Homecomings

I’m chopping vegetables in the kitchen when I hear a loud scratching sound, and then a thud. I run to the source and see my mom on the floor in the hallway, trying to get to her feet.

“What happened?” I race over and help her up.

“I tripped.”

I see my guitar case is no longer leaning next to a chair where I left it. I guess that she must have hit it on accident and fell. It was out of the way, but I guess not out of the way enough, and so I immediately put it in my room where there’s no chance of her ever hitting it again.

I’m beginning to worry about my mom. I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s happened, but I’ve noticed she’s definitely deteriorated in the past couple of weeks. She just doesn’t seem to be here. She mixes up her languages when she speaks. She repeats herself on the phone, and I’m worried it’s not because the other party doesn’t understand but because she isn’t sure what she herself is even saying. It’s like as if she were a car, and whoever is in the driver’s seat is on their phone and not really paying attention.

She may want to be my dad’s caregiver, but I’m no longer sure if she can even take care of herself. And if that’s true, I’m at a bit of a loss of what to do, and the thought hangs over my head as we head back to the nursing center to hopefully convince my dad to do some physical therapy.

“John, please do the therapy,” my mom says.

“Not now!” he yells back.

“No, do it now. It’s good for you, okay?” she persists.

“I don’t want to!”

“John, do you love us?”

I’ve been staring at the floor during this whole exchange, but suddenly my face raises itself. Do you love us? What a throwdown, and one I have not heard in a long, long time.

Something about my parents arguing exhausts me to the core. I know that this particular argument doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s building on more than forty years of marriage, and therefore more than forty years of other arguments, debates, and heated exchanges.

The woman who’s the head of therapy was right: My mom does make my dad’s situation worse.

The exchange also pulls a reflexive response from me, something I haven’t said since I was a kid. “Do you both have to argue all the time?” I ask out of nowhere.

“GO!” my dad screams.

This snaps me out of my memories, and into my current state of being upset at my dad for being so grumpy.

“Okay, I’m leaving,” I say, and then turn to my mom. “Let’s go.”

I recall a conversation I had with my mom a long time ago. She was talking about a couple we knew who was getting a divorce. She said she didn’t agree with it, and that they should stay together for the kids.

I told her that ‘for the kids’ is a bullshit excuse to stay together. Well, I used more words than that. But that it’s not ‘for the kids’ if you’re actually just doing it to make yourself feel better or to fulfill some obligation to stay together. It’s not for the kids if you don’t ask them. It’s not for the kids if they’re only ever going to see you remain unhappy. It’s not for the kids if you become bitter and take it out on them, which you will.

I now know, that back then, I wasn’t thinking of some other person’s parents when I was coming up with my own reasoning.

On the way home, we stop by my parents’ family doctor. My mom has been having some severe dry mouth and she wants to get it checked out. The wait is long, very long. I don’t know if they’re running behind or if my mom’s situation is serious. But I’m alternating between reading a book and checking my phone and struggling not to fall asleep, when my mom finally reappears.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Yes. The doctor said it’s just the effect of my medication.”

We walk back to the car, into the scorching summer sun, when my mom suddenly speaks again.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“You had to wait so long,” she says, her voice very drawn out, as if she’s actually referring to something else entirely.

“It’s fine,” I state, and jump back in the car.

I wake up early the next day to go to the gym, followed by a coffee shop to do a little work. I don’t get home until noon and notice that the house is still eerily quiet. My mom’s bedroom door is shut. I take a peek inside and see that she’s still asleep. It’s strange; she’s usually tired, but not sleep-until-noon-tired. I listen for some breaths, and am relieved when I hear a faint one or two.

I wake her up an hour or so later. The nursing center has invited us to attend what they call a “care conference,” which is a chance for me and my mom to get an update on how my dad is doing from all teams at the center.

“We think your dad can go home soon,” they say, “as early as next week.”

I think you’re supposed to say ‘great’ or something, but all I mumble is, “Okay.”

“By the way, can your dad still drive?”

“No. I took his keys away.”

“Good, because we asked him and he said he can still drive.”

“My dad says a lot of things,” I force a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. I mean it to be the former, but the staff think it’s the latter.

