February 6, 2012 · 11:00 am

Dad as a security guard

After dad lost his job, it took almost a year for him to find new work. He never went back to the trucking industry, as he was getting to the age where he was passed over for younger guys with stronger muscles. He didn’t have any formal job training before he became a Teamster. I know he was a bellhop for awhile in New York City.

So like it is for many Americans right now, it was tough for dad to find another job. He was middle-aged, with only a high school diploma and unskilled in any kind of trade. It was a huge blow to his ego, because while dad may not have been the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he was always a hard worker who provided for his family. He had always been able to find stable jobs with the Teamsters but they pushed him into an early retirement.

Dad floundered over the next several months. He was a worker and now he had no work. He also didn’t have a great deal of hobbies, other than reading. And one can only read so much. I’m sure he went into a depression, as many long-term unemployed people experience.

I’m not sure how the security guard position came up. It was at a trucking company called Rolling Thunder. He may have heard about the job through a former co-worker. At any rate, he got the job. He was unarmed, but was given an official uniform, which he was proud to wear. His job was to let the trucks and other vehicles in and out of the facility. He spent most of his time in the “guard shack,” a small structure that allowed him to sit and listen to the radio, and eat his lunch in between duties.

I’m guessing it was a pretty lonely job, but he was well liked by the truckers who would shoot the breeze with him. He could also take smoke breaks whenever he wanted, and he did get some exercise by walking his rounds. The pay wasn’t much but it helped pay some bills and most importantly, made dad feel like he had a purpose in life again. At the time, I was embarrassed to say my dad was a security guard, because the position is often looked down upon. But now, I realize how important the job was to my dad, and how much it meant for him to provide for his family again. He was a good man.

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February 5, 2012 · 10:47 am

Dad loses his job, but doesn’t tell us

Dad lost his job when I was in junior high school, but he didn’t bother to tell my mom and I for two whole weeks. I knew this because of a letter that arrived, addressed to my dad from the trucking company he worked at. My mom placed it on top of his ashtray, which when it wasn’t in use also served as my my dad’s mail holder.

My dad was in the shower, but soon would be down to have a cup of coffee before heading out to run weekend errands. “The Three Stooges” were on, which as I’ve mentioned before is one of the few interests my Dad and I shared during my childhood. For some reason, the letter intrigued me, and as a snoopy pre-teen, I couldn’t resist exploring it. Turns out, I didn’t even need to open it. I held it up to the light and the dark typeset jumped right out at me. The first word that caught my eye was “termination.” There were other less important words, some I could make out, some I couldn’t, and then a date. It was for the Monday of the upcoming week.

I heard Dad coming down the stairs and quickly put the letter back in the ashtray. I turned my eyes to the TV screen, where Moe was hitting Curly upside the head with a fish. I slanted my eyes covertly in my dad’s direction as he opened the envelope. He tore it open by ripping off the side and blowing into the slit. The way he opened letters always annoyed me.

His emerald eyes quickened with a dark fire as he scanned the contents of the letter quickly, but he otherwise didn’t show any emotion. He re-folded the letter, placed it back in the envelope and slipped the envelope into one of his worn, dog-eared library books.

“Nyuk, nyuk nyuk,” Curly was chuckling across the TV screen.

“Oh I remember this one,” Dad said. “It’s a real good one.” Dad had no doubt seen all of the “Three Stooges” episodes, one of the few bright spots in an otherwise fairly dismal childhood marred by the Nazi aerial bombings that drove his family to the bomb shelter on a nightly basis for months.

And then he finished his coffee and went on his way. I thought for sure at the dinner table that night he would come clean with what I had dramatically envisioned as the “Big Confession.”

But dinner went off without any fireworks. Mom made one of our favorites, the chicken-dressing casserole that was strictly a can-box recipe, but we each had second helpings. Dad’s appetite didn’t seem to be impacted by the bad news at all.

