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It's hard to erase the habit of heroism

Sunday Journal

By VALERIE BORDERS
Published June 18, 2006

“She’s okay where she is,” the aide says.

His bald head hunched over his belly as he sits in his wheelchair, my father keeps pulling at the woman resident’s wheelchair. He has been watching the woman shake the table and say over and over, “Get me out of here.”

My father, at 92, has dementia. The condition set in after his first stroke at age 90. Up until then he had taken care of his second wife for three years after she’d suffered a stroke. Before his second marriage, he’d been chief caregiver for my mother during the last 10 years of her life. He’s accustomed to taking care of women in need.

It’s my father’s third day in the “locked-down” unit, the part of the nursing home that houses the Alzheimer’s and other security-risk residents. He’d “gotten out” for the fourth time the evening before he was moved to this unit.

He’d made it to the stop sign in front of the nursing home when a staff member discovered him.

The staff met in emergency session the morning after his latest escape and agreed that they needed to move him to the locked unit. He seems unable to remember not to run off. Part of me admires his spunk for going after what he wants. A larger part is horrified that he could have been mangled by a heedless driver.

Yet the move to Unit III meant he had to acclimate to new staff people and unfamiliar residents. The day after the move, I asked him how he felt about his new place.

“I’m lonesome,” he said. “I want to go home.”

“Do you understand why you were moved to this unit, Dad?”

“I feel like I’ve been punished.”

My heart sinks when I hear his comment.

“Dad, you’re not being punished,” I say. “We’re all concerned about your safety. Do you remember how far you got?”

He shakes his head no. “I want to go home, but I don’t have a home anymore.”

“No,” I say, “you live here. This is your new room.”

It’s kinder sometimes to state the reality.

I explain to him again the reasons for his move to this new unit, the same explanation he has heard from numerous others. I stress our concern for his safety — here he can go outside and tool around in his wheelchair within the walled compound.

As I leave, he thanks me for giving him “all the answers” — the first time I’ve ever been acknowledged for having them.

***

A few months after his move to the nursing home, he had commented to me that he didn’t know why he was still alive. I responded I didn’t know either, that that was for him to figure out.

“Your mama’s here,” he said, days later. “She’s on another unit here.”

“How is she?” I ask.

I don’t know where to go with this, am playing it by instinct.

“She’s fine,” he says. “I’ve been thinking I’d like to start over again with your mama, set up housekeeping, but I don’t know what kind of work I’d do.”

“I’m sure you’d figure it out, Dad. You always managed to find work.”

“I’ve decided I’d let your mama have her way more.”

“Well, Dad, she may be willing to come back on those terms,” I say, laughing.

Is this why he’s still alive, to reconcile his life? In his first marriage he was in control. His second marriage presented, shall we say, a different kettle of fish.So here’s my dad in the nursing home, sometimes in a confused mental state, at other times quite lucid. The thing is, we can’t depend on those lucid times.

***

Thirteen months after my husband died of a heart attack at 34 — I was 33 — and left me to raise three small children, I traveled from Indiana to my parents’ home in Baton Rouge for a visit.

“I want you to come home,” my father said to me, sitting on the sofa one night, tears streaming down his face. “I can’t help you when you’re so far away. I want you to come home so I can help you.”

Overwhelmed still by the challenge of raising three children alone, I returned to Indiana and thought about what he’d said. Later that year, despite Thomas Wolfe’s admonition about going home again, I relocated to Baton Rouge with my children.

Just as he wanted to come to my rescue those many years ago, my dad plays the hero on Unit III. The aide tells him to leave the woman alone, and I pull his wheelchair away to distract him.

Whether he’s present in what we call reality or whether he’s visiting another dimension, his true character always asserts itself. He’s still lonesome if he doesn’t have ready companions. And he’s still the hero, rescuing damsels in distress.

Valerie Borders is a freelance writer who lives in Baton Rouge, La.

[Last modified June 17, 2006, 11:32:36]