“Well, it’s okay, you know that he has memor—”

“Oh no no,” I smile. “I’m just laughing. It’s kind of funny.”

“Oh good,” they say, “don't lose that sense of humor."

They run through a bunch of nominal status updates about my dad: diet, health, and even how he acts when eating and trying to bathe. The dementia seems to be the most problematic, as expected. My dad doesn’t seem to understand why he’s here and doesn’t want to improve, and he seems very easy to agitate—even by the natural laws of physics.

“One thing you can do, is make sure when he goes to the bathroom to remind him to pull down his diaper,” one nurse says. “Sometimes he forgets, and then he tries to pull down his diaper without standing back up first, which is very hard to do. And then he becomes agitated just because of that.”

“Huh. Good idea,” I say, and then turn to my mom to ask her if she’s paying attention to this because if she’s going to be a good caregiver, she should take note.

Her head is leaning on her shoulder, her mouth open and arms flopped to the sides; in one of the most crucial moments of our meeting, my mom has fallen asleep. Wonderful.

They continue to tell me about my dad, and start asking me about my plans for my parents, and ask me about our house. It’s a single story, has a walk-in shower, and a lot of furniture has been moved out of the way so he won’t trip—all things that luckily, were already in place before I even moved back.

“And do you have help?” they ask as their final question. “Are you going to be the primary caregiver?”

I look over to my mom, who’s still asleep.

“My mom wants to do it…” I start to say but my voice is weighed down with hesitation.

The staff just look at each other, at my mom, and then at me. “She can’t do it.”

One of them adds, “She’s going to be the one who needs a caregiver soon, you know.”

I do know. Or at least, the thought is somewhere in my head.

They give me a few options and ask about what our finances are like. I’m starting to think that even if my parents stay at home, and even if my mom wants to be my dad’s caregiver, they’re going to need other help. Maybe I’ll have to hire some in-home care, some people to come care for my parents, and to help my mom feel like she’s successfully caring for my dad.

I wonder how we’ll pay for it though. My parents have a good financial cushion, but depending on how much help they need, I wonder if they’ll need monetary help too. Maybe the time will come for me to have to get a full-time job again and help support them staying at home. I can’t possibly stay home with them because I’ll go crazy, but I can’t exactly leave my parents without care just because they don’t have the money for it anymore. I’m afraid my future may be mapped out already, but I also wonder how other families who aren’t as well off survive this time in life. Maybe they don’t.

Suddenly my mom wakes up. “When can he come home?” she asks. It seems to be the only question she cares about.

“Early next week,” the staff say, before turning to me. “Good luck to you.”

I laugh again. It’s the only response I know.

We leave the conference and attend one last therapy session with my dad. The therapist has me do a few exercises with my dad, in hopes that he’ll cooperate more. We play one game where he hits a balloon to me, and I hit it back to him. I think it works his muscles controlling balance, but to me it feels like I’m playing a game with my own baby boy.

We help him take a shower, and when he goes to put on his clothes, he waits for us to help him. We don’t.

“Your job is to help me!” my dad yells at the therapist.

“No, my job is to make sure you’re safe,” she replies gently, with a smile.

We all just sit there for a couple minutes, and eventually my mom gives in. She helps put on his socks, but somehow hurts my dad. I can’t really tell how, maybe she grabbed his skin or something.

“Jesus Christ!” my dad screams.

I pull my shirt collar over my mouth to hide my giggling. My mom would’ve died if he had said this when they were both many years younger, knowing how religious she is and how of all the sins related to bad words there were, you, did not, in her presence, "take the Lord’s name in vain.”

When he’s back in bed, I sit on his bed and lean over close to his ear.

“Hey Dad, can I tell you something?”

He nods back at me.

I make up some story about how I go to the gym to get stronger. But that when I stop using my muscles, they get worse. And that my dad needs to do exercises too or else he’ll get weaker. I don’t know if he nods because he understands, or because he understands that he’s supposed to respond once I stop talking. I guess it doesn’t really matter; my bedtime, father-son story is simply made of lies and truth woven together anyway.

