Heart Break Hotel

My mother in law died a year ago March.  She was 90 and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, or as my father in law calls it, "The Disease."  My father in law tried very hard to tend to her by himself, but she was a wanderer and he could never get any sleep.  We helped him find a nursing center for her.  He continued to live in the apartment alone, but the drive (yes, I said drive…scary!) to and from the Center was hard on him, so he made arrangements to move into the Friendship Village in the independent living center.  It worked out well, for he could walk down to the nursing center and spend the day with his wife of 60 some years.

But after she died, he had no purpose–no purpose for living in the Village and no purpose in his life.  He was in his 90s.  All their friends were dead.  His sons and daughter lived miles and hours away.  He had no purpose.  His daughter tried to get to Pittsburgh about once a month, but it was a six hour drive.  His youngest son lived about as close, but while he is the executor of the estate, the two of them are feuding about something not money and each is as stubborn as the other.  His eldest son lives in Texas, and my fella and I live in Oregon.  Doug calls him a couple times a month and visits him a couple times a year.  Doug’s step-daughter visits him once a week, something he looks forward to with clear joy.  And I write to him twice a month, sending him pictures of us, including our grandgirl, Kaity.  I want him to feel a sense of inclusion as best I can.

He fell twice in one day late last year and had to have emergency come in to help him.  During one fall, he turned on the electric stove and papers that were on it caught fire.  He had to go into the nursing center until his injuries healed.  That’s when they discovered he just could not take care of himself any longer.  He wasn’t eating right, wasn’t taking all his medicines as scheduled, and had no bladder control.  They permanently moved him into the Center.  It is locked (because of the wandering patients like my mother in law) and lonely.  He has decided that they are trying to kill him (they pushed him down in all his falls), watching every move he makes in his room with cameras, and are trying to poison him (he won’t eat the red foods because that is where they hide the poison).  He is lonely and basically without purpose.  And here he is.  Over 92 with full mental ability but little physical ability to care for himself…

Last evening I received a phone call from him.  He was so excited.  When I asked him why, he said because of me!  I know he enjoys my letters and I had just send one, so I felt good about the call.  His voice was clear, loud and full of life.  See, he has hesitations errr ahhh ummms in his sentences that make it difficult to understand as he is searching for the words and there are times it takes us maybe 2 or 3 minutes for a whole sentence to arrive.  Not this evening.  He talked about a project he wanted to get involved in and went on about it for a while–maybe 10 minutes.  I listened and interjected "un huh" when appropriate, trying to get a sense of this project.  It wasn’t clear to me, but I hope it would come around.  Then he got to his real excitement, the real reason he called.  I could come back to Pittsburgh and help him get out of the nursing home!  He can’t do it by himself, he says, but I could help him and then he could succeed.  He explained that I was now ready to start a new life and so was he!  He doesn’t want to just sit on his butt and die, he said.  He wants to come out here and we can work together on this project that I didn’t quite understand.  And he could die free.

It became so sad.  When I didn’t say, "YES!  I’m on my way!" he grew quieter and started stumbling more with words.  He promised he wouldn’t eat much and would even sleep on the floor if we didn’t have a bed.  His voice grew weaker and less sure of himself as he continued to talk. He said again we could work on this project.  When I asked what this project was, he said it was the one I suggested.  My heart sank.  I was totally clueless as to what he thought he read in my letter that suggested this.  My letter talked about the carnival we went to with Kaity.  It talked about the squirrels in the yard.  It talked about the upcoming 4th of July party.

I had to tell him that he had surely given us things to think about and we would talk to him later in the week.  This seemed to break his heart because he called thinking I had suggested these ideas.  And his voice went soft with so many hesitations…no longer strong and excited.  He could sleep on the floor, he had said.  He could sleep on the floor…   He could die free.

And it all simply broke my heart.