A doctor’s appointment
I went into the living room. My father was sitting between my sisters.
"How are you doing, Dad?” I said.
“Fine, now that you three are here,” he said. “There seems to be a bit of commotion going on.”
“Dad,” said my younger sister, “I don’t know if you remember, but you have a doctor’s appointment at the hospital this morning. For a checkup, and some tests.”
“Well, if you say so.”
“I do,” she said. “So should we go?”
He had always known
He called goodbye — ever loyal, ever polite — to my mother, who was in the kitchen with the police, and we took the elevator down to the lobby and outside. Dawn hadn’t broken yet, but even in the dark the police car parked in the driveway circle was impossible to miss. My father did a little double take between us, a classic buck and weave, a vaudevillian whoa. “I’m not getting in that,” he said. No, we assured him, that was for someone else; he was coming in my sister’s car, just to the hospital, for his appointment. Good, he said, and came peaceably. But it was at that moment, when he resisted the sight of the black and white car, that the realization started to dawn — the realization that would grow over the course of the long day to follow, which he tolerated with remarkable stoicism and good humour: the waiting in the emergency room to see the social worker, the controlled frenzy to find a bed for him in a locked facility, the countless interviews by countless young doctors, the walks around the hospital, which he was convinced was a cross between his old high school and Eaton’s (not a bad likeness at that), the three lunches he ate (peppy throughout), his hilarious, flirtatious routine in the shopworn psych ward that night that got everyone — the charmed nurses and my sisters included — laughing uncontrollably, the way you laughed at Jackie Mason or Robin Williams at their best, his perfect equanimity when we left, the gratitude he called out to us from beside his single bed, and the restraints they had to put him in an hour and a half later when he got agitated and belligerent, the sedation that rendered him a Parkinsonian and mumbling shell of himself.
He knew. He had always known.Caring for aging parents can take more than just an emotional toll. Read Caregiving: Big career impact for tips on how to balance your career with caregiving
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of More