When we get back to the car, I turn to my mom and decide to make an impassioned plea to her. I tell her that her husband has changed, that his brain isn’t working anymore. She needs to accept that, which means she needs to change how she treats him too. And that if she’s going to take care of him, she’s going to need help that doesn’t come from me.

My voice is unusually tender, and my mom nods and says ‘okay,’ but somehow I fear that her response, like my dad’s, is also automatic. Maybe it is too late to help her see that things need to be different now. I fear that she too, is also past the point of no return.

The care center calls me later to confirm a discharge date. I only have a few days, and so I go into high gear, preparing for my dad to come home.

I buy a bunch of equipment: a bed rail, a commode with arm rests to put over a toilet seat, a shower chair.

I rearrange furniture around the house so that my dad can use it as a stabilizer when he walks around.

I even buy him some new clothes, including a couple t-shirts I found that have a picture of ‘grumpy cat.’ I imagine my dad wearing it and smirk; my grumpy dad wearing a grumpy cat shirt would definitely make me smile when he’s agitated.

It really does feel like I’m preparing our home for a newborn baby. This whole experience feels like raising a baby. Except unlike raising babies, there’s no payoff of them learning, growing, and maturing as humans. In some ways, it’s the exact opposite experience. It’s like taking care of dying plants; you care for them not to help them get better, but just to soften the punches and lessen the pain of the experience.

More than anything I think I feel sad. I wish I could get to know my folks better. But now the harder I try, the worse I make it. The more questions I ask my dad, the more agitated he gets. I feel like I missed the opportunity I had, although maybe I was never actually afforded it. We all have things we expect out of life: marriage, children, close relationships, we all have our things. But maybe the truth is that nothing about our lives is ever promised. Nothing is guaranteed. We aren’t even promised life to begin with. So I guess there isn’t really any point in brooding of the things that the things we think we should have but don’t.

It doesn’t make it any less tough, though. My dad is now past the point where I could ever understand him, and there’s no way he’ll ever understand me. The funeral I held for my dad was obviously more symbolic than anything else, but the grief, I think, feels real.

I have to wonder if all of this, this whole experience, is worth it. But when I overhear my mom calling one of her friends, asking her if she can come help clean the house during the week, I think maybe it is. Maybe it’s a good sign. Maybe, my mom has actually heard me.

The big day arrives, the day my dad comes home. I wake up early, make myself a smoothie breakfast, go for a swim, play some guitar, even do a little writing. All in the span of a few hours. I have strange feelings about today, and feel like I need to take as much time to myself as possible. To get in some sort of zone.

“Are you excited today?” I ask my mom on the drive to the nursing center.

She waits a beat. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“There will be someone to sleep next to tonight.”

This seems like a very sweet way to put it. Unless of course, it means that my mom is also setting herself up for disappointment.

The discharge is relatively uneventful. We can essentially leave whenever we want. I just have to have a couple quick discussions with some nurses and sign a few forms. Once that’s over with, we’re free to go. I pull the car into the back parking lot, get it as close to my dad’s patio door as possible, and walk to my dad’s room with our walker from home.

“Time to go, Dad,” I tell him, setting the walker in front of his feet.

He bumbles around and struggles to get to his feet. His balance is so terrible he falls back to his bed once or twice. I want to help him, but I also really don’t, and I justify not doing so by telling myself that if I help him now, I’m going to be helping him forever.

Once he’s actually on his feet, he gets to the car with surprising ease, and barely needs my helping getting into the passenger seat. My mom follows suit, I place the walker in the trunk, and we’re ready to go.

I recall that a nurse asked me to swing by right before we do leave. I forget why, if it’s to just say ‘hi’ or if there’s something else I needed to sign. Like maybe an official ‘we’re leaving’ kind of form.

“I’m going to see the nurse again real quick,” I tell my parents, and then race back inside.

I see the nurse talking to someone for a few minutes. This is taking longer than I thought it would. It’s hot outside, and I’m starting to get nervous. Five minutes pass. And suddenly I think I should check up on my parents.

When I get back to the car, my mom is waiting outside for me.

“Daniel…” she starts to say. Something about her tone makes me uncomfortable. “Why did you have us go to the car?”

