Undone

by Kelly Rimmer

  “Sorry about that,” Dad says, suddenly sounding every bit as weary as I feel.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Tim calls as he jogs down the path to catch up to us.

  “No work today, Timmy?” Tim hasn’t been Timmy for at least twenty years, except at family functions when our brother Jeremy wants to rile him up. Forty-two and forty-one respectively and with several graduate degrees between them, my brothers still revert to adolescent banter whenever they’re in the same room. Today, I can only wish Dad was teasing Tim playfully the way Jeremy does when he slips back into that old nickname.

  “I have the day off today,” Tim says quietly.

  “Are we going to the . . . that thing . . .” Dad’s brows knit. He searches for the right word, waving his hand around vaguely in the air in front of him, then his shoulders slump as he sighs heavily. “Are we going to the green place?”

  “The golf course? No, Dad. Not today. We’re going to the nursing home, remember?”

  We only realized Dad had dementia earlier this year, and at times like this, I’m horrified all over again that it took us so long to figure it out. He had a heart attack four years ago, and in the aftermath, was diagnosed with heart failure. His deterioration has been steady despite medication and cardiac rehab, and with the changes in his physical health have come significant changes in his personality and, we thought, cognitive function. He’d been losing words the whole time, but his mind seemed intact otherwise. And who doesn’t search for a word every now and again? What exactly is the tipping point between “not as sharp as you used to be” and “neurologically deficient”?

  Tim’s an orthopedic surgeon, and given his years of extensive medical training he could probably answer that question in excruciating detail, but his eyes are suspiciously shiny right now as we walk Dad to the car, so I don’t ask.

  Dad sighs heavily and turns his attention back to me. He’s on permanent oxygen supplementation now, the cannula forever nestled in his nostrils. Sometimes I forget it’s there, and then when I look at his face, I’m startled all over again by the visual reminders that it’s really happening—Dad is really dying. The evidence is undeniable now . . . the cannula, the swelling around his face, the sickly gray-white tone in his skin.

  “Where’s Noah?” he asks me.

  “He’s at Chiara’s house.” My mother-in-law worships my son—her third grandchild, first grandson. Today, when I dropped Noah off, she barely looked at him—instead she threw her arms around me and hugged me for so long that eventually, I had to disentangle myself to make a hasty exit. I like Chiara and we have a great relationship. It just turns out that I really don’t like her feeling sorry for me, and that hug today was a strangely awkward experience.

  “Visit him?” Dad says, immediately perking up.

  “Another day, Dad. Soon,” I promise. Between my siblings and our spouses, at least one of us will visit Dad every day from now on. My sister Ruth pinned a roster for the first two weeks of visits to the fridge in Dad’s house, but for some reason, she’s left me off it. Ruth has a lot on her plate so the mistake is understandable. I noticed it a few days ago. I just keep forgetting to call her to sort it out.

  I help him from his wheelchair into the car, but just as I move to shut the door, he reaches up to hold it open. He pauses, frowning as he concentrates. I scan his face—those beautiful blue eyes, lined with sadness, lips tugged down. Tim helped Dad shave this morning and his cheeks are smooth. I’m suddenly besieged by a memory, of snuggling close to Dad for a hug after I’d fallen on this very path rushing out to meet the school bus one morning. I’d skinned my knee pretty bad, and Dad had waved the bus driver away, promising me he’d make it all better then drive me to school himself. I remember his cheeks were rough that day with stubble, but his arms around me were warm, and his gentle kiss against my forehead gifted me instant courage to deal with the blood that was trickling down my leg.

  That moment feels like a million years ago. I just wish there was some way I could return the favor, to make him feel as safe as he made me feel so many times over the past four decades. But hugs can’t make this better. Nothing can change the reality that our time with Dad is coming to an end.

  “Come on, Dad—” Tim starts to say, but Dad shakes his head fiercely and he looks right at me as he says, “Beth.”

  “Yes, Dad?”

