Night visit to Wal-Mart

 

Inside the sliding glass doors at Wal-Mart we found ourselves at the wrong end of the store, and I followed Grandpa slowly slowly down along the long rank of checkout lanes towards the pharmaceutical aisles. I had suggested a hand basket but he had wanted a cart. “A hand basket?” he said, as if this was some unknown object. “No, I need a cart, to lean on.” But he had his walker. I didn’t bother to argue, as I knew it would be no use, but pushed the empty cart along behind him.

I had arrived back in Boise the night before to find Grandpa out of the rehabilitation hospital and in his own house again. My mother had come out from Maryland and she was staying with him. His other two kids, Rosemary and Mike, were over much of the day. So far he had proved a nearly full time job for the three of them. Not so much because of his physical limitations, though there was that, but they were trying to get the house in better order, to manage his complex meds regimen, and to deal with his demands and sometimes his frustration. He has always wanted things just so, and that’s harder to get now.

It probably doesn’t help that he’s not sleeping much. He wanders around the house much of the night—during the day too he can’t hold still for long. When he does sleep it’s in a chair in his room; he never gets in the bed.

The lawn remains a source of trouble. (In New Plymouth both Janie and Jeannette also fretted over their yards, the watering and the mowing, the tragedy of brown spots, whether to use irrigation water or pay for city water….; I have concluded that the elderly would have substantially less stressful lives if the Kentucky bluegrass lawn was eliminated. Or maybe if they simply didn’t have to rely on—and sometimes pay—others to do what they had always done for themselves. So maybe the lawn is just representative.) At Grandpa’s the difficulty has remained how to get the lawn cut. But a solution has, it seems maybe, been found close at hand: the two teenage brothers next door cut it today, working in tandem with push mowers. Grandpa had agreed to pay them twenty dollars, but then he had them do some extra work, raking and clearing fallen branches, and it was about a hundred degrees, and they worked for two and a half hours. Mom and Mike and I all agreed that we should pay them more; but we did not consult Grandpa, as we knew he would not agree. I said to Mom, “It’s either placate him and short those boys, or piss him off and give the boys what they deserve. I vote for the latter.”

He was having his physical therapy appointment when the two boys were done, so Mike gave them forty dollars. Later, when we were leaving for Rosemary’s, Grandpa told me to back out of his driveway and pull into the neighbor’s. A ridiculous move, it seemed to me, and I couldn’t resist asking, though I knew better, “why?”

Grandpa said, “Just go ahead and do it.” This is the sort of thing that most irritates me. How hard is it to offer a brief explanation?

When he started to get out of the car Mom figured it out. “Mike already paid them,” she said.

Grandpa stopped and put his hand on a white envelope he had put in his pocket, with the cash for the boys. He sat back hard in his seat, petulant, and said, “Why can’t people mind their own business and keep out of mine.” Mom tried to explain but he didn’t want to hear it.

Later at Rosemary’s he said something to Mike, and when Mike told how much he had paid, Grandpa got up and picked up the two chair pads he puts down wherever he sits and made his way out into the backyard. He can’t really storm out of a room, but he did his best version.

I have sympathy for him, but even at his age and in his condition I think a person can practice a little more consideration for others. The Wal-Mart visit, for example. We had been over to Rosemary’s house for dinner, and it was late, nearly ten, but he insisted on stopping at the store. I suggested we make the trip the next morning, but there’s never really any possibility of such flexibility. Rosemary’s better able to say no to him, but not Mom and not me. Mom asked if it was okay if she stayed in the car, and I said yes, and I got his walker out of the trunk and decided to be patient, especially since what other choice was there. With another person I could’ve asked, what are we here for, or what is it you want to get? But that’s pointless with Grandpa, as he’ll just say something annoying like, “you’ll see,” or, more commonly, simply ignore the question. So I didn’t know what I was up for, if he had a long list or what.

He worked slowly up and down the aisles, picking up bottles of various over-the-counter medications and peering at the labels. But he put each item back and kept looking…. Finally, he pointed at a bottom shelf and had me hand him a plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol, then another. For a long time he contemplated the difference between 50% and 70% rubbing alcohol, and then he had me put them both in the cart. We started the long journey back to the other end of the store, where only the last two checkout lanes were open and the lines were each ten people long.

Grandpa waved towards the doors and started off in that direction, and I thought he was going back to the car. But after I had paid, I found him sitting on a bench between the two sets of automatic doors, in the bay where the carts are kept. He had his two hands on his walker and he was staring off in front of him, and he looked ancient and frail and tired. He can hardly walk, he can’t drive and get around in the world on his own, can’t even go to the store for a bottle of rubbing alcohol without a lot of help.