My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents, Jonathan Silin [uplifting novels .TXT] 📗

snowstorms make travel hazardous she sends her health aide as her ambassador. She cannot tolerate the idea that my father m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 151

might pass one day without seeing a member of the family and thus feel abandoned. It takes many months to convince my mother that a “day off ” to keep a medical appointment is not a disloyal or unloving act.

Truth be told, because my father slips so easily between manic and depressive states and suffers from prolonged periods of dementia, it is often hard to know what to expect upon entering his room. At times he is not even in the room but out in the hallway frantically writing notes and wildly gesticulating about the staff’s refusal to take him to the development office so that he can give the nursing home a million-dollar gift. On other days, he schemes about installing two telephones, one on either side of his bed, even though he is voiceless and unable to carry on a conversation. On yet other days he is absorbed by some small affront or failure of the staff to respond quickly enough to his request for suctioning. Most offensive is their insistence that he get out of the bed for a few hours each day, which he feels is too great an effort.

Going to visit my father is a journey for which I pack carefully.

Beyond a great deal of protective gear, I try to manage something di-verting as well. On some days I bring old family photos. At first blush, what might appear to be severe dementia will then give way to a few minutes of focused attention. When I thrust the pictures in front of my father, he can identify everyone, including himself at age five, standing alone in front of the family home in Erie, Pennsylvania, dressed in an English-style winter coat with velvet collar. Occasionally the photos lead to family stories; mostly they end with a simpler labeling project. I am never sure how much he can comprehend. Several weeks after viewing the picture of himself at five, for example, I watch my father write the barber, whose prior attempts to trim his now long hair he graciously but forcefully resists, that he would be pleased if she could cut his hair, “in the manner of a small boy.”

On another day, in desperation to end a tantrum about the telephone lines, I pull my recently published book from my backpack. He takes it from my hands, examines it slowly and carefully, and then 152 n jonathan g. silin

writes, “Is it only published in paperback? No hard cover?” Rebuke, sincere inquiry, subtle put-down? I respond with laughter, naming his return to this world, and speak for a few minutes about the contents of the book before he drifts off to sleep.

Surely he is pleased, however, the day I come to his room directly after giving a talk a few blocks north at Columbia University. Then I report reading a narrative about his love of language. He smiles appreciatively but expresses no desire to read it himself. While nursing home residents often imagine that they are temporarily staying in a hotel, my father, ever the intellectual, sometimes believes that he is living in a university, the psychologists and psychiatrists who test him part of the faculty who simply enjoy his company.

I have no idea how my father will respond to the news I carry in my backpack that July afternoon three years ago. Walking across 112th Street in Manhattan, I rely on my experiences with HIV/

AIDS. I remember how it feels when impelled to do things for myself, not necessarily for the person who is sick—a cross-country visit to someone in a coma, a phone call to someone else with dementia, so many words spoken that cannot possibly be understood. I never regret these actions, but neither am I confused about their purpose. As on this day, I act out of my own needs, not anticipating a response from the other. I feel that no matter my father’s emotional state, telling him about Bob’s death is the only respectful thing to do, the only way to acknowledge that he still matters to me and is part of the world. Despite all his erratic behavior, there is an ethical and emotional imper-ative that draws me toward him. And I am not to be disappointed.

When I arrive he is calm, and after some banter about his latest discontents, I tell him why I have come. He listens carefully but does not respond. As with young children, I reframe my comments and use other words to make clear that he will never see Bob again. I try to check for his comprehension—no written response, no change of facial expression. I decide to drop the subject. After all, I am not there for his sympathy. We sit quietly together and he peruses the newspaper. Then it is time for me to go, my mission accomplished. We are m y fat h e r ’ s k e e p e r n 153

not an openly affectionate family, hugging and kissing not part of our usual comings and goings. My father is sitting in his wheelchair and as I lean down to look him in the eye and say goodbye, he reaches up with his bony, arthritic hands and pulls me toward him, planting a deep kiss on my forehead. Then I know he understands.

In the following weeks I am preoccupied with securing Bob’s ashes from the funeral home in Chicago and his possessions from the police department, and finally organizing a memorial service. I do not get to New York City nor is my mother mobile enough to come to the service. The afternoon before the memorial my father writes to my mother, “If the service for Bob is tomorrow, could you call Jonathan for me.” I am amazed