At lunch on Wednesday he struggled into his chair and sat down with a huge sigh. "Very low today, very low," he said. He didn't look good either: sallow, thin, a little sunken and with the slightly transparent look I've come to associate with elderly people who are starting their journey out of this life. He had had a bad night, or a bad waking-up: he had woken early, convinced he had a doctor's appointment today so he had rushed around - such as he can rush now - to get down to the desk where a car would be waiting to take him to the hospital. Panting and exhausted, he arrived there only to be gently told, "It's tomorrow." So he had gone back to his room, and never gotten his head or body back to a normal state. "This sort of thing distresses me, and I find I can't recover from it - it ruins the whole day," he said, looking mournful. He had surveyed the lunch buffet when he came in and chosen some things to eat. Chris, his favorite of the young women who work in the dining room, came along with the plate of food he can no longer carry. "Here you go," she said, with a warm smile, putting her hand on his shoulder.
"What would I do without you?" he answered. He looked over at J.'s plate. "What's that?" he asked, pointing to a brown oval with bright yellow goo dripping over the top, like solidifying plastic.
"Cheeseburger."
"Oh," he said, raising his eyebrows, and then began picking up the slices of ham and turkey Chris had brought him and putting them one by one, with his long, slightly shaky fingers, on a piece of bread spread with "my- yo-nise", as he always called it, and mustard. "They've become terribly kind, everyone here," he said. "I don't know why - they must think I'm on my way out!"
"They like you," I said.
"Oh, I don't know about that," he said. "They keep trying to get my table," he added, looking over his shoulder at two people who had just gone past us to sit at the table for two he normally occupies when he's alone or with one other person. "They all want it: 'When's he's going to die and let us have it?' He growled, shaking his jaw from side to side like a hungry beast.
"That woman in the line was very nice to you," my husband said.
"What did she say?" I asked.
"She asked how he was today, and Dad recited his litany of all the things that don't work, and she said, 'Even with all that, your mind is better than all of ours together!'"
His father smiled, but said, flatly, "I'm bored to death. Literally. They're all very nice here, but it's hard to find a real conversation, and I tire very quickly now. There's a new doctor here the past two weeks - retired - he spent a lot of time in the Balkans and had a lot of interesting experiences - we eat together sometimes..." His voice trailed off and he took a disinterested bite of his sandwich. "It's a terrible thing not to be able to read anymore, and the people who clean my room changed the station on my radio. I don't want to scold them - they're so kind - but when that happens I'm completely lost, I can never find it again."
"We'll fix it for you when we get up to the room," J. said. Neither of his parents had ever had the slightest mechanical sense, and their homes have always held the carcasses of perfectly good radios, televisions, telephones, stereos, kitchen appliances, hairdryers, clocks they had abandoned because they 'didn't work,' or the same items, now totally nonfunctional, that they'd recognized as "expensive" and picked up in some thrift store or the "exchange" room of their retirement homes. "It's a very good mirror, one of those that lights up so you can see all your pores," we'd hear on the next visit. "Would you like it? Maybe you can make it work."
We ate in silence for a few minutes, and then I said, "So - you had a quite a dream about M..."
He brightened up immediately. "Yes! It was aMAzing. And it persisted for 48 hours!"
"What do you mean?"
"It was so real that for two days I kept thinking I would find her in my rooms. I told you I got up and went to look for her that morning, but the next day too, I was sure she was there...but, nope." He shook his head, grinning. "It was really so pleasant! We were having such a good time. She had gained a little weight," he added, and laughed; we did too.
"Didn't you also tell me you had a dream about your father recently?"
"Yes! And that was odd too. I don't ever remember dreaming about him before."
"The next thing you know you'll be dreaming about your children," J. put in.
"They aren't dead yet," I said, under my voice.
"I never dream about my children."
"Right. So what were you doing with your father?"
"He was approving of me," he said, matter-of-factly. "He always approved of me. And wishing me a long life. That was also something he often did. Odd. I don't know why he always did that. It may be more of a curse than a blessing." He lifted his eyes from his plate and looked at us. "I don't know why they're all being so nice to me. It's like they're attracted to me suddenly. It was like that at the funeral in X I helped with recently: everyone was coming over and wanting to touch me afterwards."
"Maybe people think someone who's reached such an advanced age with all their marbles is good luck," I suggested.
"Maybe," he said, dubiously. "It's mostly that they all know me, or know of me through the families that have lived in that village for so long. I know the minister didn't seem to like it; he took me home quickly and then went back to the reception!"
Oh, Beth, I love these conversations. They are poignant and painful some times, of course, but they feel so real; you've recorded them so well that I feel like I know him, a little.
It's a remarkable thing, to live in an age when these kinds of connections, however tenuous, are possible.
Posted by: Rachel | October 04, 2007 at 10:55 AM
Thanks, Rachel. It is, isn't it? I wish he had been a little more able to understand the internet himself - he used an MS-DOS computer since the late 1980s, but never quite got the web or the whole notion of graphical interfaces. Another technical thing! Somehow, I do believe that people's good wishes are felt, no matter what.
