One cold morning, grabbing my bag and pile of listing documents, I headed to the front door for another fun day of real estate uncertainty when Enemi said, “Your father has an eye doctor appointment today.”
“So?” I grumbled, wondering why this would concern me. Dad’s medical visits were usually routine, ending with the proclamation, “He’s in perfect health.”
“He wants you to go with us.”
Stopping dead in my tracks, I sighed, annoyed. While Dad’s medical appointments weren’t on a daily basis like Mom’s had been, he had a regular monthly visit to the eye doctor for the past two years, but my presence had never been required.
“But I’ve never been there before. Why now?”
“I think he just feels more comfortable with you there.”
Patting my shoulder as she opened the door, Enemi giggled. “Who knows why old people do what they do, or why they want what they want.” Then, with a look of all seriousness, she added, “You know his eyes are getting worse. He just may want a little extra support.”
Walking to the car, I thought about my already exhausting schedule that day. With a new buyer wanting me to explore every home within a twenty-five-mile radius, I wasn’t sure I could break away. After all, doctor visits on a good day took at least a couple of hours.
But, remembering the chat we’d had until 2:00 a.m. the night before about what it was like when he was little during the Great Depression, the war that followed, that I came to be named after him (my mom’s sweet idea), and how he’d say at the end of every conversation, “I love you,” I pulled out my phone, made some calls, and rescheduled my entire day.
I found myself hoping someone was watching upstairs. Maybe all this would make my way to heaven a little easier.
Three hours later, I met Enemi and Dad at the ophthalmologist. Walking into the waiting room, I saw my father sitting in his wheelchair in a corner and Enemi tapping away on her phone.
“Hi, Dad, I’m here,” I said, kissing his cheek.
“Hi, honey. I’m so glad you came. I hate these visits,” he mumbled, absently rubbing his forehead, head bowed as if in deep prayer.
I wondered how bad it could be to have a doctor look in your eyes. “What do they do to you?”
“They’re trying to save my eyesight, so they put some medicine into my eye.”
What’s so tough about that? I wondered, feeling a little irritated at the inconvenience of being there.
“Do they just put some drops in?”
He stared at me blankly, and I wondered if he’d even heard me.
“Dad, do they just give you eye drops?”
He scratched his chin and looked around the room at the other poor souls waiting for their turn. “No, he has to stick a needle into my eye to get the medicine all the way to the back,” he said reluctantly.
Bingo! No wonder he wanted me there.
“Ugh! That sounds awful. How many of these have you had?”
“One a month for I don’t know how long.”
Guilt washed over me as I found myself thinking, How did I not know this? I thought I knew everything about my parents and their ailments. How could I become so remiss as to not understand how horrible these visits were for him?
“Dad, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
He patted my hand, his signal to say it was okay and that he was glad I was there.
An hour passed. Sitting confined in his prison on wheels caused his broken body a lot of pain.
“How much longer?” he moaned. “My back is aching.”
Seeing the sweat on his neck soaking his collar, I looked over at Enemi, lost in her phone playing some stupid game called Candy Crush.
“Let me go find out.”
As I walked past the other elderly patients, heads also bowed, I wondered if they too were beginning to live in the dark.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” I called, patting the countertop of the nurse’s station. “Hello! Is anyone there?”
As I waited impatiently, I found myself wondering what it must be like to be my dad. In her final years, my mother constantly lamented over the loss of her bodily functions, but he rarely said a word.
After she passed away, I’d often wondered what would be worse: to live with no legs and a sharp memory like my father, or a body with mobility but a brain floating on a cruise ship somewhere in the Pacific Ocean for an extended vacation around the world, but not knowing where in the hell it was. With my own body beginning its descent down the rabbit hole of ailments, nothing sounded good to me. Getting older was all just one big shit show.
Maybe medical science is letting us live longer than we should, I thought as I looked at all the ninety-plus-year-olds sitting with their caregivers. The Hippocratic oath prioritized preserving life at all costs, not only when the patient lived in their own personal hell, but when the family did as well. I swear if I get like this, I’m going to tell the kids to get my wheelchair to the Golden Gate Bridge and turn around. I’ll take care of the rest. This is no way to live.
All of a sudden, I heard, “Can I help you?”
From behind the counter, a perky little nurse with Betty Boop lips appeared.
“Jack Madden has been waiting over an hour. How much longer?”
Looking over the roster, her gleaming Pepsodent smile lit up. “Only four ahead of him.”
Suddenly, I felt my body want to lunge over the wall between us, grab her throat, and shake her silly.
“Four! That means at least another half hour.” My voice rose, trembling in anger.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” Her plastic grin dimmed. “It won’t be much longer.”
“Me too,” I hissed. “It’s not like I don’t have anything better to do. You know, a lot of us have jobs to get back to.”
Marching back to my father, I sat down and held his hand. “Not too much longer. Can you close your eyes and take a rest?” Knowing Dad could sleep anywhere at a moment’s given notice, my suggestion immediately sent him into a peaceful snore. Forty-five minutes later, we were called in.
