Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 18

• Dad – “I gotta get another TV. This one’s boring.”

Did my dad suddenly go all Punk Rock on me?

• Cable TV issues part 3:

It seems he was getting charged for both Direct TV and AT&T’s U-Verse simultaneously because he hadn’t returned the Direct TV receivers. He got them to send him two cartons with postage paid to return them. He can only find one receiver.

o Dad – “What’s that?”
o Me – “It’s a DVD player dad. That’s not what we’re looking for”
o Dad – “Send them that!”
o Me – “Dad, that’s not what they’re looking for, and anyway, you own it.”
o Dad – “Doesn’t matter. Just send it!”

Why not just send them a toaster oven? By the way: I found the other receiver behind a table covered in dust. The remotes are still missing though. Perhaps we could send them an unused cell phone instead?

• Early in my mother’s health decline, she spelled out a number of things she expected of him. This included spending lots of time with her while she was infirmed. It’s not as if he has a job. This has always been a battle with him. He’d arrive at the facility in the early afternoon, spend ten minutes with her, disappear to get some coffee for an hour, spend ten more minutes with her, try to get her into a wheelchair for a five to ten minute walk (sometimes resulting in “Weekend At Bernie’s” type moments), harangue some staffers and want to leave.

o Dad – “Why do we need to leave the house at 9:30 in the morning? What’s so special about that time?”
o Me – “It’s just after rush hour dad. We can stay until three and beat it back. You’ll have plenty of time to go to the gym. We could always leave earlier and be resigned to driving in rush hour to get there earlier if you want?”
o Dad – “I don’t understand why we need to get there so early? She doesn’t even recognize me anymore.”
o Me – “Actually, she did say your name when she saw you yesterday and made a motion as if trying to kiss you.

She’s said since July that she wants you there with her. She’s not expected to live another two weeks dad. At least give her that. You can bring your crossword puzzle with you.”

This was the third day in a row I had to explain this to him. My sister’s been saying it since July as well as my mom when she could still communicate clearly. “I still don’t know why your sister was mad at me,” he’d say. (It’s worth noting that when he’s happy with her, he uses her name. When not, she’s ‘your sister’.) It was like living in the movie “Groundhog Day.” I guilted him into doing this once but the next day he said he needed more rest before leaving the house. He comes from a time and place where men stayed in the waiting room while their wives gave birth. I came from a time where I was expected to be there in the room coaching my wife to take deep breaths and hold her hand while the doctor said “Push!”

When my mom finally passed, my sister and I were there with her while he was off getting a Mocha Frappuccino. I’m not angry. It actually seems fitting.

© Curt Weiss 2015

Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 17 – SPECIAL ELISSA WEISS MEMORIAL EDITION

• As some of you may know, my mother Elissa passed away yesterday after a long period of illness. In the evening, I convinced my dad to have dinner out with me, my older sister, her husband and two daughters. While dining, all of the adults, except my father, had a few drinks. To help plan a memorial, my brother in-law took notes and asked questions about my mother. My father remembered meeting my mother and their first few dates back in 1957:

o Dad – “I was hanging out on the corner with my friends in the old neighborhood (President Street in Brooklyn), just watching the girls go by, when I saw Elissa. I told my friends, ‘I’m going to marry that girl someday.’ Soon enough it was Valentine’s Day. I went to Barton’s Candy Store to buy a box of candy for another girl and Elissa was working there. Before I left I asked her out on a date. We started dating and in a few weeks, went to Puerto Rico and got married.”
o Sister – “I always suspected that mom was pregnant with me before you were married.”
o Dad – “Nope. She had an abortion and then we were married. That all happened in Puerto Rico. When we got back, we were also married by a Rabbi in Brooklyn. You were born the next year.”
o Sister – “Lou Weiss, you were a f*cking playa !!!!”
o Me – “Dad, didn’t you tell mom you were only 22, when you were really 27?”
o Dad – “She told ME she was 22, but was really only 17.”
After fifty-seven years, the truth is revealed…

• At dinner, in spite of all sorts of fish and steaks on the menu, my father ordered a hamburger, well done. He barely touched it. Later, he said it was “dry as a bone.” I said “Dad, you did order it well done. What did you expect?” “I didn’t order it any kind of done” he scoffed.

