All That Ails You: The Adventures of a Canine Caregiver

by Mark J. Asher

  After Carla waved goodbye to Marjorie, and excused herself, I took to my perch inside the doorway.

  “I was wondering when you’d get here,” Walter scoffed when Mark reached him.

  “Sorry, you’re not the only obligation in my life,” Mark responded, annoyed by his father’s welcome.

  “Listen, get me out of this place, I can’t stand it,” Walter told his son. “The food, the people, the room . . . everything.”

  “Dad, you can’t fend for yourself any longer, and you don’t have the money to hire people to take care of you.”

  “My luck, I come down to the end of my life, and lose almost everything I have in a God-damn Ponzi scheme.”

  “You’re not the only one who lost money; we all did,” Mark replied. “I realize it’s not a good situation, but life goes on.”

  “For you maybe,” Walter snapped.

  “Some life… I either feel guilty that I’m not doing enough for you or resentful that I spend as much time helping you as I do.”

  Mark looked at Walter for a moment without saying anything. You could see he felt badly about his harsh tone.

  “Dad, it’s not that bad of a place,” he reasoned. “I have a friend who told me her mother got great care here. She also said there’s three times as many women as men. Who knows, maybe you’ll find someone nice.”

  “Just what I need after 25 years of marriage to your mother, and then this last nightmare—another broad.”

  “I don’t know what else you want me to say,” Mark replied, exasperated. “You’ll adjust.”

  “Alright, let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  “You never want to talk about anything, you just like to complain. And I don’t have the time or the energy to listen to it.”

  “Then get the hell out of here, and leave me alone.”

  With that, Mark turned, and left SunRidge.

  5

  After Mark left, and Walter returned to his room, Marjorie gathered a few things and made her way to the activity room to play Bingo. She went whenever she felt up to it, and always looked forward to spending time with her close group of lady friends. Whenever we were together, I would tag along.

  From a dog’s perspective, Bingo rates up there as one of the most tedious ways humans choose to pass their time. But, if you dared to skip one of the three scheduled weekly games, you would get a great deal of grief from several of the residents at SunRidge.

  Despite my feelings about the game, Marjorie always added a twist that made it fun for me. Alongside her card, she played a special card for me that had the word “TREAT” in large letters beneath the “BINGO” heading. If I won, she’d call TREAT, and I’d race to Tamara, the social coordinator, who called the numbers, to collect my prize. Usually it was a small rawhide twist or a heart-shaped treat.

  Like everyone who plays Bingo, you need luck to win. So on this afternoon, I lay at Marjorie’s feet, falling in and out of sleep, listening to the ladies talk about their lives and the latest gossip, while I waited for my good fortune to strike.

  At one point, I heard Marjorie telling her friends about the argument Walter had with his son in the hallway. The consensus of the group was that Walter wouldn’t last much longer at SunRidge. However, one lady, Louise Brooks, shocked everyone when she confessed that although Walter acted like a brute, she found him to be attractive in a way she couldn’t describe.

  “Call me crazy,” she said, “but I think there’s a soft side to him.”

  To which Mary Jo Pickerton quickly responded, “Didn’t Hitler have one as well?”

  The ladies all laughed.

  “I was excited when I saw that another male was moving in,” Evelyn Michaels chimed in from the next table over. “So much for that.”

  “What’s the difference?” Estelle Hadley asked. “Most of them just want to be taken care of, and I’m done with that.”

  I waited and waited, but it wasn’t my lucky day for Bingo. Joan Mangini looked over at me, sensing my boredom, and said, “Poor sweetheart hasn’t won anything yet today.”

  “Maybe he just needs to cross his paws,” Mary Jo said with a laugh. “That’s what my sweet old dog, Rusty used to like to do. Cutest thing in the world.”

  I decided to get up and head back to the front office. I was halfway there, when I smelled ginger cookies in the air! Jamie, the kitchen manager, baked them every so often in the afternoons for the residents. The occasion was the one exception to the dining room boundary line, and it always got me super-excited.

