in the house. My dad was alone but he was very far from lonely.
I put a gloop of his condensed milk in his coffee and reached for the sugar bowl. Aside from a few coffee induced lumps stuck to the bottom, the bowl held little sweetness so I went to the closet for the bag of sugar Dad kept there.
The bag of sugar was right where it always was. The half-gallon of Orange Juice that was alongside of it definitely surprised me. I felt it. It was room temperature. Warmer actually. It had been here since yesterday. Yesterday. Yesterday? My father returned from his walk, had his morning glass of OJ, and put the container in the closet? Yesterday? He looked for it in its normal spot this morning and it was not there.
I stood by the closet for quite a while. Not sure how long but long enough that my father called to me from the porch. “Hey, what’s taking so long? You going to Columbia to get the beans fresh?”
My chuckle was fake. “Be there in a minute, Dad. Have to refill the sugar bowl.”
I took the container of Orange Juice and poured it down the sink as quickly and as quietly as I could. Then I put the container in the trash under the sink. Pushed it under some stuff so it would not be seen at the top. Knew exactly why I did and pretended that I didn’t. Then it was time for coffee and to pretend it never happened.
It did happen. It happened again a few days later when he looked at me like he didn’t know me. He popped back quickly that time and didn’t say a word about it. Then it surfaced again and again in small ways. I saw them. Denied them. Others saw them. Tom asked if he was alright. The kids noticed too. They asked me. They asked me what I already knew. Dad was not alright. Dad needed to get to a Doctor and get to Doctor soon. I resisted as long as I could. Some would say too long. Others, the ones who understand it from the inside, would say so what. Time does not heal this wound. Time just exposes it until we can’t pretend our world is the same anymore.
Dad didn’t want to go the Doctor. He actually refused. For a while. He called me one day and just said let’s go. I knew it was hard on him to do that. It was hard on me to have him do it. Off we went into the whole new place where people don’t know their own name.
Doctor No
That was not his name but it might as well have been. He was one of the best and he didn’t know what caused it, how to treat it, or how long it would last. What he did know was the shitty stuff. It was fatal. It was unpreventable. It did not have a pattern. Researchers were hard at work on it. Someday. Maybe. Hopefully. Today, here is the best you can do as your father deteriorates.
I will spare you the medical details and jargon. It was as effective as snake oil and covered by most insurance. The only fun Dad and I had at the beginning were the names of the drugs he took to slow it down. Maybe. Heck, what could it hurt? He tried the Exxon ones and Intercepts. Bang. Zoom. Gonna head you off at the pass Fuggeddaboudit. Grave yard humor before planting time.
He took the mini-mental exam and asked if that meant he was a mini-mental case. The Doctor liked his sense of humor. I did too. That was one of the first things to go. Mine went slightly after his.
The Doctor visits increased, We made them outings and stopped for lunch or dinner but always had breakfast. Jersey was the Diner Capital of the world and my Dad and I both loved Diners. So we made each run to the Doctor’s an excuse to try some familiar places and some not so familiar places.
As test followed test and one medicine replaced another, time and the symptoms marched on. The familiar diners become unfamiliar for Dad more and more. The time he stared at the menu for a while and then just asked me to order for him, I knew the outings would be more about medicine than healing and I stopped the Diner stops.
Diners are basically Barber Shops that serve eggs twenty four hours a day. People that run Diners get things. They notice things. The one on Route 9 just above where Highway 35 and 36 kiss in Matawan is run by Diner people. They noticed as Dad and I went from occasionals to more than occasionals. They also noticed Dad went from an average Joe to the guy working hard to make mental ends meet.
I knew that each time I paid the check. The owner, a Greek Patriarch of the old order, tapped my hand and said thank you with his eyes somewhere between the fifth and the twenty fifth visit. The taps on the hand became sweeter as the visits became bitter sweeter. It helped more than he suspected and more than I knew at the time.
It touched me to see the floral arrangement at the funeral. A Diner sent flowers to my Dad’s funeral. That makes for good eating in any neck of the woods.