And then the weekend was over and a new school week began for me, but for my dad, his work days had been shut down, at least temporarily. I knew and he knew, but my mom didn’t. So she went on faithfully packing his lunches every day, turkey or ham sandwiches with mayo, a banana or orange and a cookie. She kept packing those lunches for two weeks straight and dad kept taking those lunches and going off God-knows-where for the day. I suspect he hung out at the library, as his bar days were well behind him at this point. I suspect he ate those sack lunches in the car, or perhaps on one of the benches under the elm tree outside the library. Alas, I’ll never know for sure.

Finally, he spilled the beans and we began our financial purgatory. The small savings account that was set up as my college fund, started by my long-deceased grandparents, instead went to pay for my braces when our health insurance was cut off.

My dad would drop me off for my bi-weekly orthodontist appointments in the early afternoon. There was a massive Catholic church across the street. After my appointment, with my teeth aching from the tightening of the rubber bands, I would peek inside the car, where sometimes I would find him reading or napping. Usually, I would find him in the cool, quiet confines of the church, poised on the padded kneeler, eyes closed, praying. I would watch him from a distance while standing in the aisle; at that time of day we were often the only two souls in the church. The sun streamed through the stained glass windows, highlighting the dust particles floating unhurriedly through the atmosphere.

I had not been brought up as a Catholic like my dad nor a Southern Baptist like my mom, so the visits to the church didn’t make me feel anything in particular. But it was cool and quiet and comforting, much like the library which my dad and I both enjoyed spending countless hours in.

I carefully took my place in the pew beside my dad and waited as he prayed for a new job.

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February 4, 2012 · 9:59 am

Dad’s inability to swallow, the final insult

I think most people probably associate Alzheimer’s with memory loss and other manifestations of mental decline. And while certainly those would be the hallmark symptoms, the physical impact of this disease cannot be forgotten.

Despite being a lifelong smoker, dad was in pretty good physical health when his mental state began to decline. Sure, he had been diagnosed with COPD and emphysema, and he was having some mild prostate issues, but he had always been a lean man who enjoyed walking as a form of exercise. Frankly, I always expected lung cancer would be what claimed my dad’s life. But it was a cardiac arrest, along with pneumonia and dementia that secured that spot on the death certificate.

Dad had been put on medication for a bladder infection and that’s supposedly what knocked him out when he was transported to the new nursing home. We will probably never know what truly happened. What was quickly determined at the hospital where he ended up was that he was having difficulty swallowing. The palliative doctor explained to us that the act of swallowing actually consists of many complex processes that the brain must execute, even though to us, it seems automatic. As anyone who has dealt with Alzheimer’s and dementia knows, difficulty swallowing can lead to aspiration pneumonia.

Before the hospital was able to conduct the swallow test, the dietary staff would still bring dad full meals, which just set there on the tray, growing cold and congealed. Turkey medallions and mashed potatoes and carrots. All things dad would have loved if he had been more lucid and able to eat properly. Instead, he was given water mixed with honey, and he struggled to suck up the sugary dredge in the straw.

I actually watched one of the swallow tests performed on dad. There was a cup of water, a cup of juice, and a small container of applesauce. Dad struggled physically to swallow, but also most importantly for rehabilitation purposes, failed to follow directions. That’s the irony for those with dementia. Some of their physical symptoms might be alleviated via rehab, but they make poor rehab candidates because they can no longer follow simple commands.

Once the ability to swallow is lost, then the discussion of the feeding tube comes. Dad had one for a short amount of time, but we then opted for the palliative approach, which was focused on hand feeding. Yes, this increases the risks of aspiration pneumonia, but if it can give the patient a moment of faint, if fleeting pleasure, then so be it in my opinion. I’m not sure if dad enjoyed the bits of scrambled eggs and other soft foods that a stranger fed to him over the last weeks of his life, but a tube would have just been prolonging the inevitable, a cruel extension of a life that had already been stolen by this terrible disease.

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February 3, 2012 · 9:33 am

Dad defending my honor as a teen

Yesterday I wrote about how my dad defended me against a pint-sized bully when I was three years old. That sticks out in my mind because dad was typically hands-off as a parent, and let my mom handle the bulk of the parenting duties. This became more true as I got older, as I think it’s pretty typical that girls gravitate to their mothers when they approach adolescence.

