Stop, listen, love

Even with my dad back home, the house still feels eerily quiet. And yet, even an eerily quiet house with my dad feels like it contains more energy than a house without him.

Some of it is my mom, who perhaps has anxiously been awaiting my dad’s return so much, she finds any way possible to interact with my dad and attend to his needs. Or at least, the needs she thinks he has.

“John, wake up,” I hear her mumble in their bedroom. Silence, before she tries again. “John?”

“WHAT!?” my dad growls back. Ah yes, we truly are back to normal.

“It’s 11 o’clock. You need to wake up.”

I get her logic: My dad has basically been in bed or on the couch the whole time so far, and it’s not healthy for him to just sleep all day; therefore, he should be woken up.

My dad disagrees. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” he yells again.

At this, I get up and head over to their room. It’s incredibly bright outside, but you wouldn’t know that in my parents’ bedroom with all the shades pulled shut and it almost looks like it’s midnight. Maybe that’s actually part of the problem.

My mom does not give up. “John, please, do it for your own health.”

“Hey-unh!” my dad shouts back. He grips the bed rail, struggling to get to his feet. But the moment he does find his footing, it’s like he’s suddenly finds a hidden reserve of energy, and he charges out of the room as fast as his shuffling feet will allow. When he really wants to move, he seems perfectly capable of doing so.

“He didn’t used to be like this,” my mom sighs.

I raise an eyebrow. “You’re joking, right? He’s always been like this.”

“No…” she mumbles.

I walk over and wrap my arm around her shoulder for a few long moments.

“Oh, maybe open the blinds in the morning. It’ll make the room real bright and maybe he’ll naturally want to get up.”

I don’t actually know if that will work, but I know my mom needs to try other ideas besides talking to my dad in a way that he’ll simply perceive as being bossed around.

This becomes abundantly clear when my dad makes it to the couch, but my mom hounds him with more questions about whether he wants something to drink. To my mom, she’s showing that she cares. To my dad, well, I’m not quite sure.

“Do you want some water?”

He looks up at her, stonefaced.

“Water?”

“I can’t hear you!” his voice rises. If you used to have a max of five chances to tell my dad something before he got mad, it seems you now have two.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“What do you want!?” he yells.

I walk over to my mom and intervene, telling her I’ll take care of it. I wonder if one of my dad’s problems is being sensitive to sound; that’s what one of the nurses told me. Dementia can cause people to desire silence and become agitated with too much noise. If true, and it’d make sense when I remember my dad covering his ears sometimes when we go out, then any additional sounds I make will probably just make my dad more mad. So, I walk away and let my dad be before coming back a few minutes later. And when I do, before I say anything, for some reason I think of all his jerky hand gestures. This gives me an idea.

I play charades.

I hold out my hand, cup it, and tilt it towards my mouth, raising my eyebrow.

“Coffee?” my dad asks.

I nod once. He nods back.

I keep my left hand cupped, and with my right hand, make a shaking gesture as if i’m pouring salt into the cup. Although I really mean coffee creamer.

“Just a little bit.”

And so I return a few minutes later with a cup of coffee, with just a little bit of creamer.

“Thank you,” he says.

I nod again, and flash a ‘thumbs-up’ sign.

Whenever my dad used to use hand gestures, I just got annoyed. It was frustrating with other people because it was ‘too much work’ to use his words. And maybe that’s still really rude with everybody else. But I realize I’m afforded more information than everyone else, and I never bothered to really ask why he started doing it.

Maybe it’s because he actually is lazy. I’m sure that’s some part of it. But maybe he’s also just tired. And maybe he really does enjoy the quiet so much, that he doesn’t like to break it himself. I can’t really know, but I do know that if he chooses to do it, I can do it back.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.

After dinner, I go off to clean the room I’ve designated as my office. It’s full of boxes, clothes, and other junk that my mom has no idea what to do with. My parents moved into this house a few years ago and never unpacked. Each box is full of a random assortment of stuff and it’s like discovering old treasures while simultaneously wishing our family was less consumeristic over the years. We have VHS tapes, books, old clothes, and so much of it is outdated, doesn’t fit, or is old technology that’s irrelevant and hard to dispose of. I make a personal vow, multiple times, never to live like this anymore.