Posted by: beth | October 04, 2007 at 12:52 PM
Your father-in-law has powerful medicine and knows it! Hilarious about the jealous minister.
Posted by: Bill | October 04, 2007 at 01:14 PM
(o)
Posted by: Pica | October 04, 2007 at 02:11 PM
You capture so well the sort of here-but-not-here-ness of people on the threshhold.
It's hard to be around, especially when it goes on for a long time -- it's like you're dealing on two planes at once, and you never know when something intended for one will arrive at the other and be terribly inappropriate :-)
But valuable, both in itself as as a reminder that we none of us get to stay here.
Posted by: dale | October 04, 2007 at 04:09 PM
I'll add that I never read one of these reports on your father-in-law without thinking of the ballad that ends,
God send euery gentleman,
Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman.
...and substituting "such a daughter-in-law" for "leman." Though it doesn't rhyme :-)
Posted by: dale | October 04, 2007 at 04:14 PM
I started reading your blog just a few days ago. I really love this. It reminds me of my great grandmother, how she talked, the way she acted, before we lost her. Really lovely.
Posted by: Kaycie | October 04, 2007 at 06:29 PM
Kaycie, welcome! Thanks for reading and commenting; I hope you continue to enjoy my blog. It was good to discover yours too!
Posted by: beth | October 04, 2007 at 08:18 PM
Bill, glad you picked up on that bit. He is very sharp about such things, having been a minister himself.
Thanks for the (o), Pica.
Dale, thanks for the quote and the compliments, quite undeserved. I especially liked what you said about "dealing on two planes at once" - though with my mother and with him, it's a bit strange because neither really believed/believes in "other planes" and yet he, especially, is starting to go back and forth between two worlds. I suppose he identifies them as "now" and "the past," but I see him waffling sometimes; even he is not sure.
Posted by: beth | October 04, 2007 at 08:24 PM
This post was a good companion to Jean's post about John Berger, http://tastingrhubarb.blogspot.com/2007/10/one-word.html and Leslee's about her mother, http://3rdhouseparty.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/day-to-day.html
It always interests me how certain bloggers in my blogroll can independently decide to tackle similar themes on a given day.
Posted by: dave | October 04, 2007 at 08:36 PM
I clearly don't come here often enough. Each time I come, I regret I waited so long.
I don't know what physical traces of blogs will be left in a 100 years, but the warmth some of them provide will certainly have brighten the days of many people until then. The traces might not be visible, but none the less present.
Posted by: Jean-Olivier | October 05, 2007 at 09:28 AM
Merci, Jean-Olivier, pour ces mots...
Posted by: beth | October 05, 2007 at 10:09 AM
B. and I are going through this with her mother, with some of the exact same conversations. It's comforting somehow to know it's not just her. Wonderful posts.
Posted by: language hat | October 06, 2007 at 11:44 AM
Thanks, LH. And I'm sorry about B.'s mother; it's hard and funny and painful all at once, and makes you think more than you want to about your own old age. Please tell her I said hello.
Posted by: beth | October 06, 2007 at 11:39 PM
Beth, what they all said and I too really really love these vignettes about your father-in-law. I have a feeling he would love them too though he'd probably growl here and there and offer corrections or additions. Do you ever mention that you write about him? Would Jon take photos to accompany your words? Is a book a possibility and would he (the F.I.L) be pleased to heaar this?
Posted by: Natalie | October 07, 2007 at 07:27 AM
Excuse typos, I seem to make a lot of them lately. By the way, the photo is amazing too: is it a human or an alien behind that grid?
Posted by: Natalie | October 07, 2007 at 07:29 AM
C'est moi, à Brooklyn!
Posted by: beth | October 07, 2007 at 09:13 AM
Sorry Beth! There was something about that hand hanging down and the indeterminate head .....Maintenant je comprends and my first impression is modified.
Posted by: Natalie | October 07, 2007 at 03:06 PM
Of all your characters that you write about I love your father-in-law the most. I keep wishing I would have a chance to sit and talk with him, though I fear he would find my dialogue not quite up to his level of wit and I'd be staring at him blankly a lot. (^J^)/"
That so-called "grid" in the photo is an upturned bed frame with springs, no? It took me several passes to understand what I was looking at. I thought at first that it was you taking a photograph in a mirror... or is that exactly what it is?
Posted by: Miguel | October 14, 2007 at 12:53 AM
Miguel -I don't think it was a bed-spring, but I don't know what it was - some sort of stripped-apart upholstery probably is right. I was taking the photo of my reflection in a jumbled antique shop window in Brooklyn, so the thing in the frame is a mirror, reflecting me and also something in front of it. I guess! I should go back to the original and see if I can figure it out.
Posted by: beth | October 14, 2007 at 08:44 PM