But the summer I turned 13, my dad came to my defense in a big way. On one Saturday night, I started feeling very ill after dinner, with stomach cramps and nausea but still scarfed down the cherry pie that my mom presented for dessert because I didn’t want to worry her. Well, that plan backfired. Of course, I started feeling even worse and my mom offered some Pepto-Bismol but that didn’t help. It was probably just a bout of the stomach flu but as a teenager, everything seems more dramatic. It was a weekend night and back then I don’t think urgent care centers were as common so off to the ER we went. And of course, since my symptoms were vague and not acute, we were in for a long wait. I believe we were there for several hours, until after midnight. Over the course of the evening, I started feeling better, and they gave me some kind of medication to calm the stomach cramps.

They also had me submit a urine sample. When the doctor did his brief examination, he asked if I was sexually active. I was a bit shocked but said no. Well, this question made it back to my dad, and he was none too happy about it. He grilled the nurse and the doctor on why his barely 13-year-old daughter was being asked such a question. The medical staff, who I’m sure had seen plenty of pregnant 13-year-olds in their time, told my dad it was routine procedure. Dad backed off but he was still steamed. Of course, at the time, I was embarrassed that my dad would cause a scene like that (how dare he steal my thunder, I’m the one that’s sick here!) But looking back at it now, I think it’s sweet that my dad defended my honor without hesitation.

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February 2, 2012 · 11:31 am

Dad takes on the neighborhood bully

For my third Halloween, I dressed up as a clown. It was one of those cheap dimestore getups that reek of vinyl that somehow attracts a child and repulses the nostrils of anyone over the age of 10. There was a crinkly plastic smock that covered my petite frame, painted crudely with giant buttons and garish colors and all of the other perversely cheesy attributes of a clown. The mask was fragile, with the rubber band breaking the very first time my mom slipped it over my freckled face. She mended it with a bit of motherly magic before we headed to the kids’ Halloween party at the neighborhood recreation center at the park.

Photo: Dirtybirdiesvintage, http://etsy.me/ybOBA2

I don’t remember much about that night, to be honest. I don’t remember the decorations, or the other kids’ costumes, or even the candy, which I assume there was copious amounts of everywhere.

What I do remember is the little boy. Jose or Juan, his name I can’t recall for sure. I don’t remember his face, or if he was even wearing a costume. What I do remember are his dirty little boy hands. They were small and brown and the fingernails were crusted with grime. They pushed my tiny body down to the ground.

The next thing I remember is the shock of being on the ground and the pain and the immediate waterworks that only a kid can turn on. The injuries didn’t amount to much, just a couple of skinned, bloody elbows where the vinyl costume didn’t offer much protection. My mother scolded the little ruffian as he fled, while she gingerly picked the gravel out of the modest wounds and dried my eyes. The incident put me in a fussy mood that no amount of Halloween candy could soothe, so my mom brought me home soon after and put me to bed.

And that might have been that. Except my father, coming home from the swing shift that night, sweaty and tired, with muscles aching from lifting heavy boxes all day, asked how our day had gone.

“Well, tonight was the Halloween party,” my mom ventured.

“Oh yeah, how was it,“ my Dad asked absent-mindedly, shoveling a forkful of a Salisbury steak Hungry Man dinner into his mouth as he flipped through the newspaper.

My mom hesitated. They had only been married for six years, but she thought she knew my Dad pretty well by now. He generally took a back seat to household affairs, but she had seen flashes of that Irish temper. “Well, there was this little boy at the party that pushed Joy down,” she said quietly.

Dad’s emerald eyes caught fire. “Pushed her down? Why?” His chin was already tensing up.

Mom sighed. “I don’t know, he just did. He was just a little bully, I guess.”

“Did he hurt Joy-Kim,” Dad asked cautiously, invoking my first and middle name, just like everyone on his side of the family did.

“She’s fine. A couple of skinned elbows. She’ll have forgotten it by tomorrow,” Mom said to placate him.

But Dad did not forget. As he sipped his nightly beer, the angrier he became. No little twerp was going to injure his daughter without punishment.