“Sun-Gei!” I hear my dad suddenly call for my mom from his couch. I’m not sure where my mom is, and my dad yells again.

I get up and walk to him. “What’s wrong?”

“She took my cup!” My dad’s been spitting for random reasons, so my mom gave him a cup to use. Now it’s gone, and I don’t know why. So I make up a reason that makes sense, and that shows him that his wife loves him dearly.

“She’s washing it. She’ll bring it back once she’s done.”

I don’t know if it’s true and I don’t really care.

He nods.

I go find my mom. She’s in the bathroom washing her feet, and it turns out she does have the cup. I imagine she probably went to wash it but then got distracted with her dirty feet.

“Dad said you took his cup. I told him you were washing them.”

“Oh. Here.” She hands the cup to me.

I shake my head. “I think he needs to see you put it back.”

I worry about my mom a little bit. Despite her one moment where she could argue with me like she used to, she’s mostly back to her deteriorating self. I’m afraid she’ll continue to push my dad, which will make him yell at her, which will make her sad. This, of course, is still the one thing that really hurts when I look at my dad. I realize I’m starting to become numb to more or less everything else he does.

I continue to focus on the practical things I can do to help my mom, including cleaning the house and decorating it. While cleaning, I come across some old photos from when my oldest nephew was first born. There’s one with our whole family in front of a Christmas tree, my dad watching my nephew mopping the floor, my mom holding my nephew with their hands spread wide. I buy a few picture frames and places the photos around the table my mom uses as a desk. If she’s going to spend a lot of her time here, at least I can make it an even happier corner of the home.

I see my mom the next morning sitting at her table, reading her Bible.

“Did you see the pictures?” I interrupt. Realistically, I put so many around her table, there’s no way she couldn’t notice. But you never know.

“Yes.”

“Do you like them?”

“Yes, I like them. I like them a lot.”

I can tell she’s being genuine, because she’s off script again. She never says ‘a lot.’

I keep up the cleaning, and later in the day my mom walks in on me one day while I’m sorting through a huge box of old VHS tapes.

I turn to her and pause. What? I ask her with my eyes.

"Daniel,” she starts, before considering the next phrase. “Do you love me?"

I’ve always found this question strange, and really hard to answer. She used to ask me this all the time; complained that the only person who really loved her was her mom, a woman before my time. My response was always to joke around, to say something like “well, depends, what day is it?” or “yes, but you have to pay me for it” or “nope, I’m a robot and don’t know how to love.”

This time, I take a quick breath and again evaluate all the different ways this scenario could pan out given any particular response. And then I scrap those thoughts and just say what needs to be said.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why do you think I came back? I didn't come because I had to.”

“Thank you,” still hovering above me. “I need your love.”

“You already have it.”

The exchange reminds of a story a friend recently told me. He was with his baby daughter, and several other fellow parents with newborn babies, when they discussed how to react when hanging out with one another and one of the babies would start crying. They decided to come up with a phrase, to teach everyone—especially the babies—how to respond.

“How about ‘Stop, listen, hug’?” my friend had suggested, which is funny, because this friend used to hate hugs.

Apparently, this aversion to physical contact was shared by other parents in the group, and by extension, their babies in general.

“Okay, how about, ‘Stop, listen, love?”

That change seemed to do the trick. Everyone was free to interpret ‘love’ as they saw fit.

I find the saying insufferably cheesy, and yet strangely appropriate. “Love on it; just pour some love on it,” someone once told me in response to a tough situation, which I then had to bite my tongue to not burst out into laughter. What does that even mean? Love, if it itself is the focus, can become just another way to deflect someone else’s problems.

But preceded by ‘stop, and listen’? I think I get it. I’m on board.

Because with my parents, and with little kids (and aside from being optimistic about their future what’s really the difference anymore), any outburst demands an immediate response. And without any time to think, there’s a good chance you’re going to give the wrong one.

Taking just a second to pause—one breath to listen—gives me the headspace to realize, maybe my dad needs to be left alone. Maybe he needs some quiet because his brain can’t compute any more sound. Maybe, that’s the kind of love he needs in the moment.

And for my mom, maybe she does need some physical contact. Like a hug.