  “How’s my good buddy doing today?” Jamie asked, noticing me standing near the doorway leading to the kitchen.

  Dogs respond to enthusiasm, and Jamie never had a shortage of it.

  “You smelled something good, didn’t you boy?” he said, patting my mid-section like we were football teammates.

  I sat down and made my body rigid as a soldier about to say, Yes sir!

  “I know these are your favorites,” he said, while walking back over to the cookie tray on the counter.

  One thing about Jamie—he could be a bit long-winded before delivering the goods.

  “Well, let’s just see what we’ve got here.”

  I inched a few feet closer, licking my chops.

  “They sure smell good.”

  Jamie touched one of the cookies to see if they were ready.

  “Just a little bit longer, Wrigley . . . I don’t want you to burn your tongue.”

  Don’t worry about my tongue, Jamie—that cookie is going straight to my stomach.

  Finally, a minute later, Jamie walked over with a cookie in his hand. He broke it in half, and gave me the larger piece. I half-chewed it before quickly swallowing, so I could get the rest of the cookie. Jamie knew me well.

  “Okay, Wrigley, but just one more piece and that’s it.”

  He handed me the other half without delay.

  Even though Jamie never gave me more than one cookie, I always sat and stared at him, hoping to guilt him into changing his mind. When it proved futile, I would intently watch him scrape the cookies from the tray onto a plate, and then follow him, sniffing all the way, as he set them out for the residents and staff to enjoy.

  After my dinner that evening, I followed Tamara around, as she made preparations for one of the more popular events on the SunRidge social calendar—movie night. It took place every Saturday night at 6:30pm in the entertainment room. My unofficial, self-assigned role on these occasions was as greeter and popcorn eater.

  When the time came, I stood at the door of the entertainment room, as the residents filed in, welcoming them with sniffs and kisses, and getting rubs and scratches in return. After everyone was seated, I milled about, visiting with a few of the residents who wanted more of my company.

  While Ann Hanrady was telling me about her last dog—a bulldog named Seymour—I looked up and was surprised to see Walter slowly make his way into the room. He took a seat in the back row, and sat stoically, waiting for the movie to begin. I didn’t think of approaching him, and from what I saw, nobody else did either.

  My socializing phase abruptly came to an end, as it always did on movie nights, when I heard the first pop coming from the microwave in the back of the room. I rushed over and began dancing on my hind legs, next to Tamara, while she stood waiting for the popcorn to be ready.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…” she announced, looking at me, and then back at the residents, “For your pre-movie entertainment, I present to you, Wrigley, the dancing dog.”

  The residents clapped and laughed.

  “Go, Wrigley, go,” I heard one of them yell out.

  “He’s a regular Fred Astaire,” another one said.

  “He beats watching previews any day,” Marjorie added.

  When the microwave stopped, Tamara divvied up the popcorn into small bowls to those who wanted some. She never gave me any, because she knew I would make the rounds and sit beside the most generous seniors, who were willing to share a few kernels of joy, and
that I would happily help myself to any popcorn that accidently ended up on the floor.

  Marjorie was always my first stop, and she didn’t disappoint. After I tried my luck with a few others, I looked up and met eyes with Walter, who was consuming a rather large portion of popcorn. His menacing glare was unambiguous. It clearly said: Don’t even think about it, dog.

  Realizing there was no more good stuff to get, I found a comfortable spot on the ground next to Marjorie, and drifted off to sleep. Once in a while, if the movie had an animal prominently featured in it, I’d watch, but most times I’d close my eyes and hope to dream of chasing a squirrel through a forest with no trees.

  After the film ended—this one was As Good As It Gets—there was a short discussion amongst Tamara and the residents.

  Although Walter never said much to the other residents at SunRidge, he wasn’t shy about giving his opinion on whatever came to his mind.

