In all the chaos, I forgot something. Now that things are settled. I remember. How it started.
All the way back. Before Dad had his teeth pulled and started falling, before the aides moved in to help, before Dad moved to Nora’s and the house was sold, a doctor diagnosed the problem with my father’s neck. Spinal stenosis, he explained, and he offered a “cure.”
When Dad called to tell me, he was more hopeful than I’d seen him in ages. He was still ambulatory then, still driving, still working. But he needed help — someone to drive him to the hospital and visit him in the rehab center and, when he was recovered enough, to drive him home. And he asked if that “someone” could be me.
In the hospital waiting room, I was hopeful, too. I sat with a few other people, trying to tune out the blare of Fox News that was, I suppose, meant to help distract us. Practically a different universe, I remember thinking.
Then, the surgeon came out to the waiting room, still in his scrubs. He didn’t quite look at me. Staring at the floor, running his hand through his curly, light brown hair. — funny the things you remember. His hair, his bewilderment. The way the surgical mask hung from his ears, just sort of floating there, the inside part facing out.
“I’m sorry,” he told me. “I got in there and I just...” He stopped. Started again. “I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t.”
“Wait,” I said, not understanding. “You mean you didn’t do anything?”
He shook his head then. That’s when he looked at me. “Your father’s anatomy is like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. I just . . . I closed him back up.”
I understood then. There was nothing he could do. My father’s condition was not being cured. Heart sinking, I thought, of course, of Dad. The miracle surgery that was supposed to arrest the progression of the condition that was twisting his spine like a DNA helix had only made it worse. More painful. A surgery to recover from — with nothing to gain.
He sat at the post-surgical rehabilitation center (aka nursing home), in pain, angry and belligerent with the staff, weakened by the surgery and the long days of isolation. It was during this time that I started to detect the presence of a quality my sister and I came to know as Dad the Buddha, who lived in the airy world above the other residents. (”I’m not like them. They’re old.”) He sat for hours on the terrace overlooking the train station, philosophical and wise — until his catheter started burning. Then, every few minutes when urine flowed, he’d shriek in pain, berating the nursing staff and insisting on being spoon-fed.
After a long week, his favorite nurse, a kind woman from the Caribbean, drew me aside. “He need to feed himself,” she said. “He be home alone soon and then what he do.”
Good question, I thought. Then, what he do? If I was exhausted by these visits, drained and emptied, I could only imagine what it would be like for Mom.
I have such mixed feelings about that time. Dad must have been so disappointed. I didn’t know how to help, how to keep up, how to support while also managing my own life. “Please call Dad,” I whispered into my cell phone from the terrace overlooking the Great Neck train station. “I can’t do this alone.” Reaching across the country to my sister in California. To my other sister, in Brooklyn. They did what they could, with this man, this mystery, this bear at the top of the stairs. We all did.
This week, I’m filling in scenes from earlier in the book. I’m remembering more. Finding more journal entries. This week, I sent out: Yes, your mother is crazy and Salamander, Little Pieces, and Canoe.
It’s all from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago. If you’re new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here.
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Why did I think you had only one sister.