I’m embarrassed to say it, but I don’t want to pick up Papa today. In five minutes I have to go.
For two decades we had hosted Papa for weekends and summer weeks so he could see his grandchildren. He was a fun person to be around. A little selfish, for sure, but not mean.
Our first father-to-son-in-law conversation was about my pots. Three weeks before we married, his daughter and I had moved into a miniature garden apartment. “Garden” was a euphemism for a below-ground unit that offered a sliver of sunlight piped in past the parking lot.
The kitchen was tiny, and I had installed a pot-rack to hold my collection. Family and cousins had gifted us (me) a host of pots for our wedding: among them a cast-iron skillet for cornbread, a wok for fried rice, and a box set of copper-bottom Revere Ware pots and pans. (Editors note: Revere Ware pots were discontinued in 2018. Since then they have become an eBay collector’s item.)
When my in-laws peeked into the kitchen during our unpacking they saw the crammed pot rack and the box of pots underneath. I heard an exclamation and ran out of the bedroom feet away.
“What are you doing with all those pots!?!” exclaimed Papa and Nana
It was rare that they agreed on anything, but lightning can strike twice.
Later that day as we drove to Ace Hardware, Papa said, “You have to make sacrifices in life. You’ve gotta throw out those pots. Keep one or two. Three at most.”
There was merit to what he was saying. But coming from a man who in fifty-five years of life had never prepared a two-course meal, the comment pissed me off. I bit my tongue and agreed that a few of the pots could go.
For years the man had lived alone in a Manhattan efficiency apartment. His meals were eaten in take-out containers and pizza boxes.
In the coming years Papa finally learned to change a diaper. He took our son to the end of the block to watch the big trucks doing construction. He played “sack of potatoes” with our daughter. Over a glass of wine after a day in the park with his grandkids, he declared, “I’ve gotten a second chance at fatherhood.”
His daughter, my wife, agreed. He hadn’t been much of a father to his own children, and the divorce hadn’t helped.
The calm of the past week has been rapturous.
No oxygen machine pumping 24-hours a day. No numb eyes open slightly too wide. No ears that regularly mis-hear. No papers, pads, pencils, rubber bands, laptop and charging cords for the computer, the iPhone, and the oxygen machine all tangled up with his tubes. Stuff spread out every morning across the table, expanding into more territory unless the hoard is beaten back for dinner. No more bottles of White Out because every kitchen deserves the industrial odor of paint thinner mixed with whatever good smells might come from the food. No more hourly neediness spiced up with the strident daily demand to “stay out of my business!”
At Thanksgiving it felt like Papa needed help. After teaching him to manage online lectures for his university students–again and again–it was clear he was becoming less capable. I wasn’t surprised when he declared himself no longer fit to teach in-person classes a couple weeks later.
Still, I was shocked by what we saw at McDonald’s.
Not long after Papa stopped teaching, his son had gone to check on his dad. I’m told the stale air from the apartment signaled a dire situation. The Chinese, Italian, and Thai takeout we had Door Dashed to Papa lay in varied stages of eaten and uneaten. Bottles of his favorite sodas sat unopened because “They put the tops on too tight these days!”
Papa had to be rescued, and his son pried him out of his apartment.
A few days later we drove two hours to a McDonald’s parking lot halfway between our homes. Papa was gaunt, 105 pounds. And he was finally using the portable oxygen machine that had been prescribed him months before.
Since then we have been caring for Papa in our home. He’s gained twenty pounds. We’ve shepherded him to doctors appointments, battled our way into his online accounts for him, organized his affairs, and helped with his taxes.
When he washes up for visits to doctors, he is strikingly presentable and competent. As we drive away from them, he tells us how well he did. The rest of the time he is a different man, closer to an entitled child.
When we waved goodbye to our eldest at college, I thought we had moved past this stage. After the sadness of goodbye, there was a sunbeam of freedom. We had become more adult again — not tied down by the daily obligations of parenthood.
Now there is another child in our midst. An odd one who sees themselves as our elder, with the right to instruct us, but with a fragile body, and a mind that swings from dull to sharp and back again over the course of a day.
Papa’s son cared for him over the last week. He had one last doctor’s appointment, another visit to Papa’s apartment, and a pickup of mail.
Per the blow-by-blow accounts from my brother-in-law, every day was tumultuous. Towards the end he summed it up:
“Dad is so ungrateful! Everything has to be his way — even if it is twice as hard for you because he can’t do anything. I know he didn’t do any of this for his mother. He got her into a home, and he hardly ever visited.”
Tomorrow, Papa becomes our responsibility again.
He’ll live in our home for the foreseeable future. We will feed him. We will facilitate his health care now shifted to hospitals and doctors in our city. We will “help him” manage his 81 online accounts, deliver his mail, finish his taxes, and coax him through exercise — something he says he needs but is reticent to do.
In the car ride the portable oxygen machine will once again set my pace, cycling through its “shush” and “duh” ten times every minute. 600 times per hour. At night the fifty-pound machine in the guest room will roar to life. Its thrumming will dominate the house until late morning.
My family moved into granddad’s home to care for him eight weeks after grandmother died. It was hard on everyone. I remember waking as I hit the ground after an uncle threw my sleeping, eight-year-old body off a couch that he considered his.
We never did exorcise the ghosts from that home. Not even after granddad was devastated by his third stroke.
The house is so wonderfully quiet.
It’s time for me to leave to get Papa.
© J. Andrew Shelley. Originally published in Crow’s Feet on Medium.