  “Now, there’s a realistic premise,” he said sarcastically, soon after the conversation began. “A pretty, young blonde falls for an old curmudgeon.”

  “I really enjoyed it,” Dolores Johnson said.

  “Leave it to a woman to believe sap like that,” Walter responded.

  “Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson did win Academy awards for Best Actress and Best Actor for their performances,” Tamara, the film buff of the bunch, added.

  “Who cares, it’s completely unrealistic,” Walter rebutted.

  “For goodness sake, Walter, it’s a movie,” Marjorie chimed in. “What’s life without fantasies and dreams?”

  “It’s called reality,” Walter cracked. “You might try it sometime.”

  A dog can do many things, and mediating is one of them. I waited for a couple more verbal volleys to go back and forth between Walter and the others in the group, before I began to whimper.

  “Sounds like Wrigley wants to add something to the discussion,” Dolores said, smiling.

  I whimpered again, this time paddling my front paws in the air and landing on the side of Marjorie’s chair.

  “What is it, sweet boy?” she asked me.

  “I think he’s asking, ‘Are you positive there’s no more popcorn?’” Tamara said with laugh.

  “Dumb dog probably just needs to take a piss,” Walter blurted out.

  Wouldn’t it be funny, I thought, if I sheepishly walked over, lifted my leg, and spritzed on Walter’s scooter by the door. That would give him the satisfaction of being right.

  As it was, my whimpering did the trick. The bickering ended, and Walter left the room, while a group of ladies went on talking about their favorite male actors.

  6

  It didn’t take long for Walter to wear out his welcome with Carla, or any of her fellow caregivers for that matter. She requested—insisted might be a more accurate way of putting it—to have someone else care for him. Everyone has a breaking point, no matter how tolerant or kind, and Carla had reached hers.

  Theresa was cutting my nails, when Carla came into the front office one afternoon visibly upset.

  “I can’t take that man for a minute more!” she cried. “He’s intolerable, he’s rude, and he’s impossible to please.”

  “Carla, try to calm down and tell me what happened,” Jane said from her desk.

  “Walter called me a worthless piece of shit, because I put his water down where he didn’t want it.”

  As the conversation continued, I could sense Jane and Theresa were finding it difficult to respond. They were caught between caring for a resident—no matter how ornery—and keeping the sanity of one of their favorite caregivers.

  “He needs a robot, not a caregiver. Find someone else,” Carla said, adamantly, having no such dilemma.

  With that, Carla turned and stormed out of the office. Theresa started to get up to go after her, but Jane motioned to leave her be.

  I felt badly for Carla. I observed her and the rest of the caregivers on a daily basis, and it was impossible not to admire them. The residents depended on them to do the simple things they could no longer do for themselves, and they did it with smiles on their faces, and love in their hearts. These were angels who deserved to be appreciated, not belittled.

  I waited for Theresa to finish fiddling with my nails, and then left the room to follow Carla’s scent. It led me to—of all places—one of the storage rooms. The door was open wide enough for me to slip through, and I found her sitting on a stack of boxes. Her head was buried in her hands. She didn’t feel my presence, until I licked her elbow.

  Without saying anything, she lifted her hands away from her eyes. Then, she began slowly stroking my ears back, over and over again. After several minutes, her tears stopped and she gave me a faint smile.

  “I got into this profession to help people,” she told me, looking exhausted, “but I’m learning that some people don’t want your help. They just want you to be a punching bag for all of their frustrations.”

  I lay down beside her, and listened as she continued to vent. When she got everything out of her system, she looked down at me and said, “I wish I were a dog today, Wrigley. I just feel like falling asleep in the sun and forgetting about life for a while. But I guess it’s time to go out and face the world again.”

  I don’t know if Jane forced it upon Walter or he took it upon himself, but a few days later there were a pair of private caregivers taking care of him. A stocky man named Rudy Hemen helped a few hours during the day, and a young Filipina woman named Corina Navarro assisted Walter in the evening. They seemed pleasant enough, but both were cool when it came to their enthusiasm for the house dog.

