We recently placed my father in a nursing home for an extended stay. I emphasize “extended” because at ninety-nine years old, my father may outlive all of us. He’s on no medication, speaks clearly, has normal vitals, and still loves to argue for causes he believes in. The tough decision to move him out of his home to a care facility is one many adult children of the elderly will face at some point. For us, the answer was obvious after multiple falls left him banged and bruised and his balance had become too shaky to trust. It was time for a change.
In our case, it would have been a lot easier on us to place him in the nursing home community many years ago. We would have slept better knowing he would be ok during the night, we wouldn’t have worried about him being taken advantage of by some kook on the internet, and we wouldn’t have worried about how we might find him when we checked on him. That said, we also would have confiscated his self-esteem and made the personal decision for him that our way of living was more fulfilling than his way of living.
In the last five years, as I talked to my dad and heard him repeat the same stories I’d heard a thousand times, I saw my sunny afternoons slipping by knowing I had leaves to rake at home, and a long to-do list that I thought was more important. Sitting with him, I often had trouble fighting off the resentment and boredom. During those times I’m sure he was afraid I might leave if he stopped talking, and then he might be left all alone again. So, he chattered endlessly about the prisoner of war island he was stationed on during the Korean War, the time my eye swelled up so big from an allergic reaction he thought I would become a pirate, and how he fell in love with mom. He also shared every wisdom he had learned in his five decades to me so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes he had. And sometimes, through his long narrations, I’m sure he was also hoping those stories would redeem him for mistakes he had made as a father, husband, grandpa and great grandpa.
One day, as I was writing out his bills, we got into a heated discussion about how to keep his checkbook up to date. He was sitting across from me, and we were bickering back and forth about some figures that were not adding up. His approach made no sense to me, and mine made even less sense to him. The table we were working on looked like a kindergarten art project with newspaper clippings he had kept, unopened mail, and a backlog of paperwork. In the heat of our discussion, we had both taken off our reading glasses and mistakenly picked up the other’s pair.
“I can’t see a darn thing out of these,” Dad barked, “I’m going to my den to look for another pair.”
I took mine off and put them back on, looking down at the figures in front of me. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of anything in front of me either!
“Dad, I think we picked up each other’s glasses,” I said, “I’ve got yours on and you’ve got mine.”
Dad turned around and stared at me.
Ever the consummate physician, Dad replied dryly, “Apparently our mental proficiency was interrupted by our ocular incapacitation.”
We began to laugh at our own idiotic mistake, and then the laugh grew and became an all-out commentary on our own ineptitude. In that moment, he was a kid again, and I saw him in his youth, energetic and soaring and lighthearted. Laughter would not be lost on my father at his new nursing home residence, but those kinds of moments would have been lost had I prematurely moved him there.
Last week when he fell for the third time in ten days it was time. He was banged up like a schoolboy that had been in a tussle, and it was time to bring the fight to another home. After ninety-nine years I told him I thought he had earned the right to take it easy, to watch a bit more TV, to take longer naps, and to wear his own glasses instead of mine, the ones that allow him to see the world on his own terms. Those terms have gotten him to nearly one hundred years old, so he must have done something right along the way.
Funny, but when I called him today at the nursing home and told him I was coming out to visit he told me not to.
“I’m too busy. Don’t come out today. And don’t come out tomorrow either. I’ve been making rounds, getting people up, fixing hearing aids. Tomorrow I’m going to give the cook tips on a healthier menu. They need more fish, less chicken, then I’ve got physio after that. Just stay home. You’ve done enough and you need to get caught up on your rest. I’m fine.”
I’d worried that he was missing his life, but he was worried I was missing mine. He certainly was not agonizing about dying or falling or unpaid medical bills. He was making turmeric tea in his new microwave, cussing the stock market, and bringing in his nursing attendant to show her his collection of scrimshaw photographs. He was fully engaged, like he always had been, making a new path like he always did and gathering his people. He was in a nursing home, yes, but he was also in the land of the living, seeing life clearly through his own pair of glasses.