  His entire expression shifts in an instant—from determination to a sudden, crippling sadness. His gaze is pleading and his eyes fill with tears as he whispers, “Sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “I do,” he insists, and his gaze grows frustrated, presumably at my blank look. “I . . . the mistake and of course I didn’t. Because I’m sorry and she’s gone.”

  What strikes me first is simply how much I miss Dad being able to speak easily. His speech has been getting worse and worse over the past few months; most days now, it’s just fragments of language that are, at best, related to whatever he’s trying to express.

  “Dad . . .” I’m trying to figure out what to say, but I can’t, and Tim and I just stare at him in confusion for a moment as he tries to explain himself.

  “I, when Gracie . . . alone. Remember? What’s it called? When . . . and she came and I tried . . .” There are tears in his eyes again, and he looks from me to Tim desperately, as if we can help him somehow.

  “That’s enough now, Dad,” Tim says firmly, then he adds more gently, “You’re okay. Just relax.”

  Dad’s language issues stem from a form of fronto-temporal atrophy called semantic dementia. His memories are intact, but his language skills have been devastated. Tim sighs heavily and runs his hand over his salt-and-pepper beard, and I belatedly notice how weary my brother looks. For the first time all day, he seems to be struggling more than I am.

  This situation is awful and it’s been hard on all of us, but I know Tim, and it’s not the stress of a sick parent that’s giving him anxiety. Tim’s habitual over-responsibility is slowly driving him crazy this week. Despite being the one to miraculously win Dad a place in the hospice ward of an amazing new nursing home on Mercer Island, he’s still been trying to find some last-minute solution that would enable us to decline the placement anyway.

  “We’re doing the right thing,” I assure him softly. We’ve been using a combination of at-home nursing care three or four days a week, supplemented with a rostered system of sleepovers for me and Tim and our siblings Ruth and Jeremy on the other days. This has mostly worked for the past six or seven months, but it was never going to be a long-term solution, especially now that Dad is well into the “end stage” of the heart failure process.

  Tim’s apartment is a forty-minute drive from here, in downtown Seattle close to his hospital. It’s a lovely home, but it’s on the twentieth floor of a high-rise tower—not at all a suitable place for Dad to live out his final days. Plus, Tim works insane hours, and his wife Alicia isn’t exactly a nurturing soul. And Ruth has three children of her own and runs the family construction business. Jeremy is an earth sciences professor and when he’s not teaching, he’s traveling. Right now he’s in Indonesia, reading seismic waves or something, and I know he’s supposed to spend the second semester of next year teaching in Japan.

  My husband, Hunter, and I probably were the only family members who could have cared for Dad given I’m at home full-time at the moment anyway. We already live nearby too, so we could have just moved into Dad’s house, or Dad could have moved in with us—either home is plenty large enough to accommodate us all. When Jeremy casually tried to hint at an arrangement like this, I just told him I was going back to work soon. That’s a lie, but it was a necessary one. I’ve quietly extended my maternity leave by another six months, but I have no idea if or when I’ll go back to my position as a child psychologist at a community center. I do know for sure that I simply cannot take on Dad’s care full-time . . . especially knowing what’s coming.

  “I wish there was a way we could keep him at home
,” Tim says, for what feels like the one millionth time. “Maybe I should have looked into moving here . . .”

  I step closer to him and slide my arm around his waist, then rest my head on his shoulder.

  “Come on, Tim. Be realistic. The commute would have killed you.” The commute or his wife. For the past seven or eight months, Tim has been here with Dad at least one night a week—usually on his only day off, sometimes making the journey straight from a night shift. Alicia came with him a few times, then suddenly stopped helping out. As far as I can tell, she’s very busy being a “media personality.” Given she hasn’t had an acting or modeling gig for at least a decade, “media personality” seems to mean she spends her mornings at the gym and her afternoons with her socialite friends, hoping she’ll make it into the frame of a paparazzi photo so she can complain about her lack of privacy.

