Morning Thanks--the nurses

The accident didn't total his 1980-something Olds, but it quite thoroughly did it in. It would have cost him much more than the car was worth to fix it up to be decent. You know. 

When you took a look at the accident itself, you might have made a case for keeping him off the streets. After all, he was in his early 90s. But Dad wasn't interested in losing freedom. Not driving meant even more dependency. I honestly figured that just smacking a parked car--truck actually--was no indication of limitations. Not yet anyway. 

So we went shopping. He hadn't looked at cars for a quarter century and was appalled--seriously, appalled--at prices. Once upon a time, after all, he'd farmed with horses. I found an old Explorer for $5000, drove it to the Home, picked him up so he could drive it, and he bought it. 

Then he proceeded to read the book--all of it, every page. Some of that info stuck. Some didn't. 

Accidentally, he hit the key wrong and the horn started bawling like a crying baby. Drove him nuts. He knew nothing about that key fob, so it just kept going off until it blew itself out. 

The truth? I would have let well enough alone, chalked it up to whatever. But my father-in-law is a cause-effect man. He had no idea how it started or stopped, which meant things were way out of control. That night, that mysterious horn kept him awake and trotting back and forth to the garage to make sure it wasn't doing it again. And again. And again. 

And then he had to listen to listen to his hot shot college prof son-in-law, who doesn't know a head gasket from a water pump, explain that all of that infernal honking was controlled on that little flat black gizmo on the key. 

That's who Dad was--and still is, even though today things don't line up all that well in his head.

He's older now, 99 this June. He's always been his own boss. He loved farming because farming allowed him to hold that kind of office. He loved tinkering with mechanical things, worked the motor pool from Normandy to Berlin, fixing tanks and jeeps and trucks and anything else hauled back from the front. 

On Christmas, fleecy snow sat at the side of the road right. When I got him into the car--not without some pain--he said, "The corn's going to freeze." It's been decades since he's farmed, but crops are still his major concern. "That's really unusual," he said, "--snow in June." 

He thought it was his birthday. Several times I told him it was Christmas, but it just didn't sink in. 

Later, after Christmas dinner, when we brought him back to the Home, he was confused. "Which chair, Dad?" I said when we got to his room. "Or do you want to lie down a while?" 

"I don't know what I want," he said, both hands up around his face as if his head was somehow out of control because, I'm sure, it was.

Later, when I walked out, I stopped to tell the nurses to bring him some water because he said he'd like some. "How is he?" they said.

I told him he seemed mixed up. 

"We'll go over there," they said. "Whenever you bring him back, he gets agitated."

It wasn't a veiled reprimand. It was simply life with Dad as they knew it. And as they know him.

He's one of twenty-some in the neighborhood where they work; most of the residents--or so it seems to me--are less active citizens of this world than he is. But the nurses love him, they say, because he's funny. Many of the residents are not.

Those nurses do blessed work--they're angels of mercy. Their job is not at all pretty, but it's simple: help old men and women feel joy while they wait, often impatiently, for death. 

This morning thanks is for the angels of mercy who take care of Dad. They're at it right now, I'm sure--getting him up, dressing him, making sure he's ready for breakfast. They're amazing.