Her question is so off-script, and laden with layers of undertones, that I have to wonder—no, be afraid—that this might be a rare moment of lucidity, that lightning has struck her and she is suddenly the animal that’s laying low, on its legs, and ready to pounce.

“Because we are about to leave.”

“But if you have to go talk to the nurse you should let us go back inside,” she argues.

Please drop it, I think to myself. “It was supposed to be for one second.”

“You’ve left us out here for so long already,” she almost borderline yells.

Please, please, just stop. I don’t want my dad to have to walk back into the nursing center. He might trip, and even if we make it, talking with the nurse should literally take a second, and then we’ll have to walk him back out and it’ll be easier if we just stay. “I’ll turn on the AC. Just give me a moment.”

“Daniel!”

We lock eyes. I’m so tired I’m not even sure of what I’m thinking anymore. Other than we need to get out of here, and in that moment I decide that whatever the nurse wanted me to come back for, if it’s urgent, they can call me about it. I jump back in the car and drive off.

I think a former version of me would have let my mom have her say, but not anymore. I don’t know if it’s because I’m tired of feeling like my work is going without any gratitude. The job is thankless, and there’s so much more I’ve been doing behind the scenes for her that she’ll never understand. Maybe I’m tired of not asserting how I really feel. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

“Please don’t stress me out even more,” I say calmly.

And then we enter a time warp. We wind back a few years. My mom snaps, and she becomes something I completely forgot she could be.

“No, Daniel. You let us stay outside while you had things to do. You should’ve let us stay inside while you talked to the nurses.”

“Which is exactly what I did.”

“You need to think clearly about these things.”

“No. You need to think about what you’re saying. They told me I had to sign a bunch of forms. I didn’t take you and dad to the car until those were done and we were about to leave. They just asked me to drop by right before we left.”

“Fine,” she releases the word from her lips, as cold and flat as ever. “Be upset.”

Her voice floats through the air, reaches my ear, and detonates a shockwave that renders me silent. Like every time I was a child, every time I felt I was being attacked and tried to defend myself, like every time I was pushed around and I asked if I was the crazy one, she slams the door on the conversation with a crushing blow.

Be upset. Be mad. Be angry. As if you’re justified in being any of those things, but only because you’re actually not.

It has been forever since this has happened. I actually forgot how this used to happen. But I guess those memories were there all along, just waiting to resurface. Like the time my mom crushed me over Chinese School homework. Or how I once lied on accident. Or how my soul wasn’t saved. And like all those times before, I respond the exact way I was trained to: I shut down.

The rest of the ride is silent, the kind where every bump in the road reverberates and every shift in the car engine whirs and whines.

“John,” my mom suddenly perks up, “do you want orange juice?”

My dad doesn’t respond.

“John? Do you want orange juice?”

“What do you want!?” he seethes.

“Do you want orange juice?”

“I can’t hear you!” he yells.

My mom goes silent.

I feel a wave of something wash over me. I don’t know if it’s residual anger, or annoyance, or a response to a glimmer of disappointment I think I catch from my mom in the rearview mirror. But it compels me to reach my hand over and place it on my dad’s knee. He turns his head to face me, and I briefly twist my head so that my voice travels closer towards his ear.

“Do you, want, orange juice?” I ask, enunciating every syllable.

“No,” he mumbles back. “Not necessary.”

I want to turn my head back to look at my mom. To show her how it’s done. To point my finger at her and tell her to lay the fuck off. Of my dad. Of me. To be triumphant that I can do what my mom cannot. But I can’t even summon any energy for that. There’s no will. And maybe no desire to keep that hatred alive. At this point, I just want to walk away from it all.

We take one last turn onto my parents’ street, and I think back to when my dad used to pick me up from the airport when I was in college, and how he used to ask me if the neighborhood looked familiar or not. And so I throw the question back at him. I want it to be silly, but I know he doesn’t remember asking me. I ask anyway.

“Does this look familiar?” My voice is so hollow I sound like I’m the one who’s eighty-plus years old.

He nods back.

And as I pull up into the driveway, I grab the garage door opener, and mumble, “Welcome home.” I don’t say it very loudly, and I don’t even know if I’m talking to him, or myself.

“Thank you,” he mutters anyway.