Adventures in Eldercare

Day 1

It’s not clear my 94-year-old great uncle knows who I am.

Mom’s backstage, as she will be singing with the choir, so I accompany Russell into the symphony hall.

I’m not going to pretend I know anything about classical music, but the program tells me the Piano Concerto No. 3 by Rachmaninoff is the fear of all concert pianists. That seems about right. It’s very complex. Gorgeous, and well-executed. I am rapt.

But during the first quiet moment, I hear it.

Thok
Thik
Tik
Thak
Tak

Russell is sucking on his dentures, which he doesn’t bother to glue in. The sound is frequent but arrhythmic, and if anyone within a five-seat radius has misophonia, he/she will surely set him/herself on fire before intermission.

I sigh with relief at the forte parts of the piece, which drown out the thoking. During the piano segments, my shoulder blades beat a steady march up into my head.

At one point, the thiking stops, and I glance over to find Russell has dozed off. This is the best possible scenario. Unfortunately, he wakes up after a few minutes and recommences thaking for the remainder of the program.

Day 2

Mom offers me some tricks-of-the-trade for what she calls Adventures in Eldercare.

• Put a few cookies per day in the jar; if you fill it up, he’ll eat them all because he can’t remember having any.
• Same goes with the fruit bowl.
• Make foods that are soft—rice, potatoes; he can only sort of chew.
• He’ll wash the dishes, but he doesn’t use soap, so view anything in the strainer as suspect.
• He loves going to the post office, Stop & Shop, and Aubuchon Hardware.
• Give him specific yard work tasks to do; if it’s too complicated a process, he’ll give up.
• No such thing as too much cribbage.

My folks leave. Russell breaks out the cribbage board. There’s nothing he enjoys more than shit-talking. “Well, I did all the pegging that hand. You pegged no points ha ha ha!”

I skunk him in the first game. He is chagrinned.

His pompousness returns full force when he ekes out a win in the second game.

*****

He spends a lot of time shuffling around, farting, vocalizing.

Just repeating words he sees on signs. “Mini… golf. Mini-golf. Mini-golf.”

In the Cape Cod Times. “Pedestrian… struck, killed in Dennis. Pedestrian struck, killed in Dennis. Pedestrian struck, killed in Dennis.”

On tabloid covers splashed with Kardashians in the grocery line. “Divorce… gets ugly. Divorce gets ugly. Divorce gets ugly.”

And pointing out things he notices/is entertained by. “That car looks very short ha ha ha.” (It’s an SUV…?)

*****

“Do the dogs have a lead?” he says.

Yes, I tell him, and we walk around his 9/10 of an acre. He points out the property line of this plot he bought in the late ’50s, the moon gate he built, the bamboo grove he planted.

Day 3

We’re crouched around the cribbage board.

“What’s that jacket you’re wearing?” he says.

“It’s a hoodie. Cuttyhunk Ferry Company,” I say, pointing at the lettering on the lapel.

We play several hands.

“What’s this jacket you have on?” he says.

“It’s a sweatshirt. I got it from the M/V. You’ve ridden that ferry,” I say.

Another half a game goes by.

“What is this jacket?” he says, jutting his chin at me.

I stand up to show him the logo on the back.

He reaches out. “I like this bottom ha ha ha,” he says, flapping three fingers against my left butt cheek. (Only three fingers because he cut off his pinkie four decades ago with a table saw or a chipper-shredder or something.)

“Don’t do that,” I say and sit back down.

He’s gotten in trouble once before for getting fresh with a substitute home-help person. And this summer, he had remarked, “There goes a pair of legs,” as a 20-year-old in short shorts walked by. When I grimaced, my mom had said, “That’s the World War II generation for you,” shaking her head.

Now I feel uncomfortable and grossed out (grosser on a geriatric level or a blood-relative level?). I also feel tricked, like his inquiring about my “jacket” was part of a plan.

We finish the game without further incident. I text my siblings. My big brother is ready to helivac me out of there. I convince him there’s nothing to be worried about. It was after his nightly scotch, I say. He still doesn’t recognize who I am, I say. I won’t wear spandex anymore. I’ll stay out of his reach.

As I’m speaking, I realize that I’m making excuses for him and victim-blaming myself.

He had no right to do that. And I have every right to be angry, which I am. Realizing my anger is justified, and the fact that I could take the old man down with one hand, makes me feel better. And I’ll wear fucking spandex if I’m going to the fucking gym.

And not to minimize it but he wasn’t a grab-ass kind of guy in his pre-dementia days. It probably really is a function of the Alzheimer’s.

Nonetheless, I make wide arcs around him for the next day and a half until it’s clear he’s more or less figured out who I am and he’ll keep his hands to himself.

Day 4

A cake is delivered to the door.

“It seems we have a cake here,” he says.

“Yes, it’s my birthday,” I say.

“Happy anniversary,” he says and gives me a chaste peck on the cheek.

Half an hour later, he walks into the kitchen and peers inside the box on the counter. “It seems we have a cake here.”

*****

“Now, do the dogs have a lead?” he says.

Yes, I tell him again, and we tour the property again. He points out the property line, the moon gate, the bamboo grove.

Day 5

I’m attempting to nap. He barges into my room, shoe in hand.

“I can’t seem to find my other shoe,” he says.

This is the pair he’s been wearing all day. I look for it in the living room, in his bedroom, in the kitchen. Finally, I go down to the garage and check the car. It’s sitting in the footwell of the passenger’s side. The disturbing part is that we haven’t been in the car since the morning errands. He has walked around for three hours, and neither of us noticed he was missing a shoe.

Day 6

He loves Violet and Redford. Blackie and Oliver, he calls them. (Oliver was his cat who was killed by a coyote a couple years ago.)

“Here are the dogs!” he says whenever they enter the room.

*****

I put on a DVD of Downton Abbey. “Picture but no sound,” he says, and I realize his hearing aid batteries are dead. I take the battery out of one of his hearing aids, but I can’t find where my mom keeps the new ones. I tell him we’ll buy more batteries tomorrow.

Fifteen minutes later, he points at the TV and says, “No sound. Can’t you put the sound up?”

Day 7

He’s lost his hearing aids. I look everywhere. Eventually, I find one in his ear. I can’t find the other.

*****

“Now, do the dogs have a lead?” he says. Yes. We walk. Property line, moon gate, bamboo.

The hardest part is not the forgetting and the repeating. The hardest part is when he says, “Losing my grip. I can definitely tell I’m losing my grip. I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do and when I’m supposed to do it.” He doesn’t laugh when he says this.

The hardest part is when I’m sitting at the computer and he peeks around the door jam down the hallway looking for me, for anyone. When he’s lonely.

Day 8

The good news, I guess, is he can’t hear me farting either.

*****

It’s not terrible—this taking care of an old person—but I imagine it’s something like parenthood. Just a low-grade, constant worry that he’ll accidentally kill himself or burn down the house. Not like parenthood, though, because there’s no guiding him toward eventual self-sufficiency. Just management of his decline.

And, while he’s family, he didn’t spring from our loins, so there’s no mama-bear instinct, no fierceness to our love.

Day 9

My parents’ flight will get in at 5:00pm. That means they’ll be home by 7:00 maybe. In the morning, my brother texts: Not much farther, little smurf.

Thank god.

My mom is a saint. I’ve done this for nine days. She’s done it for nine years.

I was ugly when I was born, sort of notoriously so. The family lore goes that my father said, “Oh good, a homely one to take care of us in our old age.” I like to think I grew out of some of the homeliness, but I’ll absolutely, positively take care of my mom in her old age. Her karma cup is brimming.

Plus I know she won’t grab my ass.