I sank deeper into depression, as I felt as if I had failed, in not making enough money with my writing, to keep her at home. And the feeling of failure mounted as the family spent the remaining funds we had available to take care of Pop—confronting me with the necessity of placing him in the nursing home with Mama, not because he was “so bad off” that he needed to be there but because there was no longer enough money to keep someone round the clock in the home. I had cousins who thought that I should move in with him and take care of him, but I knew that was not an option for my sanity, much less my life as a writer.
I felt helpless in the face of my next great decision: I would have to, in effect, have my father locked away in an institution. And again, I could not help but feel that I would be putting my father into a prison.
* * *
I have to put my father in the nursing home was the guilt-inducing, constant thought in my life. I felt like the decision was killing me.
For some reason I recalled images of my father from my childhood: driving his tractor on hills on the land where I grew up, sometimes actually plowing fields and grading land standing up. Other scenes of him from my childhood in the country came to mind: my father with his father’s single-barreled shotgun, teaching me to hunt; working with him gathering bales of straw in the fields; learning to drive on his tractor, at age ten; working in winters with him cutting pulp wood trees, then trucking them to the saw mill on the other side of the town.
And I had my memories from just seven years before, when I got out: he was still in fine physical shape, still running his landscaping company, still a handsome seventy-six. He was still doing what amounted to landscape architecture, sculpting the land with his tractors, vigorous and exacting. And, Deacon Hopkins would still stand tall in church, leading the congregation in prayer—a fine figure of a man.
We bonded more than ever before, during that time, often travelling the eighty miles from Danville to Duke University, where I had doctors do his initial diagnosis and treatment for the Alzheimer’s. And for a while we worked together, when I took over a big job landscaping a bank, with him marveling, proudly, at how I was able to read and execute the landscape architect’s plans.
All that seemed to remain of my father now was a shell, the brain matter, the cortex filled with protein tangles and tau malformation, the imprint of Alzheimer’s, allowing him to live on as Daniel Hopkins but little more. Memories of my son Roderick exist there, in his mind, and in mine—along with the pain of Rod’s sudden passing, from a heart condition, when he was but twelve—some fifteen years before.
I began to think of Rod a lot during this time, because he had looked somewhat like my father, and I have kept a treasured Polaroid of the three of us (taken in front of a prison visiting room vending machine) on my writing desk. Nowadays, it seemed like every look from my father, as I withdrew from his presence, reminded me of the longing I remembered in Rod’s eyes when I left him with his mother or saw him leave after visits in various prisons. I sensed the same with my father giving me the same long looks when I’d leave after visiting him out in the country.
It seemed as if I could always sense a bit of anger and bewilderment at my leaving, my leaving equating to treachery, all that was now happening around him coming down to a sense of blame upon me, that it was my fault. At the same time, there was an unqualified love I could feel when he saw me.
I realized, in one of those moments that, ironically, I had now become his father figure. This realization, mixed with both guilt and moral obligation, gave me a new sense of purpose, and became a balm of sorts, for the loneliness of my existence in Danville.
* * *
The tune on the radio was Miles Davis’s “All Blues,” next switching up to “Blue in Green.” I was blue, and in deep, psychic pain. I could not help but wonder, I endured so much, why must I go through still more, alone?
It was time to get out of the house, to go for a long walk, hope that the air of spring might rejuvenate me. I headed east, stopping by my analyst’s office for an unscheduled visit, thinking that one of the few niceties of living in a small city is that you might actually have your analyst’s office but a block around the corner.
Back before things had gotten worse for him, I had taken Pop to see a neuro-psychologist, because of his complaints of “dizziness.” After a series of visits and tests, she told me, “There’s not much I can do to help your father. It’s just the progression of the disease. But I’ve noticed you seem a little stressed out. Maybe you’d like to come in for some therapy?”
Telling her now during this impromptu visit about the struggle I was having concerning my father, she offered her opinion: “He will probably be disoriented when you put him in the nursing home and go downhill.” Thanks a f**kin’ lot, I think. Then she added, “It will probably be better that he go in while his wife is still there.” Thanks again, for raising the idea that Mama is not guaranteed to be around much longer. “That is, if you are lucky enough to place him there.” Now I really appreciated that one. Food for thought—or worry, depending on one’s mindset.
Walking back up West Main, my mind searching for an anchor, I thought that maybe I needed to take heart in the struggle of it all, to look upon the situation as if I were still a member of the Black Panther Party, working to free myself of the fetters of everyday life, so that my work might someday soar into the consciousness of humanity (or less grandly, maybe make a bit of difference in the world).
As I passed the Averett University Library the scent of the magnolias there held me for a moment, and I decided to go inside. Students were at work on computers. As I walked among the shelves I thought of the three college readers in which my work had already been published, and visualized students in libraries all over the country being able to pull the book I was writing from the shelves, or studying my words in class. I thought of how some lost and searching young prisoner might one day encounter my book on the shelf and obtain some hope.
When I was fighting against the idea of closing down the landscaping business my father had founded, my analyst had told me, “You have to realize that people might soon forget your father’s business, but they will remember him for many years if you get your book in print.”