The next day, he left early for work. Mom didn’t think much about it, busy with household chores and the taxing duties of taking care of a three-year-old kid. Dad went down to the recreation center where the Halloween party had taken place. With his Irish charm, he coaxed the name of the little bully out of the pre-K teacher. With a little more coaxing, he got his address. The teacher assured my dad that the little boy would not be welcome back into the program, but my dad had his own version of justice in his mind.

That night, Dad came home from work at his usual time. I had been put to bed a few hours before. He peeked in at my sweet, slumbering form before setting down at the dinner table.

My mom had cooked up one of my dad’s favorite dishes: halibut. He savored a couple of pieces, his muscles unknotting slowly but surely. Then he said, as casually as he could, “I took care of it.”

“Took care of what,” my mom inquired absent-mindedly, while washing up some dishes.

“The boy. The boy who hurt Joy-Kim.”

A dark cloud formed in my mom’s mind. “What did you do,” she asked suspiciously.

“I went to the park and asked for the boy’s name and address. Then I paid his parents a surprise visit. And boy, were they ever surprised to see me on their doorstep,” Dad chuckled darkly. “I told his mother what happened, while the little whipper-snapper hid behind his mother’s skirts,” my dad spit out with disdain.

With further venom, he added, “I asked to speak to his father, but the mother said he doesn’t speak English.”

“Anyways,” my dad said cockily, “I don’t think that little boy will bother Joy-Kim anymore.” And with that, he drained his Guinness in a healthy swallow and released a satisfying, well-earned belch.

And dad was right, I never had to deal with that pint-sized bully again. And I’ll never forget what dad did for me.

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February 1, 2012 · 2:04 pm

Expecting the unexpected with dementia

While certainly my dad’s death did not come out of the blue, his sudden decline did catch my mom and I off guard. From most of the accounts I had read about Alzheimer’s, patients seemed to usually experience a slow, but steady decline. For my dad, his overall health took a nosedive over the course of just a few fateful days. He would never recover.

When you have a loved one suffering from dementia, you have to adjust your expectations greatly. While at the nursing home, my dad suffered from repeated falls and had to have a catheter placed because he was having difficult urinating, but he also had a great appetite and was fully ambulatory. He stayed in this fairly stable condition for several months, and mom and I adopted an uneasy new sense of “normal.”

The last photo of Dad and I together, July 2011.

There was finally an opening at an assisted living facility much closer to my parent’s home, so dad was to be transferred there on Nov. 1st. In mid-October, my mom went to see my dad and he bumped her as she was talking to one of the nurses. He was fairly alert and totally ambulatory. He had a doctor’s visit that day and did well there. My mom had lunch with my dad and he ate everything on his plate, and had some of mom’s food as well. She felt like it was one of the best visits she had with him in quite awhile.

On Oct. 26th, I had talked to the staff at the facility he had been at, to thank them for their care. I clearly remember the update the nurse gave me that day: Dad set off the alarm when he tried to leave the unit, but she was able to coax him to take a walk in the facility’s garden by giving him a lollipop. And he had a huge bowel movement that morning and they had to put him in the shower to clean him off. In the alternative world of Alzheimer’s, this is considered a good day. While the pessimist in me had doubts about the move, I held out a bit of hope that things would go well and mom would get to visit dad more, which would have meant so much to her.

But alas, it was not meant to be. On the day he was transferred, my mom and the director of the facility he was being moved to went to pick him up. He was asleep, more like knocked out, and had to be helped into the van. He supposedly had a bladder infection, and then was diagnosed with pneumonia. He spent the last two months of his life almost exclusively in the hospital. If there is one thing that this disease taught me, it’s to expect the unexpected around any corner.

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January 31, 2012 · 11:04 am

It takes a dementia village?

A new community for those suffering with dementia is being built in Switzerland. It’s been nicknamed by locals as “Dementiaville” and what makes it unique is that it is a fully-functioning village designed to mimic the 1950’s era. Caregivers will dress up as gardeners, shop assistants, hairdressers, etc. while taking care of the residents, who will be free to roam throughout the village and who will reside in home settings with a retro flair. It’s a fascinating concept and I’m eager to see how it works out.