When he got home, he made his regular, full dinner, microwave explosions included. I can hear my mother now: “He still can’t order by himself.”

• Through all the months of my mother’s progressing illnesses, she had a persisting pressure ulcer at the base of her spine. This caused her much pain and sometimes she would literally say, “My ass is killing me!” During her last weeks in hospice care, there was another patient who was a cantankerous old fellow, with a thick New York accent. In spite of the angelic staff, who handled my mother with delicacy and dignity right up until the end, he would say things like “Does anybody speak English around here?” or “Where the hell’s my doctor! You people don’t know anything!” Literally, at the moment where I realized that my mother had stopped breathing, I swear that Mr. Cantankerous himself yelled out “My ass is killing me!” It was almost as if the evil mojo spirit had finally left her body and found the most unpleasant prick in the vicinity to inhabit.

No more pain mom.

© Curt Weiss 2014

Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 16:

• Driving with dad:
o Dad – “Make a left turn here.”
o Me – “I can’t.”
o Dad – “Why not?”
o Me – “Because I’ll drive into that building.”
o Dad – “That’s a stupid place to put a building.”

• After Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move” comes on the radio, he reminisces:
o Dad – “This song brings me back to the west village. Every once in a while I went to this bar with some friends. I didn’t drink much, but sometimes we’d just hang out there after work. Robert DeNiro used to hang out there too.”
o Me – “Were you married yet?”
o Dad – “Yeah, I was about 32 (note: this song came out in 1971 when he was 41). Somehow I got into something with someone and the bouncer threw me out. I don’t want to tell you what I was doing there. Heh, heh. Let’s just say your father isn’t perfect.”

Really? Every day brings new surprises with him.

• As much as he doesn’t listen to any doctors, ironically, he still believes there’s a medical solution for all ailments. It just needs to be of his own discovery. As TV Guide isn’t widely available anymore, he has to read ads and articles somewhere else. Sometimes he just invents memories. His present invented memory/obsession is with stem cell therapy:
o Dad – “I met a doctor at the gym who saved his wife’s life through stem cell therapy.”
(As I’ve mentioned before, it’s always trouble when any statement of his starts out with some version of “I met a guy at the gym”)
o Me – “Dad, they won’t take her in any clinical or experimental program. She’s got too many other issues and she’s too old.”
o Dad – “We don’t have to tell them that other stuff.”
o Me – “Do you actually think they’re not going to notice the dialysis port in her neck?”

I really need to memorize the Serenity Prayer…

© Curt Weiss 2014

Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 15:

• “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” – ‘The Boxer’ by Paul Simon

I don’t know if its life imitating art or the other way around, but my father, who boxed in his teens and twenties, and was always in and around the boxing world, never seems to fully grasp what the doctors, or in fact, any authority figure seems to tell him. On top of that, he will interpret it in a way that justifies his belief system or in some way is to his advantage. No matter what the hospital administrators tell him, he seems to think it means he pays nothing, and they in fact owe HIM money, in spite of them saying the opposite. Regardless of what any doctor says about my mother’s realistic options, he interprets it to mean she’ll have lifesaving heart surgery, although my sisters and I heard them say she’s too sick for any surgery. He’s convinced that one doctor confirmed his theory on why she got endocarditis (heart valve infection), thereby confirming his pursuit of a malpractice suit, while I stood there and heard nothing of the sort. My sister and I are constantly running interference between him and nurses, doctors and admins. One even asked, “Does your father have cognition issues?”

“…he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him…”

He’s a Freudian field day for a roomful of psychiatrists. I’d say he’s a full chapter in their text book but
then he’d want an agent’s cut.

• He said that he had a 1:30 doctor’s appointment today. Turns out it was yesterday. That’s one less thing on my “to do” list.

o Dad – “I forgot the doctor’s appointment was yesterday, not today. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached”
o Me – “Dad, maybe you should re-consider taking that prescription for your short term memory issues that had the possible side effects you were so concerned about?
o Dad – “What prescription?”

