The Old in America

For a brief moment earlier today I thought about working in a nursing home.

I am fascinated, and inspired by elderly people, however, the downside is the part no one wants to talk about: Coherence tinged by senility, loneliness, isolation, poverty, incontinence, bed sores, homes that reek of urine, and which younger generations avoid visiting, perhaps because they too sense the transient, and impermanent nature of their own lives while looking into the rheumy, medicated eyes of those that have seen everything, yet often leave this world with nothing, as naked, and as wrinkled, and as needy as the day in which they were born.

But, I digress. I actually enjoyed visiting the grandmother of a former ex, nearly every Sunday for about five or six months before we broke up. He had been visiting his grandmother for the better part of a decade, almost every week. She had come to expect his visits, and I found myself enjoying them more than I thought, despite the language barrier. My ex's grandmother spoke mostly Russian, with a few words of broken English. She was skilled in nonverbally expressing her displeasure over my appearance, particularly my blackish purplish "Lincoln Park After Dark" nail polish, which still annoyed her even after my claims that it is a very popular color these days.

"You know, you don't have to come with me to visit her," my ex would say on occasion.

"I know," I would reply. "It's fine. I don't mind."

He'd usually replied that it's cool, and that he appreciates the company. We'd sometimes go walking at a forest preserve, and grocery shopping beforehand to get the items she requested week after week, always the same things: raspberries, cottage cheese, an Odwalla fruit juice shake that must have tasted heavenly compared to the home's individual cups with peel back foil covers that smelled suspiciously acrid like the Blue Bell from tins at summer camp.

Though we broke up a while back, I miss his grandmother on occasion, in fact possibly more than I miss him. There was the relaxing, slow pace of the home, where a half hour could pass staring across the parking lot at the Wal-Mart across the street from the high rise residence, populated mainly by Russians, and Korean immigrants. There was also my ex's grandmother's quirky roommate that was always excited to see us. The roommate often demanded the use of my ex's cell phone within the first two minutes of our visit, so she could call her daughter, and often she'd stare at the bags of food we brought with heightened curiosity. I guess there had been a past history of unreciprocated generosity between my ex's grandmother, and her roommate, so I was always cautioned not to offer R. anything, though I found the dynamic interesting, especially since the two women had lain within feet of each other for years.

My grandfather, whom we called "Papa," died in 1992, not much longer after my father passed away. I was close to both my father, and grandfather, and particularly felt like I shared a unique bond with my grandfather, whom I shared similar personality traits: creature of habit (he lived across the street from a synagogue for forty years, and almost never missed a service), interested in stories/comedy/reading, and somewhat extroverted, yet still very much an interior person. He also had a bit of a rebellious streak, having veered off the path from his ultra religious parents, and siblings, and choosing a more liberal, yet still conservative form of practicing Judaism.

Papa insisted on living alone, even when he was becoming increasingly less physically capable of doing so. An older cousin lived with him for a while as he went to law school nearby, which probably saved Papa from having accidents much earlier.

Eventually he died from a fall down a flight of stairs, which resulted in a coma, then death. Many falls had preceded this fall-- one such was written about in one of my old journals-- and I guess my mother, and her three siblings could have fought harder to put my grandfather in a home, or an assisted living facility, to prevent future falls, but it would have been a tough fight. Instead, Papa lived alone, an 82-year-old widower whom deep down might have known it could happen at any time, the inevitable, final fall, yet wanted it to perhaps happen on his terms, and in the environment he'd known for so long.

This poem was written on Nov. 9, 1991. He died four months later from a different fall.


"Papa Fell"


Papa fell down today,

he pushed a button and the police, and fire squad came

with a stretcher and a just-in-case IV-

Refused!

All he needed, he told them, was "a lift off the floor"

Mom paged me at the library

she needed the car

"Papa fell," she said

and "Papa fell" kept running through my head

his white whispy hair

sunkun eyes

frail arms loose waving skin

lying on the hardwood floor

i learned to crawl on

perhaps the humiliation

of sirens,

of a daughter driving forty-five miles….

no, no, no!

"I'm okay" he said, on the telephone

don't worry, I just tripped

coughing into the telephone line

I can almost see him taking out his folded hanky

Spitting into it

Shaking his head