  Unfortunately, neither one of them was able to perform any magic on Walter’s disposition. He was still the same cantankerous and contentious person he had been since arriving at SunRidge.

  It didn’t take long for Corina to realize what she was in for.

  One evening, shortly after she began working for Walter, a new resident named Ruth Redderson tripped and fell in the hallway. I was resting inside of Marjorie’s doorway when it happened, and went over to lick up some of the milk, which Ruth had spilled on her sweater and pants.

  Walter’s door was open at the time, and Corina—having heard the fall—walked out to assist the resident. She helped Ruth to her feet, and then retrieved a towel from Walter’s room to clean up the mess.

  When Corina returned to Walter’s room, she got her first taste of his prickly nature.

  “What were you doing out there?” I heard him ask, insistently.

  “A woman fell, I was helping her up,” Corina replied.

  “Listen, when you’re here, you work for me,” he said sternly. “Do you understand?”

  “But, I was just helping…”

  “I don’t care what you were doing,” Walter responded sharply, cutting Corina off. “When you’re here, you work for me.”

  When I went back to Marjorie’s room, she was standing in her doorway, having listened to the altercation.

  “What a selfish, old fool,” she said, disgusted. “He had better get used to this place, because God keeps people like him around until they learn the lesson of kindness.”

  7

  Over the next couple of weeks Walter kept a low profile, and although I saw him once in a while, he spent most of his time in his room with the door closed. He didn’t partake in one of the most out-of-the-ordinary events I can remember at SunRidge.

  I was fast asleep in front of the fireplace in the living room, when I heard the sound of chairs moving. As I opened my eyes, I saw a few of the staff members preparing the space for guests. Standing off to the side, waiting for things to be set up, were two local newspaper reporters, who had come to interview the seniors for a story on how they felt about today’s culture.

  I got up and greeted the young woman and man with excitement and curiosity, poking my wet nose around their briefcases, notebooks, and recording equipment. They tolerated my invasion with smiles and pats on my head.

  As I began shifting my
attention from the reporters to the arriving seniors, I picked up Marjorie’s scent, and looked around until I spotted her coming into the room to join the group.

  “How’s my sweet boy doing?” she asked, when I went over to her.

  I wagged and wiggled and panted, seeing her for the first time all day.

  She reached her hand into a large bag at her side, and I sensed a surprise.

  “Look what one of my grandchildren got for you,” she said, holding up a monkey for me to see.

  I took the monkey by the tail with my mouth, and tossed him in the air to myself a few times, before following Marjorie to find a place to sit in the front row.

  While I became acquainted with my new friend, which it turned out, had no stuffing, but instead, a plastic bottle for a body, Marjorie made small talk with a few of the residents. After all of the seniors had filed into the room and were seated, the reporters got everyone’s attention, and introduced themselves as Randi Reese and Tim Kellerman. As they began to explain the impetus for their story, and the objective for the discussion, Sandi Schifman interrupted and joked, “So, you want to hear how we all walked to school in the snow, right?” The reporters chuckled and smiled, and then began to ask the residents a series of questions.

  The seniors, some of whom were born before electricity, and all who had experienced life-altering inventions like the television and the automobile, gave the reporters an earful on how they viewed the fast-changing world.

  I drifted in and out of sleep, repositioned myself often, stretched, yawned, and waited for it to end. I would have gotten up and gone back to my bed in the front office, but Marjorie was enjoying herself, and I wanted to be with her.

  Meanwhile, I listened as the conversation carried on, one opinion after the next.

  “I love my great-grandkids, but much of what they do . . . I don’t know…” one senior said, at a loss for words. “It’s strange seeing boys playing baseball on a TV screen for hours and hours at a time, instead of going out and playing with their friends. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”