  It’s fair to say I was never Alicia’s biggest fan, but her decision to sit on the sidelines while the rest of us struggled with Dad’s care is not something I’ll forgive anytime soon. Jeremy is newly single, but even his ex-girlfriend Fleur made an effort to help out a few times. And my husband, Hunter, and Ruth’s husband, Ellis, have gone out of their way to help too. Hell, even Hunter’s parents, Chiara and Wallace, have taken their share of turns with Dad, especially after Noah’s birth when I just couldn’t get myself here.

  It’s been a team effort: Team Walsh Family and Friends—minus Alicia. And yes, I suppose it’s possible I’m a little bitter about that.

  “Are you okay?” Tim asks me suddenly. I grimace and nod toward Dad.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I don’t actually mean about what’s happening with Dad. I mean . . . in general.” He says the words so carefully, it’s like he’s tiptoeing his way through a minefield. I raise an eyebrow at him.

  “Do you realize you’re deflecting?”

  “Do you realize you’re deflecting?” he fires back. We stare at each other, then at the same time, both break and reluctantly smile. “Look, everyone is busy, and we’re all a bit overwhelmed at the moment. But I just need to make sure you know I’m here if you want to talk.”

  “I’m fine,” I assure him.

  “I can’t tell what’s going on with you, Beth. Sometimes I worry that you don’t realize how little time he has left. Other times I worry that you’re all too aware of that and maybe . . . not really coping with it?”

  “There’s a lot happening,” I say, then I glance at my watch. “We really need to go.”

  Tim sighs, then gives me a quick hug before he walks around to slip into the driver’s seat. I look back at the house one last time, aware that after today, it’s no longer Dad’s house, but Dad’s old house.

  Until this year when his speech started fading, Dad had a saying—everything changes. For as long as I can remember, those words have been my father’s default response to pretty much everything that happened in our lives. He used the words so much when I was a kid that it felt like a corny, meaningless catchphrase—but there was no denying that my dad genuinely believed in the sentiment. Everything changes was his consolation when things were rough. It was his reminder to stay humble when things were good.

  And now, as I sit in the back of the car and the house gradually shrinks in the rearview mirror, those words cycle through my brain on a loop—a simple but unavoidable truth.

  The years have been rough and they’ve been kind and they’ve been long and they’ve been short . . . but everything changes, and the best and brightest era of our family’s life has drawn to a close.

  Grace

  October 4th, 1957

  My baby girl turns one today. For some people, a milestone like this is bittersweet. After all, a first birthday marks the shift from helpless infant to inquisitive toddler, and inquisitive toddler leads to precocious pre-schooler and so on and so forth until that helpless newborn is a fully fledged adult who must leave the nest. A first birthday marks proof positive that the innocent days of parenting a child are a finite resource.

  I don’t grieve the end of the babyhood era. I won’t miss the milky scent of her forehead, or the intensity of her gaze on my face as I feed her in the small hours. I won’t be one of those mothers who laments the passing of time or coos about being broody, dreaming of going back and beginning all over again. No, I celebrate the closing of this chapter because if history repeats itself, it means that my life will soon improve again. For the sake of my marriage and my sanity, this day really couldn’t have come soon enough.

  We didn’t have the money for a gift, which I feel so sad about. I’m sure for my first birthday my parents lavished me with toys I would have been too young to understand or appreciate, but my daughter’s childhood circumstances are very different. She’s growing up in a modest house in a modest neighborhood. She shares a room with her sister because although they constantly wake each other up, there are only three bedrooms, so in a family of six, everyone has to share.

  I grew up in a house so large my sister and I never had to be in the same room unless we wanted to. This baby is growing up in public housing where just scraping by is the norm, and when she makes friends, many of them will be used to birthdays where a cake is about the extent of the expense spared. I grew up in a place where fathers were bankers and lawyers and politicians, and mothers outsourced the cleaning and cake baking so they could spend their days at the salon. My mother was busy with her charity work and herself, and while she was very formal at times, I can’t ever remember doubting her love for me. She was steady and dependable in both mood and temperament, strong and capable as a mother and a woman. She wore the titles of wife and mother as a crown, not as an oppressive yoke over her shoulders.

