Treaters

It’s a little odd staying in my grandfather’s house without him there…. I don’t have to be quiet in the mornings, I sit alone at the dining room table rather than listening to his long, slow stories … in the afternoons no one is puttering about in the yard, and in the evenings I have control of the television. That last is not necessarily a good thing, especially on rainy days. There’s lots to watch on cable, especially in my current mood—I’m a bit at loose ends, after the weeks of preparation but still a week before I start hiking….

I like visiting Grandpa at the rehab center, a place that strikes me as friendly and useful, airy and appealing…. But there our time together is more intentional than at home. We sit in his room and talk…. Which is good, but at the house we more naturally fall in and out of conversation as we go about our days….

Last night he asked me to look for a jacket at the house, something between the winter coat he’s been wearing and the windbreaker he has in his hospital room closet (he didn’t like the tight cuffs of the latter). I was directed to the basement, where he keeps several racks of clothing. Each is draped on top with a sheet to protect the shirts and jackets…. Nearly all the clothing dates from before he retired in 1984, and most is from Penney’s. He also has a metal cabinet filled with almost-new suits of similar vintage, all with slight imperfections (which is why he picked them up, either for free or cheap). This might sound like a sartorial goldmine, but it’s actually hard to find something interesting among his collection.

On my afternoon visit today I brought him a few coats and long-sleeved shirts to select from, but none were quite what he was looking for. Not that he necessarily needed a coat of any sort: he had the temperature in the room turned up to eighty-five degrees.

My uncle Mike was with me on the visit, and when the conversation turned to cars, Grandpa told a story about a “beautiful” vehicle he had bought sometime in the early 60s, a red and gray Chevy, but then the  teen-aged Mike wrecked it. “He did that a lot,” Grandpa said, jerking a thumb in Mike’s direction. Mike laughed but not in an amused way.

Grandpa shifted in his wheelchair, grimacing in pain. He waved his hand in the air in front of his face—“Who was that? Sammy…. That actor?” I guessed Sammy Davis, Jr, which was correct. “What was it, about five or ten years ago, he broke both his hips. And six months later he was jumping all around.” Mike said, that was more than five or ten years ago, but Grandpa didn’t hear; his hearing aid had been sent out for repair. One has to speak loudly.

Grandpa said, “I just don’t know what I’m going to be able to do….” Maybe, but he expects to be back in his house, and to finish repairing his rider lawn mower, a portion of which lies in parts in the garage. His own difficulties brought to mind Rosie, his girlfriend. She only visits on Sundays, when her daughter brings her. She doesn’t like to leave her house much anymore, and hasn’t for months now. Last year she and Grandpa had been together all the time; she had spent most of her nights at the house. But she’s had serious back troubles, one operation after another, four all together now. “It’s affected her balance,” Grandpa said, tapping his forehead. Apparently he referred to the mental more than physical. “She feels best when she’s at home. Where everything’s familiar….”

They talk on the phone still, but the intimacy and closeness has diminished. Still, the other day when he was talking to his physical therapist, I heard him refer to Rosie as his “wife-to-be.” Hard to see that happening, though, as they both continue to be whittled down….

Grandpa has mixed feeling about the staff at the rehab center. Well, maybe not so mixed. He does recognize that they have a job to do, but he doesn’t always appreciate their style. Struggling for the right word, he settled on calling them the “treaters.” “See, these treaters just want you to do it their way all the time…. Till you just want to … give them a way out.” He made a fist and threw a short right hand punch to an imaginary jaw.

Mike and I left at dinner time. Grandpa said he wasn’t going to bother to go over to the dining room, there wouldn’t be anything he could eat. But then he said he guessed he’d go have a look.