeting last Tuesday night. They are red and silver. The silver part is a butterfly. I had told Carol how much I liked her butterfly earrings. I told her that when my precious German Shepherd Bo, the D.C. police dog flunk-out, died, my mother and I decided to make butterflies the symbol of Bo and his spirit. So I think of him, he who had made it through all the obedience parts of training and was the best dog I ever had, I think of him whenever I see a butterfly. Carol remembered all this. She has a friend who makes jewelry, and she had these made for me, and I wore the red and silver butterfly earrings yesterday.

Dad and I visited in his room for quite a while, talking. His eyes were no longer red and swollen. He's beginning to accept being there. For a nursing home, Avante is a wonderful place, but by definition, nursing homes are depressing to me and to him. When I was young, just out of college and working at my first job, I lived next door to an older gentleman, Mr. Foxe, who visited his elderly mother in a nursing home every Sunday afternoon. His kitchen window faced my living room windows. Every Sunday night, I would see Mr. Foxe standing in his kitchen drinking shots. Now I understand.

When it was almost time for Dad to go to the dining room for lunch - Yay! They don't bring him a tray anymore! - I left to spend some time with my 86-year-old mom. The two of them have been divorced for 40 years. I'm their only child. This ain't easy.

I went to Mom's house and convinced her to let me take her out to lunch. She finally agreed, but just so I'd get a good lunch. She didn't feel she was dressed up enough, and she didn't feel like changing, so she just decided to go to the Mayberry (yes, it's true) Restaurant just as she was. We each ordered sandwiches in this very popular, crowded, and very casual place. When once again she commented that she did not look good enough to be there, I said, "Mom, we are eating sandwiches on paper in plastic baskets. How good does one need to look in a place like this?" She laughed. Besides, she looked fine and was dressed nicely. After lunch, we headed for the grocery store and picked up some groceries for her. I wanted to get more, but she can be stubborn. We got her groceries in and put away. Then we hugged and told each other how much fun lunch had been and how much we loved each other. She stood in her open front door as I drove out of sight. My last sight of her is her waving to me as I pulled away in tears.

It was back to the nursing home to check on Dad before heading back to Greensboro to collapse. He told me he thinks he lost his wallet at the swimming pool. He hasn't been near a pool in years. When it was time for me to go, he didn't ask me to take him with me, but he did ask to see me to my car and watch me drive away. So I pushed his wheelchair into the lobby and placed him by a front window. I pointed out my car. A nursing administrator was in the lobby, and he offered to take Dad back to his room after I left, so I could grant his wish. I drove away and could see him waving in the window, and for the second time yesterday, I broke into tears.

Dad's got a long way to go in 2 short weeks or he loses his room at Highgrove. He has to become ambulatory, and right now he is just too weak to walk. The tests the hospital did show that he did not have a stroke causing the fall. Nor did he sustain a concussion in the fall. Yet that fall accelerated his dementia significantly. At this point I don't know if he will be able to go home to Highgrove or not. I pray for this. I chant for this. And don't think I don't know how lucky my mom and I are that she is able to be so independent at her age. We are thankful for that.

And I was thankful for Kia and the Kats when I got home, got into comfortable clothes and crashed on the sofa.

This "parents in the eighties" thing is hard as hell.