October 22, 2017: my wife and I wait in the waiting room of the Spring Park Alzheimer’s Special Care Center for my brother, so we can celebrate my father’s ninety-fourth birthday. We’ve brought Hostess Twinkies because a cake is too messy, and we are haunted by the last time my dad blew out his birthday candles, drenching the cake with spittle.
My brother rushes in late. My wife gathers the Twinkies, and I try to enter the code to let us in. This is a secure facility. No one gets in or out without the code, caregivers or clients. I love the idea that people living in Spring Park are called clients. I try the code once, twice, but can’t hit the numbers right. “Stupid piece of shit,” I say.
“Here,” my wife says. She punches in the code, and the door opens.
A tall lady in a grey sweater, a client who always stands on the other side, tries to rush past us. “Ruth Anne, Ruth Anne,” calls one of the caregivers. “You know you can’t go out.”
“I have to get out of here!” screams Ruth Anne. “I’ve got to get out.” She claws at me.
The caregiver pulls her back and says “Sorry” as we head down the hall to find my dad. I smile to the caregiver to show that she doesn’t need to apologize.
It’s late in the afternoon. Bright paintings of flowers and country scenes cover the wall as light streams through large windows that look out to the courtyard where an old man in a red coat always sleeps on a wooden bench during the day.
In front of us, two ancient women are slowly rolling their wheelchairs toward us, although we obviously don’t exist for the woman on the left who has long grey hair that falls from her drooping head onto her sagging breasts. She cannot see us because she cannot lift her head. The other looks at us and brightens. “Hi,” she says, “I’m just going around to acquaint myself. I’m new here.” In the two years my dad has been here, my wife and I have often met her. If she corners us, she will ask us our names and to find her doll in the Spokane River.
The women are like two galaxies oblivious to each other, but, moving at convergent angles, they are certain to crash in slow motion. My wife rushes forward to intervene. “Here, let me help.” She turns the woman who can’t look up at a different angle.
“Stay the hell away from me,” she snaps. “You can’t touch me. You can’t touch me.” She slaps my wife’s hand away.
“I’m just trying to help,” my wife says.
“I got your number,” the lady says as she rolls herself against the wall. “I got your number.” She is now trying to roll herself through the wall. “Oh, yes,” she adds, “I got your number.”
As we pass the other woman, she tries to talk to us: “Hi, what’s your name? My name is Margaret. Have you seen my doll?” My wife and I say nothing. We’ve told her our names and that we haven’t seen her doll countless times.
“My name is Lance,” my brother says to Margaret.
“Geez,” I say. “Didn’t you see the sign, ‘Don’t feed the animals’?”
Lance touches Margaret on the arm and walks on. “My doll,” Margaret asks Lance. “Have you seen my doll? It’s in the Spokane River.” Lance shakes his head.
A caregiver points to the day room. “Your dad’s in there. We just took him to the bathroom and changed his shirt.”
We enter the day room. The speakers on the north side are playing “Singin’ in the Rain.” They’re always playing “Singin’ in the Rain,” except for Sundays when they play “Keep on the Sunny Side” over and over:
Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us every day; it will brighten all the way
If we keep on the sunny side of life
The caregivers have moved my dad to his wheelchair from his comfy chair, a recliner that he loves so much. He likes to sleep in it during the day, warmed by an afghan of many colors that my mother knitted twenty years prior, just before her stroke and death a week later. He is somewhat awake. Before he dozes off, I speak to keep him alert. “Dad, it’s me, Dave.” I point to my wife: “Here’s Sylvia. And here’s Lance.”
My dad blinks a couple times, trying to focus on us. After a few seconds, he says, “David! Well, look who’s here. David! And who’s this?” He motions to my wife.
“Hi, Dad. I’m Sylvia, Dave’s wife. We’re here to celebrate your birthday. You’re ninety-four.”
“It is?” my dad says in his somewhat singsong voice he used to employ when talking to children. “Ninety-four. My goodness.”
Lance leans in. “Hi, Dad.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m your son, Lance.”
“I thought you was Grant, my brother. He lived to be ninety-six. How’s he doing?”
“Who?” Lance asks.
“Grant. How’s he doing?”
“He’s dead,” Lance says. “He died a long time ago.”
“He’s dead, you say. Well, that’s too bad. He broke his ribs.” He looks at Sylvia. “How old am I?”
“You’re ninety-four today. Happy birthday!”
“Ninety-four? I don’t think I want to live two more years. I want to go home.”
“You don’t have to live two more years,” Sylvia says.
“Grant lived to ninety-six.”
“I think,” I say, “that we should go into the lunchroom next door. I can barely hear with the speakers on.”
Donald O’Connor is starting into the second verse of his song:
Make ’em roar, make ’em scream,
Don’t you know all the world wants to laugh?
My grandpa said, “Go out and tell ’em a joke
But give it plenty of hoke.
“Lift your feet,” I say to my dad, and I start to wheel him out.
Richard, a fellow Spring Park client who is always attached to an oxygen tank, starts his usual complaint through his oxygen mask: “Help! Help me! I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
A caregiver calls out, “You can breathe, Richard. You’ve got your mask and your tank is on. Just breathe.”
As we exit the room, Richard shouts again, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” and then quiets as Donald O’Connor walks into a brick wall.
The lunchroom is airy, the west wall a bank of large windows that look out to a small patch of lawn with three sweetgum trees, their beautiful foliage an amazing flare of yellows, reds, and oranges. We park my dad against the southernmost table so he can look out the window. Sylvia and I sit on his left. Lance sits on his right.
“I’m confused,” my dad says.