Maybe this is how my father—my family, my son—will have to live on? I thought. Yeah, I like that thought. I have to break free; I cannot worry myself to death about my father. He will have to live on through me, just as my son has had to—which made me flash back on the dream in which my son’s spirit had merged into my body.
The weight of those thoughts converted to still more pressure upon me to concentrate upon my writing in the future, but at that moment, I wanted to get away from such thinking, get outside once more, onto the sidewalks of Danville.
As I walked, the refrain from a Curtis Mayfield song filled my brain: “Got to keep on pushin’ . . . Long as I have the strength . . .” The tune brought to mind the one Alzheimer’s support group meeting I’d gone to some months before. It had been too much for me, all the shit those people were going through I did not want to imagine, couldn’t bear to imagine.
But the words of this one black lady who was there remained embedded in my memory. After describing the wandering, rambling, damn-near oblivious behavior of her husband, she had said, “I took care of him for nearly ten years, now. And if God gives me the strength, I’ll take care of him for ten more.” So what was my duty now—should I have less determination for my father?
I wondered that maybe my openness to feeling had made me soft since my release from prison, that maybe I needed some of that hard-ass gangster revolutionary shit running through my veins again. You’ve been livin’ like your heart is pumpin’ Kool-Aid or somethin’, I told myself. Maybe it’s time for you to get hard again.
On the walk back home I encountered David, an old associate from my days “in the street,” who, with age, had straightened up, and begun a walking program. (As fate would have it, this was the brother who had sold me
the bullets for my Magnum the night of the foolish heist that had netted me the life sentence.)
Retired from the street life now, he asked about my father, whom he knew from growing up in the black community called Brucetown with us. I told him of the dilemma I was facing with Pop perhaps having to go into the nursing home with Mom. “I’m not tryin’ to tell you what to do,” he said to me, “but usually when they go into the nursing home, they don’t come out. It’s all downhill from there.”
Now I really didn’t want to hear this, so I quickly broke off the conversation, and as I made my way home, I remembered how Mama had told me, during my last year at Nottoway Prison, “I just want to stay alive until you make it back home.” I had helped to extend her life, and Pop’s, for the five years I’d been back; and though friends and family members would say to me nice things like, “God bless you, Derrell, for all you’re doing for your folks,” I still felt as if I hadn’t done enough. And now, thinking of what David had just said to me, I wondered if, after all this, I was now about to put my father into a nursing home, to die.
* * *
I sank, once more, into a depression as deep as any I’d experienced, and began to worry about my own psychological survival. I was unable to write, unable to relive the pain of my past while beset with such guilt as I was feeling. Filled with anxiety, I found that I was afraid to feel anything, blaming myself for being weak, having become soft from having opened myself up to emotion in the wider world in which I lived, wondering how I might call upon the Panther resolve of my youth—or even some of the gangster coldness—that might alleviate the psychological pain I was experiencing. I would watch movies on television and would break down into tears whenever one struck a sensitive chord, as when one film about a man who had lost his family in an accident, while driving, visited their graves at the end of the movie. I tried then to write about my own visit to the cemetery where my son was buried and struggled to fight through the continuing grief, but was so overcome I could only lie down in a fetal position, praying for the relief of sleep.
And indeed, as it had been while I was in prison, sleep became my refuge—the only freedom I seemed to know, to paraphrase the pop song “Wildflower.” I spent days just struggling to get out of bed, and rarely left the house. The isolation I was experiencing with the book was sometimes worse than what I’d had to deal with in prison. At least there I’d had to go to the chow hall at least once a day and encounter people. During this period, while struggling to write, I would spend days without talking to anyone and even began calling for delivery of Chinese food, just so I wouldn’t have to go out.
The situation became so bad that I knew I had to do something. A visit one evening by an old acquaintance from my days of reefer madness served as a wake-up call. After I let him into my living room, he opened up his palm to show me two rocks of crack cocaine. “You can do one of them, if you don’t mind me doing the other,” he said, bringing out a pipe from his pocket.
For the briefest moment, I considered taking the road to darkness I’d avoided since my return; and in that moment, I realized that I was in danger, in danger for having weakened in my resolve for even five seconds. I opened the door for the man who had once been a friend and said, “I think you better leave, Bruh. And maybe try to get some help. But don’t come here anymore, unless you’re straight.”
I recalled the pledge I’d taken in jail, not only to stay away from illegal drugs but to never take prescription antidepressants. But that was before the age of drugs like Prozac, and having read about the positive effects such medication was having upon millions, I decided to consult my doctor and give it a try.
My doctor told me, “You’re obviously depressed, and have been for some time. Try these samples and let me know if it helps. You’ll feel icky for a week or two, but then the drug should begin to help you.” My physician was British and sometimes used what was rather quaint terminology to describe possible side effects
After one week of side effects, I still felt messed up. I had to call Shelia—the girlfriend in Richmond who would one day become my wife—and cancel my weekend visit. I tried to explain that I’d decided to try medication for my depression, something she did not want to understand, for she thought that she—and our love—should be able to get me through anything. (People who have not suffered clinical depression can never seem to understand it as being a physical condition of the brain rather than something you should just be able to “get over” in time.)
