{"id":7500,"date":"2013-09-30T12:47:40","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T16:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/?p=7500"},"modified":"2013-09-30T22:21:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T02:21:37","slug":"adventures-in-eldercare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/30\/adventures-in-eldercare\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Eldercare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Day 1<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not clear my 94-year-old great uncle knows who I am.<\/p>\n<p>Mom&#8217;s backstage, as she will be singing with the choir, so I accompany <a href=\"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/14\/not-actually-old\/\">Russell<\/a>\u00a0into the symphony hall.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;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.\u00a0That seems about right. It&#8217;s very complex. Gorgeous, and well-executed. I am rapt.<\/p>\n<p>But during the first quiet moment, I hear it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Thok<\/em><br \/>\n<em><em>T<\/em>hik<\/em><br \/>\n<em><em>T<\/em>ik<\/em><br \/>\n<em><em>T<\/em>hak<\/em><br \/>\n<em><em>T<\/em>ak<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Russell is sucking on his dentures, which he doesn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>I sigh with relief at the <em>forte<\/em> parts of the piece, which drown out the\u00a0<em>thok<\/em>ing. During the\u00a0<em>piano<\/em> segments, my shoulder blades beat a steady march up into my head.<\/p>\n<p>At one point, the\u00a0<em>thik<\/em>ing stops, and I glance over to find Russell has dozed off. This is the <em>best possible scenario<\/em>. Unfortunately, he wakes up after a few minutes and recommences\u00a0<em>thak<\/em>ing for the remainder of the program.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 2<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mom offers me some tricks-of-the-trade for what she calls Adventures in Eldercare.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Put a few cookies per day in the jar; if you fill it up, he&#8217;ll eat them all because he can&#8217;t remember having any.<\/li>\n<li>Same goes with the fruit bowl.<\/li>\n<li>Make foods that are soft&#8212;rice, potatoes; he can only sort of chew.<\/li>\n<li>He&#8217;ll wash the dishes, but he doesn&#8217;t use soap, so view anything in the strainer as suspect.<\/li>\n<li>He loves going to the post office, Stop &amp; Shop, and Aubuchon Hardware.<\/li>\n<li>Give him specific yard work tasks to do; if it&#8217;s too complicated a process, he&#8217;ll give up.<\/li>\n<li>No such thing as too much cribbage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My folks leave. Russell breaks out the cribbage board. There&#8217;s nothing he enjoys more than shit-talking. &#8220;Well, I did <em><strong>all<\/strong><\/em> the pegging that hand. You pegged <em><strong>no points<\/strong><\/em> ha ha ha!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I skunk him in the first game. He is chagrinned.<\/p>\n<p>His pompousness returns full force when he ekes out a win in the second game.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>He spends a lot of time shuffling around, farting, vocalizing.<\/p>\n<p>Just repeating words he sees on signs. &#8220;Mini&#8230; golf. Mini-golf. Mini-<em><strong>golf<\/strong><\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the <em>Cape Cod Times<\/em>. &#8220;Pedestrian&#8230; struck, killed in Dennis. Pedestrian struck, killed in Dennis. Pedestrian <em><strong>struck, killed<\/strong><\/em> in <em><strong>Dennis<\/strong><\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On tabloid covers splashed with Kardashians in the grocery line. &#8220;Divorce&#8230; gets ugly. Divorce gets ugly. Divorce <em><strong>gets ugly<\/strong><\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And pointing out things he notices\/is entertained by. &#8220;That car looks\u00a0<em><strong>very<\/strong> <strong>short<\/strong><\/em> ha ha ha.&#8221; (It&#8217;s an SUV&#8230;?)<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Do the dogs have a lead?&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8217;50s, the moon gate he built, the bamboo grove he planted.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 3<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re crouched around the cribbage board.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s that jacket you&#8217;re wearing?&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a hoodie. Cuttyhunk Ferry Company,&#8221; I say, pointing at the lettering on the lapel.<\/p>\n<p>We play several hands.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s this jacket you have on?&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a sweatshirt. I got it from the M\/V. You&#8217;ve ridden that ferry,&#8221; I say.<\/p>\n<p>Another half a game goes by.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What is this jacket?&#8221; he says, jutting his chin at me.<\/p>\n<p>I stand up to show him the logo on the back.<\/p>\n<p>He reaches out. &#8220;I like this <em><strong>bottom<\/strong><\/em> ha ha ha,&#8221; 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.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t do that,&#8221; I say and sit back down.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s gotten in trouble once before for getting fresh with a substitute home-help person. And this summer, he had remarked, &#8220;There goes a pair of legs,&#8221; as a 20-year-old in short shorts walked by. When I grimaced, my mom had said, &#8220;That&#8217;s the World War II generation for you,&#8221; shaking her head.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;jacket&#8221; was part of a plan.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s nothing to be worried about. It was after his nightly scotch, I say. He still doesn&#8217;t recognize who I am, I say. I won&#8217;t wear spandex anymore. I&#8217;ll stay out of his reach.<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;m speaking, I realize that I&#8217;m making excuses for him and victim-blaming myself.