The Optimistic Traveller

This is a little story to remind you to make the most of, and see the good in, any trip, whether you’re travelling for work or to move your elderly parents across the country.

I hurriedly dragged plants this way and that, trying to arrange them so they’d get some sun yet not dry up too fast. Who knew when the next time we’d be able to get back or if my father would even come with us from the rehab center/nursing home. I didn’t have much time before we were expected there, and the road trip to New York was 22 hours+.

There were piles of electronics and disparate appliance parts hither and yon in my father’s bedroom. One side of a waffle iron was near his bed, along with a meat grinder, or a piece of one. Most of the overhead lights weren’t functional. You could stare into them like an eyeball, the pupil being a loose and dangling wire as opposed to a place to screw in a new bulb. 

He was always leaving things unfinished, especially as his cognitive abilities began to wane. My father is a confident deconstructor of most things (no comment) and a less capable reconstructor, at least in the last 20 or so years of his 83.

Did I mention the dirt? The place was musty, dusty, and cluttered with used Kleenex tissues and junk mail I could only surmise he was saving as kindling for the wood stove. He had also kept about a hundred empty rolling paper dispensers, the tiny cardboard things, as though he had a plan to refill them with handmade sheets or use them in a pot smoker’s collage. With those were 10 or 20 empty plastic jars the medical-grade weed had come in, occasionally with a fleck of a long-ago upcycled roach remaining, a ghost of highs past.

The night before, my mother had called the deer to feed in her little trough by the house, possibly for the last time. They appeared, bounding in dusk light, with verve toward the house from the lower fields and woods by the creek. I filmed the elder doe with the long-healed jaw injury as she strode up to eat, nudging the younger ones with her forward and only looking slightly askance at me. She had stomped at me one visit prior, but by now I was old news and, thus, accepted as a non-threat.

In the gloaming, I quietly watched and hoped we, especially my mother, would see them again sometime. I knew they had become like another family to her. Feeding them, and purchasing the grain and salt, was part of a regular routine that she’d never come back to. We were to find, in fact, that those routines had helped keep her stable in an unstable world of caring for an ill spouse.

The long and exhausting ride back to New York, much of it in the rain and in between speeding semi trucks, was a comedy of errors. An hour into the journey, my father demanded to return home, threatening to jump from the moving vehicle and call the police on his “kidnappers.” 

But later that evening, the three of us shared memories and laughs, and, with some productivity, even discussed plans to sell the house. My mother couldn’t hear much in general, and especially from the backseat. When I began commanding Siri to play us some tunes, my father wanted to dominate the “request line” as it were; he wouldn’t be my father if he didn’t. At some point, though, the three of us sang together. The song that seemed poignant in the moment has bewilderingly slipped my mind – but I anticipate hearing it in the future and returning to that day. Let’s imagine it as Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. And I was transported to 1979, riding in the Ford pickup truck across the country, not a care in the world (except, of course, what we’d eat next, where we’d sleep that night, and where we would find a place to live in the long run). This was joy amidst the ridiculous pain and stress, the complaining, the exhaustion, the accusations, the insecurities. It takes a second to recognize it when you’re in it, but I did.

If we fast-forward over the last few months, my parents semi-ensconced with us in the basement apartment of my house, that long journey home has continued, mostly uphill. Every few days my father says he’s going back to Arkansas or questions why he’s in New York. Every couple of weeks, he falls. He’s been in nearby hospitals three or four times since he moved in.

A few weeks ago, my mother and I went back to Arkansas on another road trip to get more things from the house and tie up some loose ends. I was exhausted from my recent stint in a community theatre production, and my mother-in-law had just entered into home hospice care. I was going to miss her birthday, so the night before we left, I went over for a brief visit. Her bed was in the living room, with my father-in-law in a recliner next to it. We had a nice chat, and I showed her pictures from the play.  It was the last time I saw her alive.

I guess when it rains, it pours.  My mother and I have had more miscommunications than communications lately, as her mind and hearing are going, and her frustration with my father continues, somehow, to grow. Some of the conversations on the road were baffling, frustrating, and depressing, especially after she’d had a beer or two.

But we managed to accomplish a lot back at the old homestead. As I’d predicted and planned for, the majority of the houseplants were fine, and we were even able to take a few with us. My mother decided what she wanted to prioritize returning with, so she did the packing, and I helped her with heavy things. I spent some time cleaning up trash in my father’s room and going through old files looking for hidden treasure. Once in town, I organized us into a schedule that made sense, closing accounts, transferring funds, getting a warning light on the car checked, seeing to it that the property taxes were paid and the cable equipment returned. 

I even got one of the old cars in the yard sold and started a conversation with the neighbor about buying the property. In three days, it was amazingly productive, interjected only by our bickering.

I followed armadillos and rabbits around and recorded the sound of coyotes howling along the creek.

I heard gunshots a few times. It was hunting season, and I worried about the deer. On the third and final evening, they came around, the matron with the jaw scars not among the much smaller group of skittish youngsters. (Where was she? I hoped against hope after all the surviving she’d done in the last few years, she hadn’t succumbed finally to a bullet.) They didn’t stay long, but their brief presence was reassuring. Forty years ago, they wouldn’t have been able to get into our yard and garden area, and if they had, we’d have shoo’ed them away, or worse. I do know what venison tastes like, and it’s not worth it. I like those people that make animal food from carcasses of deer hit by cars, and I understand hunting in overpopulated areas. Beyond that, don’t kill Bambi.

The way home was at first pleasant, as we reflected self-congratulatorily on all that we had accomplished in such a short period. Then, on the road, we heard that my father had fallen and was unresponsive. Evidently, due (again) to an extreme failure in communication, he hadn’t taken his pills since we left five days prior. The middle stretch of the drive became once again fraught with stress, disagreement, rainstorms, and car issues. You know what I prescribe, when all else fails? A bit of thrifting, which you can do nearly anywhere in the world, thank goodness. A few bargains and a Mexican dinner will cure most troubles or at least divert your attention for a bit.

Then we rushed home to work on getting my father out of the hospital before Thanksgiving.  On the other side of the coin, my mother-in-law passed away a couple of days later.