After weeks of taking the medication, however, I still didn’t feel any better and was perhaps even more depressed because I was still depressed. And being forced to make my decision about Pop did not help. The day when I finally made myself take him for his preliminary physical to the physician who would admit him to Roman Eagle seemed to sap all energy from my body, left me with the feeling that I was unable to breathe in the humid summer air as we left the doctor’s office. I now had my father on the waiting list for the nursing home, and it almost seemed as if I were waiting for the internment of my own soul.
I would take him to spend hours with Mama in the hope that he would get used to being at the nursing home and be better able to adjust, once he was admitted. But he wasn’t having any of it. When I broached the idea of his going there to be with Mama, he’d rail. “I’ve got a home that I had built from the ground up, and paid for,” he would say. “And I’m in good shape—I’m not nursing home material.”
I had to dismiss all of the caregivers except Anita, who began staying with Pop around the clock. Then, seeing what I was going through, Anita told me one day, “You can let your father come stay with me, in my home. I’ll take care of him, and he won’t have to go into Roman Eagle.”
I was relieved. Anita’s house was even nicer than my folk’s home in the country, and it then became a matter of getting Pop to go along with the transition, which was not an easy thing. “We’ll have to take him there, to spend a few nights,” I told her, “and then just let him know that he won’t be going back home.”
And so it happened that my father, Daniel Hopkins, came to reside in the modest home of Mrs. Anita Tomasso, a New Jersey widow whose roots were in Danville, who cared for him with love for the next six years. During this time, I was able to finish and publish my memoir, marry Shelia, and move to Richmond, returning periodically to see him. “I don’t have no aches, nor pain,” he told me one day, in his mid-eighties. The hard physical work of landscaping had kept his body and heart strong. Shortly after we moved him I came across a new drug, from Germany—Memantine—that worked small wonders for him for a few years. (The neurologist marveled: “It’s like he’s better than he was two years ago.”) So Daddy still remembered my name, recognized my face during visits, and he kept his weight up with the good cooking for which Anita prided herself. Remarkably, however, the deacon lost all of the dogma of religion but grew more philosophical.
I took him to visit the grave of his mother, once, out in the country where a church cemetery dating back to slavery had been uncovered and preserved. During the car trip back to Anita’s, out of the blue, while looking ahead into the distance, came this: “You know, Derrell, we don’t do this for them. We do this for ourselves.” What do you mean? I asked. “They are gone, they don’t know we were there, that we came to see their graves. So we do this for ourselves,” he repeated. “To make US feel good—like we have done something for somebody else.”
This philosophical outlook lasted to his dying day, it would seem. “The night that he passed,’ Anita would tell me, “I went by his room to check on him and say goodnight again. I said, ‘Guess what, Mr. Hopkins? Michael Jackson died last night.’ He looked up at me, standing in the doorway, and I could tell he knew who Michael Jackson was. And you know what he said? He said, ‘We all have to go, sometimes, and he laid his head back down.’” And so it was that my father passed peacefully in his sleep, as they say, on June 26, 2009. . . . In his own room. In his own bed.
BUTTER IN THE SUGAR BOWL
/>
An Excerpt from Not for Everyday Use
ELIZABETH NUNEZ
When did my father begin his gradual decline? He had retired early from the Shell Oil Company, when he was only fifty-seven. Our island Trinidad had gained its independence from Britain, and the oilmen from England, Holland, and America who owned the company had begun divesting their holdings, aware that it would only be a matter of time before the island would take control of its natural resources. They gave my father a generous severance package, but he continued to work as a labor consultant for decades afterward, representing private and public interests in the Industrial Court in Trinidad and at the International Labour Organization in Geneva, where he was already well known during his years working for both the colonial government and Shell.
Then one day he was putting butter in his tea. I was there to see him do it.
We were having breakfast, and I asked him if he wanted more sugar. “I’ll get it,” he said, and stuck his spoon in the butter dish.
I reached to help him, but my mother stopped me. “He just wants your attention,” she said angrily. “He knows perfectly well what he is doing.”
Did he?
Ten years ago, I made the trip to Columbus, Mississippi, to see my parents. They were visiting my brother Gregory and his wife Beverly. My mother had passed the five-year threshold for breast cancer survivors, and she wanted to travel again. She chose to visit Gregory, I think not only because he is a doctor and she felt more comfortable being in his home in case her illness flared up again, but also because she had a soft spot for this son of hers who had endured the blows she had rained on his bottom and legs. No longer in constant fear that my father’s paltry salary from the colonial government, together with the little money she managed to eke out from her domestic poultry farm, would not be enough to feed her ever-expanding brood, my mother became more relaxed as she grew older. At the same time, however, she was tortured by guilt that she had been too hard on us, especially on Gregory. I think especially Gregory, because, unlike the rest of us, he never got angry with her; he never pouted; he never gave her the silent treatment for days, which was my specialty.
Us Against Alzheimer's Page 5