<\/p>\n<p>He had <em>no right<\/em> to do that. And I have <em>every right<\/em> 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&#8217;ll wear fucking spandex if I&#8217;m going to the fucking gym.<\/p>\n<p>And not to minimize it but he wasn&#8217;t a grab-ass kind of guy in his pre-dementia days. It probably really is a function of the Alzheimer&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, I make wide arcs around him for the next day and a half until it&#8217;s clear he&#8217;s more or less figured out who I am and he&#8217;ll keep his hands to himself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 4<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A cake is delivered to the door.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/IMG_6735.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7507\" alt=\"IMG_6735\" src=\"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/IMG_6735-e1380484011983.jpg\" width=\"750\" height=\"750\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It seems we have a <em><strong>cake<\/strong><\/em> here,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes, it&#8217;s my birthday,&#8221; I say.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Happy anniversary,&#8221; he says and gives me a chaste peck on the cheek.<\/p>\n<p>Half an hour later, he walks into the kitchen and peers inside the box on the counter.\u00a0&#8220;It seems we have a <em><strong>cake<\/strong><\/em> here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now, do the dogs have a lead?&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I tell him again, and we tour the property again. He points out the property line, the moon gate, the bamboo grove.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 5<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m attempting to nap. He barges into my room, shoe in hand.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t seem to find my <em><strong>other shoe<\/strong><\/em>,&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p>This is the pair he&#8217;s been wearing all day.\u00a0I 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&#8217;s sitting in the footwell of the passenger&#8217;s side. The disturbing part is that we haven&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 6<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He loves Violet and Redford. Blackie and Oliver, he calls them. (Oliver was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/06\/making-things-worse\/\">his cat who was killed by a coyote<\/a> a couple years ago.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Here are the <em><strong>dogs<\/strong><\/em>!&#8221; he says whenever they enter the room.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>I put on a DVD of <em>Downton Abbey<\/em>.\u00a0&#8220;Picture but no sound,&#8221; 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&#8217;t find where my mom keeps the new ones. I tell him we&#8217;ll buy more batteries tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>Fifteen minutes later, he points at the TV and says, &#8220;No sound. Can&#8217;t you put the sound up?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 7<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s lost his hearing aids. I look everywhere. Eventually, I find one in his ear. I can&#8217;t find the other.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now, do the dogs have a lead?&#8221; he says. Yes. We walk. Property line, moon gate, bamboo.<\/p>\n<p>The hardest part is not the forgetting and the repeating. The hardest part is when he says, &#8220;Losing my grip. I can definitely tell I&#8217;m <em><strong>losing my grip<\/strong><\/em>. I can&#8217;t remember <em><strong>what<\/strong><\/em> I&#8217;m supposed to do and <em><strong>when<\/strong><\/em> I&#8217;m supposed to do it.&#8221; He doesn&#8217;t laugh when he says this.<\/p>\n<p>The hardest part is when I&#8217;m sitting at the computer and he peeks around the door jam down the hallway looking for me, for anyone. When he&#8217;s lonely.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 8<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The good news, I guess, is he can&#8217;t hear me farting either.<\/p>\n<p>*****<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not terrible&#8212;this taking care of an old person&#8212;but I imagine it&#8217;s something like parenthood. Just a low-grade, constant worry that he&#8217;ll accidentally kill himself or burn down the house. Not like parenthood, though, because there&#8217;s no guiding him toward eventual self-sufficiency. Just management of his decline.<\/p>\n<p>And, while he&#8217;s family, he didn&#8217;t spring from our loins, so there&#8217;s no mama-bear instinct, no fierceness to our love.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Day 9<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My parents&#8217; flight will get in at 5:00pm. That means they&#8217;ll be home by 7:00 maybe. In the morning, my brother texts:\u00a0<em>Not much farther, little smurf.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Thank god.<\/p>\n<p>My mom is a saint. I&#8217;ve done this for nine days. She&#8217;s done it for nine years.<\/p>\n<p>I was ugly when I was born, sort of notoriously so. The family lore goes that my father said, &#8220;Oh <em>good<\/em>, a homely one to take care of us in our old age.&#8221; I like to think I grew out of some of the homeliness, but I&#8217;ll absolutely, positively take care of my mom in her old age. Her karma cup is brimming.<\/p>\n<p>Plus I know she won&#8217;t grab my ass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 1 It&#8217;s not clear my 94-year-old great uncle knows who I am. Mom&#8217;s backstage, as she will be singing with the choir, so I accompany Russell\u00a0into the symphony hall. I&#8217;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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/30\/adventures-in-eldercare\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Adventures in Eldercare<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fambly","category-first-world-problems","category-random"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7500"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7516,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7500\/revisions\/7516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}