“Hi, Mr. Madden,” an annoyingly happy nurse with Little Orphan Annie curls and a turned-up nose sang. “Good to see you again.”
Interrupting her happy reunion, I demanded, “How long do these things take?”
Shocked at my rudeness, she picked up dad’s file, and in a high-pitched, pissy tone announced, “When the doctor is finished.”
Great. Made a new friend today.
Five minutes later, another nurse waddled in.
“Mr. Madden, we need to get these drops in your eyes. I know they sting, but they will open up the pupil so the doctor can give you the shot.”
Having heard it all before, Dad replied, “Yeah, yeah.”
Tilting his head back, down went the liquid, drop by drop, into his good eye. The other one was too far gone.
“Okay, we’ll let that sit for a few minutes. Now let’s get you into the exam chair.”
After she pressed the button on the wall to call for help, two buff male attendants with rolled-up sleeves exposing arms of steel arrived to lift Dad out of the wheelchair and onto the examining lounge.
“The doctor will come in shortly.”
As she went merrily on her way, I thought about all the times he had to endure this nonsense. I also found myself burning with remorse that I was never with him. God knows I didn’t miss any of Mom’s appointments. Why had I become so lax with his care?
Maybe it was partly because I knew Enemi could handle it. I was a busy woman after all. But perhaps it was because I was sick of the whole goddamn caregiving thing. From the time I was twenty years old, Mom’s health had begun to deteriorate with her first mastectomy, and so began my daughterly duties.
The year was 1972 and I was beginning intersession at the University of San Francisco—a six-week period between fall and spring semester where students were encouraged to take a class. I always felt making money was a better plan, so I worked every January at the upper
crust department store, I. Magnin’s, selling designer clothing to rich, snotty women.
When the chance of my mother needing a mastectomy became a reality, I left the possibility of a paycheck and went home to care for her instead. Dad helped in the way he could, but he fainted at the sight of blood. It was a routine I’d find myself in for the next thirty years, leaving my life to help my mom as one ailment after another spread all over her body. It wasn’t long before much of our time together was either spent in a hospital or a doctor’s office.
Remorse was now pouring over my self-perceived neglect of Dad’s care like warm maple syrup on our Sunday pancakes. Before I knew it, I was drowning in it.
“Jackie,” Dad called, waking me from my bad girl moment. “I think this is going to help. Thank you for bringing me.”
I patted his arm. “No problem. I’m happy to be here.”
For the next twenty minutes, we again sat in silence: he obviously in prayer, me wallowing in all the ways I’d abandoned him in the past. Just then, a man-child entered the room.
“Hi, Jack,” his doctor said, as if he were an old drinking buddy ponying up to the bar. Obviously, they were now on a first name basis since these monthly appointments had gone on for so long. “Let’s take a look.”
With his magnifying glasses, Dr. Thirty-something peered deep into the black cavern just beyond my father’s blue eyes.
“All right, get ready. Here we go.”
Taking a syringe the length of a ruler, he pierced the center of the eyeball, shot in whatever the hell he was shooting, then slowly drew it out.
“Okay, that should do it for now. I’ll see you in a month.”
See you in a month? Wait a minute. How’s he doing? Is this shit even working?
It was time Mr. Fresh-out-of-med-school and I had a little conversation.
“Doctor, can I talk to you in private?” I asked softly so Dad wouldn’t hear.
Fortunately, because my father’s hearing had also become impaired, we didn’t need to leave the room to have our tête-àtête.
“What are you doing and is it working?” I whispered, my voice becoming less affable.
“Your dad has macular degeneration.”
“I know that, but what the hell is it?”
“He still has his periphery vision.”
Annoyed to the point of wanting to rip my hair out, my voice sizzled as I said, “I still don’t understand what he can see and if this is doing any good.”
Working on maintaining his bedside manner, the young doctor drew a picture of the eyeball: a circle with the pupil and iris in the middle.
“Okay, this is the eye.”
Then, taking a black marker out of his pocket, he covered the entire center of the diagram in black.
“In a nut shell, this is what your dad sees.”
Horrified, my eyes misted over. I knew he couldn’t see much. I had been told a million times. But visualizing what it was actually like to be him, the true fact that his world had gone black, I died inside. No wonder he closed them all the time. Life is so much better living in memory when you can’t see today.
“With the medication, we’re just trying to keep what he has left.”
“So it’s not going to get any better.”
“No.”
“And what can he see now?”
“His other eye is gone and there’s virtually nothing left here either.”
“Then why are we torturing him by coming every month just to sit in the waiting room for an hour and a half for a shot that will not give him back his sight?”
With his pinched face showing his annoyance, he stuck his pen in his pocket and said with a huff, “He has another appointment next month.” The young doctor left the room.
Furious, I wanted to kick over all the medical apparatuses in the room. My sweet dad had been led to believe all this shit would bring back his eyesight. These appointments were just lessons in futility and a waste of a lot of money.
Goddamn doctors! Yeah, let’s treat the patient even if it does no good. You get paid and they get to live in an empty soda can of false belief.
