12/17/21

A visit to Robert.

A cyst was found on Robert’s thyroid, that is why the on-site physician wanted to send him to an endocrinologist. I left messages to speak to this physician and we never connected. I canceled the appointment that they told me they had made, and told Rocky, the nurse, that I would not consent unless the doctor spoke with me and unless I had an inkling as to whether Robert’s current condition could possibly improve if he were treated. Which would probably mean surgery. Which could in his case conceivably kill him.

The first and third floors still have Covid cases; luckily Robert is on the second. From the hallway I could see into Robert’s room. There was a group of people at his roommate’s bed. Evan and I walked in. I wondered if this was the roommate, the disruptive roommate, the one I was complaining about, but thankfully, and it was a surprise, as no one told me: that that man was removed and the current one was now part of Robert’s landscape. Behind the curtain, with four family visitors. Speaking Spanish. A warm bunch of people with kindness written all over them. And it never dawned on me that we were a crowd of extras on this movie set called a nursing home room, with Covid flying around us.

Evan and I had a script: he was going to show his dad the calendar of post offices he had just published, as well as the incredible gift he had gotten from a postmaster in a Maine post office: a craftsman had fashioned a bank out of the brass door of a post office mail box. A wonderful souvenir of Americana, beautifully constructed.

Hello, Robert. I sat on the bed and held his hand. How are you? How are you doing?

“Better now that I’m holding your hand.”

I noticed a box of chocolates on the nightstand. Bill brought you these last week, would you like a chocolate? He had told Bill he thought it was fabulous.
He wanted one. I fed it to him. He was able to eat and chew. Do you remember you had a nice visit with Bill?

“No.”

Do you remember that Dave has visited you?

“No.”

My lungs felt like they were overly deflating. I could smell food coming from behind the curtain. There was a pair of sneakers peeking out from the bottom, facing me, looking very strange as if a person were standing there with his nose pressed against the fabric partition…I am thinking: how can the shoes be facing in my direction when there is a man on the other side in bed in the other direction?  Looking at this scene made me feel disoriented. Later, I realize that the sneakers were attached to legs and the legs were attached to a body that was sitting on the bed, mirroring me on the other side of the curtain.

Evan showed Robert the calendar: I could see Robert’s eyes traveling across the captions. He’s reading it, I said. I wondered how many words were synapsing on their journeys through his brain to make sense of the world. Evan showed Robert the bank: I saw the front has glass that has a red, painted 51. Someone in Maine once retrieved their mail from a box that was covered by this brass plate and combination lock. Someone was identified as number 51. This must have been from a post office that was retired.

Because of the mention of Maine, a place where Robert had attended an Audubon workshop years ago, and where we had once vacationed, he said something like: “I can’t remember how many islands I visited.” referring to the islands off the coast: a sentence with complexity, relative to the conversation.

My lungs re-inflated. I held my breath. Many times during this visit I held my breath. I was thinking that I should have been recording the visit, taking down every precious remark, illustrating every thought that was fleeting.

I asked Evan if we should call Robert’s sister. Robert, who was clearly listening, said, “call who!?”

Wendy. Do you want me to call her?

“Whatever.” But the room was noisy and we decided not to make the call.

Evan had a photo of Robert’s sister and her husband from a recent visit on his way home from Maine. Robert hasn’t seen them in well over a decade. His eyes scanned the photo. No comment.

The crowd behind the curtain, began to disband.  Considering the size of this room for two, it was like a clown car. So many loving family members visiting, helping the man into a wheelchair so he could go down the hall to the bathroom rather than use the tiny one in the room, the one near the sink, on Robert’s side, where some unknown person’s pair of shoes has been languishing in a corner, underneath, for months.

Robert yawned.

Someone is tired, I think I said. And Robert, in his usual punster mode replied: “Yawn has broken.” It even took me a second to get that one.

I told him how much better he seemed to be communicating. I told him about his life, his education, the schools in which he worked. How he had worked for at least forty-four years. It was as if I were telling him a story about another person, a person who was impressive. “Wow!” he said.

I tried to review all the countries we had visited so many years ago, when we traveled in the summers, before Evan was born. I thought he would chime in and participate, but he just stared.

I mentioned that we had lost a few friends but that he was still hanging on. He said something about his still being there, and no mention of the people, no mention of any memory or emotional connection.

Then something strange happened, something that reminded me that Robert was there but his mind was twisting under the weight of memory weaving temporal and spatial flashes and knotting together: what was and what is. I lost my breath again. I had looked through the window of the workings of the intricate clock, his brain, still ticking, still observing. I assumed his long-term memory would far outweigh the lapses of the present, his present.

I told him his story over and over, how he has been gone from our home for over a year. But, there is no emotional reaction.

And so he said: “Now all you have to do is deal with your parents in Florida.”

If you have come this far, reading my posts, resonating with them, you know the following, but I will just remind you:

My father passed in 1991, in Florida, leaving my mother, on her own, until her 102 birthday. You would know that Robert helped move my mother back to New York when she was ninety-five, about eight summers ago. You would know that I set her up in an apartment and her journey into the end of life was not easy. You would know that as the years passed she fell into the hole of dementia, a dementia that is expected for someone who is so old. You would know how awful it was when she got Covid from an aide, and subsequent Covid psychosis.

Robert was around for all of this. My mother died in November 2020. We had a funeral. Robert was there.
My friend and her family helped me clean out her apartment; we finished, we vacated it on November 28th. You would know that Robert fell and hit his head the next morning and spent his seventy-fourth birthday in the E.R. the next day, where hundreds of people were waiting for beds. And, you would know that Robert’s last year was inconceivable: Covid, hospital stays, returning to this nursing home unrecognizable to the staff. You would know.

Robert did not.

You know how you associate things in your environment with your thoughts? I was sorting my emotions and the recent comments, not knowing how to process them. I saw a new coverlet on Robert’s bed, a soft furry fabric with a blue and white pattern. In the back of my thoughts I am wondering where he got it, how new and clean it looked, how I saw his razor on the floor, how the shaving cream can, travel sized, was stuck behind the right side of the cabinet next to his bed, how one of the greeting cards behind the bed looked like something had splattered on it. I thought that he really needed a haircut. I saw the fluorescent light over the sink, that there is just one person sitting at the nurse’s station. How bright the hallway is.

For however many moments, Robert’s mind wove memories of me, then inter-wove memories of my parents, then recalled Florida, where they lived more than thirty years ago. There was a tangle of the past and present.

And then, for the first time in over a year, I saw Robert smile. This was something I had asked if he could do many times during visits. Some memory, I presume, took him out of his bed for a moment, to some place in time, maybe to one of those islands in Maine. A time when he could walk, feed himself. But, I don’t know where he went, or where he was in that moment.

I made a big fuss! I hit paydirt! A smile?! Can you do that again?

We think we saw the corner of his mouth, not partially hidden by the pillow, rise and fall.

 

 

 

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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