Dinner Time
It was a surprisingly short adjustment to be living under the same roof with Dad again. Tom took great pride at how quickly our house sold. He claimed it was because of his great skills as a handyman. I actually had to agree with him. We asked for a price and sold it at that price within a week.
The kids didn’t have to change schools. They liked their new rooms in Dad’s house. They’d better. If the rooms were good enough for me, they better be good enough for my kids. We sold some of our furniture and scrapped some of Dad’s, although we told him we sold it. The extra rooms added onto the back of the house took longer than all the rest of the process. Dad settled in nicely. We did as well when all was said and done.
At the beginning, it was really kinda nice. Especially at Dinner Time. It became my favorite part of the whole thing.
Dinner was a big thing for Dad. When I was just a kid, Dinner time was sacrosanct. Not that I knew what that word meant at the time. Once I learned what it meant in the fifth grade, Dinnertime at our house ended up being the best example for sacrosanct, before or since.
It was on the table at 5 o’clock. It was meat, usually chicken, potatoes in some form, and a vegetable. Dad came home from work fifteen minutes prior, stowed his lunch pail, kissed Mom, washed his hands, and joined us at the table as the minute hand on the clock on the sideboard hit twelve. It was an exact science. It did not include TV and the phone went unanswered the few times it even dared to ring at dinner time.
Dad took things first, passed them to me, I passed them to my mother, and she passed them to my brother. If the meal included chicken, the parents got the white meat, and my brother and I got a wing and a leg each. No questions. That was the way it was.
Table talk was predictable. Questions and answers about school, homework, brownies, baseball, or whatever thing was current at the time. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the talk was all about my brother and me. I can’t recall anything Dad said about his job unless it was as cold as a witch’s tit that day up on the stacks. I didn’t think to ask questions about his job and he didn’t care to share.
Having Dad at the table again brought all of that back to me. It was nice. The kids seemed to like it, although it was new to them since dinnertime was far less sacrosanct until we moved back in with Dad.
Dad really thrived at dinnertime. He was engaging and fun to be around as the kids heard his stories about life when I was their age. It was a wonderful time. For quite a while. Then we were reminded about Fuggeddaboudit a bit more and dinner time became a whole new thing that was headed to the trash heap of life.
Soon, it became a crap shoot. A wonder if Dad would be there or if that quiet man that looked around the table in wonder would take his place. Soon, the kids dreaded coming to the table because the mystery went from cute to no surprise. Dad was there less and less.
I let them ease away easily. Homework that just had to be done. Dinner time moved from a specific place and time to a specific any place other than the table with Dad. Then Tom eased away and it was Dad and me. I couldn’t blame them. It was hard for me to stay and hope that Dad would be there.
Over time, it was even hard to have him come to the table. It was like he forgot why he was there. Then he forgot to eat unless I reminded him. Soon, I had to make sure he remembered to chew and to swallow. Dinner time joined the list
of things I did with dread.
Dad remained in his part of the house more and more. It was easier on him and the kids were actually happy, although to their credit, they never said that aloud. Dad would have liked the irony in that they and Tom started having dinner time together once I started feeding Dad while he stayed on his couch with the TV going. They inherited his dinner pattern and he inherited theirs. A sick and twisted changing of the Guard.
Soon, Dad just stared ahead most nights while I fed him just like you would a baby. My heart broke a bit more with each spoonful of peas. Dinner time disgusted me towards the end. Dad didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to care what or when or where. He just ate. Most of the time. It was more out of habit than choice. Just like breathing.
I used the time to talk to him. It was really for me. To tell him the stories he told me and the ones I treasured. To flush out the details in my head and trust that somewhere, he heard them. For a while, he did. After a while, he didn’t. It didn’t matter. I needed to say them to the thing that contained my father. The thing that looked like him. I needed to share and pray and talk about what was. It was a one way conversation but it was still dinner time and I owed him that. I owed me that.
A Walk Around The
Fuggeddaboudit Page 2