• He knocked on the door of my room and woke me up to tell me that his friend called and he’ll call him back. As if I care.

o Dad – “Why are you sleeping?”
o Me – “Because it’s late and I’m tired.”

Five minutes later he woke me up again to say the neighbor came back early and I need to get out of the parking space tomorrow. Then he woke me for a third time, wanting to know if I wanted a sleeping pill.

I don’t need a sleeping pill. I just need him to stop waking me up and I’ll sleep just fine.

© Curt Weiss 2014

Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 14:

• Trying to get him out by 10 AM;

Dad – “Where’s my bag?”
Me – “On your shoulder.”

Out the door we go but he needs to go back in for napkins so he can spit in them. Better than out the car window I guess. We get into the car and he can’t find his comb. “I need to go back and get my comb.” Before I can finish saying, “Dad, are you planning on visiting a modeling agency?” he’s in the elevator on the way back to the apartment.

Tick, tick, tick…10:15…Sigh….

• I think Medicare must sell detailed phone lists to marketers because people constantly telephone to sell him medical supplies and services, many of which have to do with diabetes (my mother is diabetic). As much as he refuses to use his cell phone, he also seems to have problems with the land line. “I can’t hear you! What are you saying?” God forbid they have any sort of accent. If so, they might as well be talking in a foreign language. “I can’t understand what you’re saying. What did you say your name is? Shabob? That’s your name? What do you want? You want to sell me diabetic supplies? That’s for my wife. Where is she? Try in two weeks. She’ll be in the cemetery.”

Talk about gallows humor…he scars these people for life.

• His printer cartridge is empty. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal but I just installed a new one about 2 months ago. My suspicions? As he is both a chronic litigator as well as a Luddite, in spite of showing him how to save, view and share a 3,700 page digital document of my mother’s medical records without actually printing it, I suspect he printed it.

Add tree killer to his list of sins.

© Curt Weiss 2014

Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 13:

• He’s been battling with a cable TV provider over changes in his bundled services for days. He really hates the automated customer service systems. “Yes, no, no, no, no, no, yes”. Yelling at the system always helps too. “Give me a person! A person! A person! A person!” When he finally gets someone, he clears his throat every fifteen seconds, which must sound like thunder through the phone. “Ahem! It was cancelled on the twelfth! Ahem! I don’t have Direct TV! Tell me what the complete bill is please! Ahem! I can’t figure your bill out!” This is about the time I close the door.

There’s been an extra cable box in my mother’s room since July, which I’ve mentioned more than once. My sense is he screwed something up.

Serenity Now!!

• He’s never been able to order food in a restaurant. That was my mother’s job. She always knew what he should order but he would always fight her. A typical restaurant exchange would be something like:

Dad – “I’ll have the Chicken Piccata and…”
Mom – “You won’t like that Lloydie.”
Dad – “Elissa, will you let me finish?!”
Mom – “It’s not on the bone and it’s in a lemon sauce! You want the Chicken Cacciatore!

She now addresses the waiter.

Mom – “Waiter, is the Chicken Cacciatore on the bone?”
Waiter – “Yes it is ma’am.”
Dad – “Does it come with spaghetti?”
Waiter – “Yes sir, it does.”
Dad – “OK, I’ll have that.”
Mom – “He doesn’t know what he wants.”
Dad – “Yeah, I’m ‘so stupid’ but you’re all fine with me picking up the check.”

He got that part right.

• Someone suggested that when they get old and batty, they wanted lots of medical marijuana. After seeing my mother in such misery over the last nine months, I’m starting to agree. I told this to my father and he said, “You know, I’ve never smoked marijuana.” Before I tell you what was said after that, recognize that this tells me he’s now having long term memory issues to go with his short term memory issues. Not only did he smoke pot in the 50s when he went to Latin music clubs, but he once tried to get me to smoke pot with him at the apartment of a crazy “new age healer” that he knew when I was 17. We weren’t ‘communicating’ so he brought me to this cockamamie shyster friend of his (my dad’s favorite kind of guy) who would help us ‘communicate’. He lived near the Dakotas (an exclusive building near Central Park in New York’s upper west side where John Lennon lived and died) and not only treated people for cancer but claimed to sell weed to Leonard Bernstein. I passed. Smoking dope with your dad is the ultimate teenage buzz kill.