  If I could change anything about the life I’m providing my daughter, it wouldn’t be gifts on her birthday or a nicer house in a better street. No, if I could change just one thing about our circumstances, I’d choose to change the mother in her scenario. I’m grateful for all of my childhood comforts, but I’m most grateful for the steadfast dependability I saw in my mother, and I just cannot offer that kind of certainty to my children. They deserve a better mother than the one God or fate or providence bestowed upon them, but I am selfish enough that I’ve prayed not to change for them, but for the courage to walk away. Motherhood has left me feeling both helpless and worn, and I am trapped here by my fears and failures. Like the skin on my stomach after all of these pregnancies so close together, I feel as if I’ve been stretched far too thin to ever go back to the way I was meant to be.

  It feels hopeless. I feel hopeless. But feelings, even loud feelings, lie sometimes, and I know that all too well after the past three years. Beth is one now, and history has proven that a first birthday in this family means the beginning of the end of the seemingly endless chaos in my mind and my soul. I’ve held on this long—by the skin of my teeth this time, perhaps, but I have managed to hold on and when the misery breaks, I’ll be proud of myself for that.

  Just a little while longer and I should start to feel human again. Warm emotion will gradually seep back into my soul and color will come back into my world. Silent tears will give way to genuine smiles. Sobs will give way to laughter. Fear will give way to hope. Rage will give way to calm. The urge to lash out and hurt will once again become a compulsion to love. If I can dam up the chaos . . . if I can hold back the storm . . . if I can just keep my grip on this life for a little while longer, the sun will come out from behind the clouds and life can begin again.

  Happy birthday, my darling Beth.

  May this year be the year life really begins for all of us.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Beth

  1996

  It’s Sunday, and Sunday has always meant an open invitation for dinner at Dad’s house. Once upon a time, Dad would cook a huge roast with all the trimmings, and he’d sit at the head of the table and remain the center of the conversation. Today Ruth’s done the cooking, and for the first time ever, Dad isn’t even here. He’s been un
settled since the move last week, and the doctors have asked us not to take him out on day-leave until he’s adjusted to the new arrangement. In his place at dinner tonight is a heavy, awkward grief. I suspect everyone else is trying just as hard as I am to be brave, but conversation has been through a series of violent starts and stops ever since we arrived. We just can’t get the chatter to flow the way it usually does . . . the way it should. There’s a sporadic throb in the center of my chest. My gaze is constantly drawn back to that empty chair at the head of the table.

  “I’m just going to put something out there,” Ruth says suddenly, breaking a silence that stretched long enough for us to devour the meal she’d prepared. “Dad gave me and Ellis the company. The rest of you should decide what to do with the house.”

  Jeremy arrived back from Indonesia this morning and he’s unkempt, jet-lagged and cranky. He sighs impatiently and stands to slide a bottle of merlot out of the wine rack Dad built beside the sideboard. Jeremy and Ruth are twins, and even now in their forties, they are close enough to fight almost constantly. Dad used to say they were ‘just too alike’, and I think there might be something in that.

  “What?” Ruth prompts him, snarky and defensive.

  “Stop trying to be a hero,” Jeremy says impatiently. He rummages for a bottle opener, removes the cork, then starts filling glasses in silence. As he moves toward me, I set my hand over my glass, and he shrugs and continues around the table to Hunter. “Dad gave you the business because you’re the only one of us who worked there. You built that company almost as much as he did over the past few decades.”

  “Walsh Homes is worth a lot of money, and it’s not fair that I should get that and a cut of the house,” Ruth says stiffly.

  “Well, it’s also not fair that we should have to watch you play the martyr now then listen to you complain about how put out you are for the next forty years,” Jeremy says abruptly. I’ve been aware all night that there’s a storm brewing among my siblings. I can see it in their stiff language . . . hear it in the way they are raising their voices. They’re all looking for a reason to fight to distract us all from the empty space at the head of the table. I don’t want to watch them quarrel, but if this is the only way to break the silence, I’ll sit back and let them go for it. “Whatever we’re doing with this house, we’re deciding it together.”