“What did the doctor have to say?” Dad asked, interrupting my angry moment. “Am I getting better?”
Looking at this soul who only deserved the best in life, I felt rage burning through my entire body. I wanted to lie and tell him it was working and that we’d be back in a month. But this was a moment he deserved the truth so he could once again move on. Dad had a miraculous way of accepting bad news. He might shut down for a while, maybe even days, but when he surrendered the pain back to God, a trick he was always trying to teach me, he moved on.
Leaning in, nearly cheek-to-cheek so he could hear my words clearly, I relayed, “Dad, your eyes have gotten really bad. There’s nothing more they can do.”
“But I’m going to see again, right? I have all those books I need to read,” he implored.
Studying his face filled with optimism, I wanted to die. He always believed in the best, that life would be kind and God would be fair.
“No, Dad. You’re never going to be able to read again. I’m so sorry.”
Dropping his chin to his chest, he went still. Then, too upset to speak, I saw him mouth the words, “It’s time to go home. We’re not going to do this again.”
As we walked out of the clinic that day, the rage I felt toward the medical profession was greater than any anger I had experienced in my life. Even more than struggling by myself to keep four teenagers out of harm’s way as a single mother, or the time my mother passed away in a cold hospital where the care she was given diminished to nothing more than a pulse reading every few hours.
But my true fury was with God. Where was He now? Dad prayed all the time for guidance and help. He said it worked, but I was afraid He was on some island in the South Pacific, taking a break from all the madness in the world, with no cell phone service. One thing was for sure—he wasn’t listening to my cries.
Wheeling Dad to the car, I stopped for a moment, stood behind his chair like so many other times in the past, and wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him close.
“Dad, I love you so much,” I began, swallowing the tears that would come later. “I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but we’ll find a way to make it better.”
Then, kissing him one last time, I turned him over to Enemi and let her take it from there. It was time I went back to work.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I found myself dealing with a recurring habit since he moved in: I began to sob uncontrollably.
“This is just too much!” I screamed, slamming my fists on the steering wheel. “When will he get a break?”
Mopping up my water-soaked cheeks, I worried how I would make this right for him. I could buy books on tape. That would help to take care of the unread library he wanted to tackle. I could ply him with extra treats. I could spend more time with him during the day. I could, I could, I could . . . But nothing would make this truly okay.
As I sat on the side of the road trying to regain my composure, I realized the most important thing I could do for my father was never lie to him. While some information might be painful and not what he wanted to hear, he deserved the truth. After all, it was what he always gave me.
1955 - David, Dad, Tim, and Me.
1979 - Dancing with my favorite partner.
2010 - Our last dance together.
1958 - David, Mom, Michael, Dad, Tim, and Me.
1948 - Jack and Lassie Madden begin their life together.
2004 - The story begins as a single mother. Me, Timmy, Jenny, Lauren, Michelle.
1952 - From the moment I was born, he was my soul mate.
1971 - Dad and his favorite girl.
CHAPTER 12
Untold Sins
Christmas came and went without a lot of fanfare and I eventually stopped seething once I saw that Dad had accepted the bad news about his eyes. He was beginning to love spending his days with his headset on while li
stening to the latest novel on the New York Times best seller’s list.
“I see you’re enjoying that story,” I said as he took the headphones off to have a snack.
“Yes! What a life that Kennedy family lived, and so much tragedy,” he said, grabbing a chocolate chip cookie. “This has to be one of my favorites so far.”
This recent story was After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family—1968 to the Present—a time in history Dad seemed connected to.
I had never seen my father look so happy about a presidency than when John Kennedy took office in 1961. The fact that an Irish Catholic had risen to that level, plus that they were the same age, brought him indescribable joy.
“You know, the Irish had it rough in this country for many years,” he began. “We had to fight hard to be noticed as anything other than drunks and bums.” Savoring every morsel, he chewed on his cookie before continuing, “There was a political cartoonist in the late 1800s that pictured us as barbarians. I think his name was Thomas Nast. He coined the phrase ‘No Irish need apply.’”
As a little girl, while my father rarely had much to say, the one thing he did talk about was how proud he was to be both Irish and Catholic and that, in his humble opinion, those were parts of our heritage that we should be grateful for as well. Our roots were steeped in tradition and tenacity that helped a beaten-down part of the human race to rise above poverty and illiteracy.
“Why do you think it was so hard for them? It wasn’t like they weren’t white or didn’t speak English.”
Gobbling up the last bit of his treat, he began my history lesson of the day.
“I think it’s because the Irish were so poor when they first arrived to escape the Potato Famine. Nobody had any skills other than working in the fields, and when we came, we came in droves to the urban areas, upsetting those who already lived here. Kind of like how people feel about the Chinese and Indians these days that have bought so much property in the Bay Area. Plus, the United States was mostly Protestant at the time.” “Yeah, I can see how that could have happened. People fear what they don’t understand. I’m sure all the new Roman Catholics setting up shop must have really made the Protestants crazy, especially when they started building churches on every corner.”
The Promise I Kept Page 10