“It’s your birthday,” Lance tries to explain. “We’re here to celebrate your birthday.”
“Who are you? I’m confused.”
“I’m Lance. I’m your son. Dave and Sylvia are here. We’re trying to have a birthday party. We just told you we are having a birthday party.”
“Is it Grant’s birthday?”
“Let’s have some cake,” I say, dumping four packages of Twinkies on the table.
“Oh, I don’t think I can eat,” my dad says. “I just had lunch. Oatmeal. I always have oatmeal for breakfast. And prunes,” he smirks, “I always have my prunes.”
I put a Twinkie on a napkin in front of him. “Just try a bite.”
My dad picks up the Twinkie in his palsied right hand and takes a bite. He hasn’t worn his dentures for years, so all he has are a few very dark teeth. He liked his old dentures, but accidentally flushed them down the toilet years ago and never adjusted to his new ones. He takes another bite and then another bite. “These are good.” He looks at me. “Wipe my mouth, David!” I wipe his mouth with another napkin. “There, that’s better. Give me another.” I put another Twinkie in front of him.
“Maybe we should sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” Sylvia suggests and starts to sing.
“These are good,” my dad says with his mouth full. “Give me another.”
Sylvia continues to sing, and Lance joins her as I open another Twinkie package and give my dad his third Twinkie.
“Do you want a Twinkie?” I ask Lance.
He glances at my dad’s mouth, cake crumbs and cream oozing out and dripping on his chin. “I think I’ll pass,” he says. “I’m a bit off my feed.”
“How about you?” I ask Sylvia.
“I think your dad’s going to eat them all.”
I hand my dad his fourth Twinkie.
A woman in a walker focuses on us from across the room and begins her journey. I try to get Lance’s attention to ward her off, but it’s too late. She shoves a framed image in Lance’s face. “This is my daughter,” she says, pointing at a woman’s faded graduation picture, probably from the ‘70s.
“I’m sorry,” Lance says, “but we’re trying to have a birthday party.”
The woman pulls out a calendar and shows the picture at the top to Lance. “This is her with her husband.”
Lance glances at the picture and says in a shocked voice, “Wait, I know her husband.” He turns to me. “It’s Rick from Simplot.” Rick used to work with us when we farmed, back in the days of our unforgiving father and our spiral of failure.
“Rick from Simplot,” I say. “That brings back painful memories.” I look at my father. “Doesn’t it, Dad?”
“You got more of that cake?” my dad says.
“Sure.” I open another package of Twinkies. “You remember Rick from Universal Sugar, Universal that almost drove us to bankruptcy?” I look at Lance, “I’m sure he doesn’t remember.”
“Those were the days,” Lance says.
“Look,” Sylvia says to the woman, “we’re trying to have a private moment here.”
“I was in the Marines,” says the woman. “You can go to hell.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but you can’t talk to my wife that way.” I motion to Alice, one of the caregivers.
“I killed Hitler,” the woman says. “You can all go to hell.”
“Come on, Denise,” says Alice with a smile.
“Go to hell. Fuck off. Eat shit,” Denise says. “I was in the Marines. Shit, shit, shit.”
“So was my dad,” I say, trying to calm Denise down.
“He can go to hell,” she says.
“And my brother was an Air Force pilot.”
“You was?” my dad says to Lance.
“Yes. Don’t you remember?”
“I was a Marine?” my dad says.
“You were on Saipan,” Lance says.
“Saipan?”
“Fuck Saipan,” says Denise as Alice tries to move her. “Fuck all of you.” She shows the calendar picture to Sylvia. “This is my daughter. I was a Marine.”
“She looks very nice, but we have to go. You need to go with Alice.”
“OK, OK, OK. No need to be rude, no need to make a fuss,” says Denise as Alice guides her away.
I pat my dad’s arm. “We have to go,” I say, but my dad has fallen asleep.
“I won’t forget this birthday,” Lance says. “Let’s hope it’s the last.”
My dad wakes up briefly. “It’s time for me to go home,” he says. “Time to go home.”
“Go where?” Lance asks.
“When he says that,” Sylvia says, “he means he wants to die.”
“Sometimes I think a big dose of morphine,” I say.
“Or a pillow over the face,” Sylvia adds.
“Or a push down the stairs,” Lance suggests, getting into the spirit.
“But now he’s too out of things to agree to any of that,” I say.
“He has a do-not-resuscitate order, doesn’t he?” Lance asks.
“Yes, but the law doesn’t look too kindly on a unrequested jolt of morphine,” I say.
“Or a pillow,” Sylvia says.
Lance rolls his eyes. “And they don’t have any stairs here.” He looks at our dad, who is now sleeping with his head back and mouth open. “He looks dead,” Lance comments. “So what’s next?”
And that is our question: What’s next? My dad always wanted to live to an old age and have people fawn all over him:
“Gosh, Bob, you’re doing well.”
“Bob, I hope I’m half as good at your age.”
“Bob, you’re an example for us all.”
But people don’t say that anymore. He’s not doing well, and he has blown through his money and insurance. He gets Social Security, but the facility costs $6,000.00 a month. We make up the difference. He owns farmland, so he doesn’t qualify for government assistance. We could sell the land, but we want to keep it in the family. We didn’t think he’d make it past ninety. We didn’t think he’d make it to ninety-four. Now we don’t know how long he will live. Ninety-six? One hundred? It’s all possible. With power of attorney, I might take a loan out on his property. Or I might just take a loan out on my house. The loans should get us through the next few years. The issue isn’t the money. The issue is his life. He doesn’t want to be here. And neither do we.