So, here’s what was said after he claimed never to have smoked marijuana;

Me – “Dad, don’t you remember when you told me about buying pot for your old business partner (name withheld to protect the guilty)? He liked to smoke it when he was having sex, but then you got him some super weed and he never asked for it again.”
Dad – “Hmm. I do remember he had all kinds of things going on…you know, on the side. You know how he died, don’t you?”
Me – “Yep: in the saddle”
Dad – “Can you imagine having to explain that to his wife?”

Just another typical rush hour conversation.

© Curt Weiss 2014

Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 12:

Today was such a winner it gets a single entry.

•To get to an 11:45 AM doctor’s appointment, he said we should go out to breakfast at 9. Perhaps my father has finally seen the light and is planning ahead and being reasonable? Could we actually eat and get out just as rush hour ends?

Fat chance.

After we get to the restaurant on Larchmont, he proceeds to:
o Order twice the amount of food he could possibly eat
o Change tables to a table for four (more room for all of the food he’s not going to eat)
o Read his newspaper and do the crossword puzzle
o Keep getting up to get ketchup, sugar, cream, napkins, and water, plus have his coffee reheated.

Meanwhile, I run two errands in the neighborhood while he’s taking his sweet time. I finally get him out of there by 10:30. He claims his doctor is nearby the convalescent home in Santa Monica that my mother is in. So, I get on I-10, but, he says to get off at the exit after the one we usually take. After driving in all sorts of directions for a half hour, he reveals that he’s looking for the UCLA Reagan Medical Center. This is not in Santa Monica. As my mother was there a few months ago, I at least know that I can search out the address on my phone and then find it in my GPS history. I pull into a gas station, so as not to crash into anyone as I search out the address, and he gets out of the car and starts asking random people in other cars where the UCLA Reagan Medical Center is. They do the same thing as me: search their phones. I try to get his attention while he’s doing this, but give up after finding it in my GPS. I finally get him back in the car and to the Reagan Center. I go off to visit my mother and a little over an hour later he shows up. He wasn’t supposed to go to the Reagan Center. He was actually supposed to see a doctor about two blocks from where my mother is after all.

It’s not even 1 o’clock and I need a drink.

© Curt Weiss 2014

Observations on quality time with my 84 year old father, day 11:

• He watches a show on CNBC called “American Greed: The Fugitives.” It’s about criminals who’ve scammed people out of large sums of money. My fear is he’s taking notes.

• My father has issues with his short term memory. However, he refuses to take the medication that’s been prescribed for it because of what he’s read about the side effects (“I don’t want bad dreams!”). Here’s a typical conversation:
o Dad – “Are you seeing your sister tonight?”
o Me – “Not tonight, it’s her mother in law’s birthday and they’re taking her out to celebrate”
o Dad – “I thought you two were going to that photo exhibition”
o Me – “Nope, it’s closed on Sunday.”
o Dad – “Are you going by yourself?”
o Me – “No dad, it’s closed on Sunday.”
o Dad – “Too bad. Well, maybe you can see what your sister is up to tonight?”

• I’ve been trying to observe him when he uses the microwave as the inside looks like it’s been through an industrial accident even though I recently scrubbed it clean. The only time he doesn’t use Jethro Bodine sized bowls is when he uses the microwave, assumedly because they won’t fit into that small space. Unfortunately, it means everything is dripping, overflowing and spurting. I hear all kinds of crackles and pops coming from inside it but he’s not making popcorn. I blame all that damn dental work! If only he had dentures, he’d be eating rice pudding like the rest of the elderly and quit using the microwave.

© Curt Weiss 2014