I think my dad would have liked a community like this. I often thought of him as being stuck in a time warp, because even when he was mentally sound, most conversations with him centered on topics of the past, such as World War II, Hollywood’s silver screen era, the Kennedy family and the great crooners like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. I’m sure it’s natural for many people as they get older to start to feel out of touch with the modern world around them, but for my dad, I felt like he really had a soft spot for say, the early to mid 1960’s. I’m not sure if he would have preferred New York City, where he first lived after immigrating to this country from Ireland, or if he would have liked Los Angeles better, where he met my mom and raised his family.

I once wrote about my dad for a college paper: “He would have liked nothing more than to step back in time and never leave the past.” It sounds like with this new residential concept for dementia patients, my dad could have done just that.

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January 30, 2012 · 9:01 am

How I almost was named Bernadette

I’m an only child, so my parents only had to play the name game once when deciding what I would be known as in this world. It’s an important task, and as my parents were older than the average age at the time, I believe they put quite a bit of thought into it.

Dad holding me just days after I was born.

My mom thought I was going to be a boy, based upon her gut feeling and discussions with acquaintances, who claimed they could “just tell” by looking at a pregnant woman whether she was going to have a boy or girl. If I had been a boy, my parents had decided upon the name Scott.

But instead my parents ended up with a baby girl. My dad offered up the name Bernadette, after the saint who purportedly saw visions of the Virgin Mary. It’s a good Catholic name, but I’m glad for once that mom intervened and suggested Joy. It was certainly a lot easier to spell when I was learning to write!

I don’t think dad was too crushed over losing out on the baby name game. My parents picked Kim as my middle name, and my dad and his relatives all took to calling me “Joy-Kim” so he put his own personalized stamp on it.

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January 29, 2012 · 3:42 pm

Dad’s need to meditate

As I had dinner in an extremely loud restaurant last night and listened to the din of frenetic human activity around me, I thought about how my dad and I both enjoyed and required solitude. I’ve written before about our enjoyable visits to the library. We were both comfortable in our own worlds and spent a lot of time quietly reflecting. My mom tends to have quite the opposite nature, and could easily talk enough for all three of us!

Back when my dad was well, he would drop my mom off to grocery shop or run other errands, and when she reminded him she might be awhile, he would say, “That’s okay. I’m just going to sit here and meditate.”

As the dementia took greater hold over his mind, dad could no longer be trusted to be alone while my mom did her errands. But he hated going into stores and having to follow her around. This made a tedious but necessary chore an extremely stressful event for both mom and dad.

I wonder if all of those times he wandered away, he was trying to find his quiet place again, a place where he could be at peace and away from his troubled mind. I remember when I viewed his body at the funeral home, how calm and peaceful he seemed to be be. I told my mom he seemed “comfortable” and that was a state I had not seen him be in for many years. For those suffering with dementia, we can only hope that death does free them from the demons that plague their minds in this life.

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January 28, 2012 · 3:10 pm

A psychic connection?

I have not told my mom yet about The Memories Project as she has a lot on her plate right now, and my mom is about the least tech-savvy person I know, so it will take a detailed explanation for her to understand what this project is about. She’s proud of her technophobia, which she will happily tell you if she gets the chance. In fact, she came up with a little ditty that she would tell all of the nurses and caregivers that were assisting my dad when he was alive. It goes like this:

Don’t text, read a textbook instead.
Don’t Google, giggle instead.
Don’t Twitter, leave it to the birds.

I told her she should get it copyrighted.

Anyways, my mom and I were talking the other night, and out of the blue she asked, “Do you remember how your dad loved to sing in the shower? It was usually some Irish tune, like ‘Danny Boy.’ He had such a good voice.”

That really threw me for a loop, as I had just written about this small but distinct memory about the shower the week before on this blog. It made me feel that there is some kind of deep connection there, whether one wants to call it psychic or not. Most of the time I’d like for mom to stay out of my head but in this case, it struck me as a very special moment.

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