Pa Chronicles

The Pa Chronicles

These are some early stories highlighting the first year I spent as a cargiver to an Alzhiemer's patient.

August 18, 2005

By August 18, 2005, I mean that it is barely an hour old. I come into this little house every night, as the previous day has just freshly expired. Tonight marks a full week as an employee here, five days of actual service. So far, here are just a few little things that have happened since coming here.

It took about a week to actually get started after first being offered the position. Mrs. Harper was at best hesitant, and at worst, she was outright opposed to me. I was supposed to have an apartment in Atlanta, but as things sometimes turn out, I had no job, no affordable house, and no descent roommate. Just around this time, Lindy Hale lets me know that there is someone that is needed to stay with Pa and just look out for him at night. They need someone to be there so that Ma can get some rest, so she doesn’t have to worry all night, grow older at twice the time. And so I was offered my 25 bucks a night, and the option of not paying rent, not having to work a real job, and I quickly decided that this was too much to turn down.

The night that I started this job, Brent Brownlee came down with me to get the key and the info on how this was going to work. I begged him to come and soothe the awkwardness of it all. I knew that I was not wanted, and that was confirmed when Ma lets Brent in on the secret that this arrangement really wasn’t necessary.

The next morning a woke up to 25 dollars cash and a request for the key. I was seriously afraid that I had slept completely through the night and that Pa must have wondered out onto the highway, all while I snored my way through my dreams. I said “thank you”, and “I hope I didn’t miss anything”, and made my weary way out the door to a few hours sleep. Later on I went down to meet my good friend Stevie and Lindy pops from the bathroom like confetti. “Hey, Tatum! You did a great job last night and you will be back tonight. Just ignore whatever Ma tries to tell you. It’s your new fulltime job.” I must say that I have a great appreciation for stuff like this. I come from the school of Frederick Beauchner, who says that everyone’s life has an element of comedy to it. I happen to believe that my life has an overdose. I have a tragic, dark comedy most of the time, but a laugh is a laugh, I always say.

Before I knew it, I was here every night. The second night, I believe he wet the bed twice. He was still on the king bed at that time, with ma on the couch in the other room. By the way, I sleep on a pull out love seat, which I don’t find too incredibly uncomfortable, eventually I started to use a fan, which means that I gratefully do not have to sweat through the night. There are few things that make me more aggravated and sleep deprived than a hot room.

That second night I found it almost impossible to get Pa back to bed. He wanted to do everything but. I woke up to find him taking all the sheets and covers off in the dark, and I had no idea what to do next. I managed to get the wet sheet back on and wake up Ma to ask her what to do next. I was already having my first full fledged crisis. She said, without taking off her eye mask, to change him and put him in a chair. That was little help at the time, but I made do. I understood that I was of very little worth if I had to always wake the poor matriarch up in the middle of the night. I knew that this time was my free pass, and I better not disturb her again short of escape, death, or rapture.

Meanwhile, Pa is meandering around in the darkness, mumbling nonsense to himself. I am flustered and without answers, so I try to get him changed, but he won’t change, I try to get him to sit in a chair, but he won’t sit in the chair. Finally, he sits on the other side of the bed, and he just sits there for about 20 minutes or so, and he eventually just kills over, asleep for what I believe to be the rest of the night. The whole time that I was trying to coax Pa back to bed, or into the chair, he was always repeating this line: “Just do the best you can. Alright, just do the best you can. Okay, but just do the best you can.” “Please, Pa. Let’s go to bed now.” This is what I would beg, and he would reply, “I’ll do the best I can, and so will you.” I wondered to myself as fell into a light sleep, how such a phrase gets stuck in a man’s mind, as if the needle on the record player is just bouncing up and down on the same old, worn out spot. It made me wonder what kind of things I’ll be saying if I make it to my eighties, if I live a life worthy enough for my mind to go before my body bows out. I wonder if I have the chance to decide that now. I wonder if I can shape my late insanity, so that people will know that I might not be perfect, and I might wet the bed from time to time, but damn it, I did the best I could.

One night Pa is set up in a chair because he has wet the bed, and I don’t have anymore sheets, after the long ordeal of getting him to bed, he sleeps for a good while. About an hour later he wakes back up, and has wet himself again, but thankfully, the chair is dry. As I sit in a chair and read by a little light, I look up to find Pa on the other side of the room staring straight at me. As I look, he throws a hand up in the air and waves to me fully and goofily. I wave back and can’t help but to crack a smile.

One morning I woke up and Pa had just gotten out of bed, and unbelievably, he looks over and says “Is that you Tatum?” This is funny, because the first morning I was there, he asked if I was Biff. As Ma was paying me that morning, He commented on what a good job I was doing and said that I was great houseboy. I don’t exactly know what a houseboy is these days, but I’m proud to be of good repute.

Here is the schedule, incase you don’t already know, I get here usually between midnight and 12:30AM, and leave between 6:45 and around 7:15 in the morning.

I’ve discovered that it is imperative to get Pa up as soon as I get there. I have to get him to the bathroom, because it has become a given that he will wet the bed. I find that about half the time, he has already wet himself before I get there.

Pa, surprisingly, has an uncircumcised penis, something I’ve never actually seen before, and hope not to see again. I have distinct pleasure of helping Pa change every night after he has wet himself. His system is usually a t-shirt, a pair of tidy whites or boxers, and not one, but two pairs of depends. The man is a mighty river.

Tonight, as I changed Pa, we talked about how his feet have swelled, and he tried to explain to me why that was. I asked him how old he was and said about 201. I then asked him if he knew my name, and after about a seconds worth of hesitation, he says “Tatum.” To this, I respond that he is sharp as a tack. He says, “You bet I am.” And he makes his way back to sleep.

After all of this, he asks me how long I’ve been there, I respond that I’ve been there about half an hour. A few minutes later, as I’m setting up my bed, he says thanks for the 30 minutes worth of work. I wonder how much sarcasm he meant to imply. If he did mean some, then I’m impressed that his mind is sharp enough for that, but still, I’m typing at my computer at 2AM because I want to make sure he sleeps well. At least the man has a sense of humor.

He asked me the other morning where I got my sniffles.

Some folks up at Georgia Tech wanted to watch a couple of great movies the other night. I said that I couldn’t because I had to go see after Pa. Lukas tells me that Pa can come if he wants. We had the greatest laugh over “Shh, come on, Pa! We’re bustin’ outta here!

I heard about the time that Ma couldn’t get him to sleep because he swore that someone was in the garage. They kept saying that of course there was no one there. It was the middle of the night, for crying out loud. Finally Ma calls Rick and says that he needs to come and look in the garage and tell Pa that no one is there. Rick is on the phone trying to explain this to the poor old man. Rick finally made his way up here, and as he pulls up the driveway he discovers that his brother Biff, for whatever reason, is sitting in the garage.

Pa wanted to get dressed and shaved the other night, and I kept trying to get him back in bed. He was relentlessly pulling random things out of drawers, swearing that he was going to need them. That’s one of the things that he loves to do, dig things out of drawers. I eventually get them from him and whether it is easy or not, get them back where they belong. Anyway, Pa keeps on swearing that it is time to shave, and finally I exclaim, “But Pa, its 3am!” “You’re kidding.” Was his reply as he checks his watch. Sure enough, after seeing this proof, he makes his way back to the bed, my victory lane.

Last night, he wanted to shave again, but I wouldn’t let him. We comprised by me showing him how to operate a mach 3 razor. Apparently Pa hadn’t mastered how to press the button and to put the cartridge back on. After demonstrating it for him, he practiced himself about 3 or 4 times, before thanking me for my advice and making his way back to bed.