One time, my Dad talked about wanting to take a cruise down through the Panama Canal. I have no idea where he got that idea from.
He said he thought it would be great if he could have a “Man Friday” to accompany him on the trip, like someone who could be like a butler or a manservant. It was a real flight of fantasy that made me smirk to myself. As far as I knew, my old man probably didn’t have enough money for such an extravagant cruise. I thought that his imagination had really taken hold of him.
A week later, he mentioned the cruise to me again, adding that he’d asked the care home’s Activity Coordinator, a lady named Brielle, to accompany him. It was truly shocking news, although I secretly admired the balls on the old guy for asking her in the first place.
At this point in his life, my Dad had been through multiple strokes and a broken hip. He was partially paralyzed down his left side from his face to his toes, and usually had to tend to his left arm with his right hand to make sure it didn’t fall into the spokes of his wheelchair. He was bruised and bent over, with a weak, slightly slurred voice from partial paralysis. He couldn’t get out of his wheelchair to get on the toilet without assistance, but inside his broken body, his mind was still active, roaring with a self-assurance that verged on defiance (and no small degree of malignant narcissism).
His mind, his intelligence, remained as active as ever. After his heart attack, multiple strokes, and broken hip, his ego had recovered and had basically doubled-down on his general sense of greatness. Stubborness was core to the survival of my Dad’s ego. When someone wrote that saying “The older I get, the greater I was”, they were describing James Evan Love to a tee.
I couldn’t believe that my old man had asked his care home activity coordinator to go on a cruise with him. “Dad, are you nuts? You can’t do that!”
“What? Hey, I’m not saying anything would happen”, he said, looking at me with a mscheivous grin, “but if it did, I wouldn’t say no.”
Cheeky old bugger! What the hell kind of champagne and sponge bath ocean cruise had he been dreaming up in his lonely old brain?
“Jesus Christ”, was all I could muster. He sounded actually smitten with this lady. He’s finally gone over the hill, I decided.
I had to go visit Brielle in her office on my way out, to ask her about my Dad’s invitation. I think I’d wanted to apologize and see if it had caused any problems with her or any of the other staff. People overhear things and then gossip away.
Brielle’s office as Activity Coordinator was just next to the nurse’s station in the common room where all the residents lounge during the day. Her office door was usually open, and she motioned me in from behind her desk when she saw me approaching. We’d chatted about Dad once or twice in the few years that he’d been in Carleton Lodge. She was a strong, confident woman who’d once been a cop.
She carefully recounted their conversation to me, speaking calmly and pleasantly but with a confidence that showed her potential for authority. Dad had always had a weak spot for strong, confident women. In fact, the stronger, the better. He’d gotten himself in trouble because of it in the past too. I understood why he’d grown to like Brielle, and I pictured him hanging around outside her office door slumped in his wheelchair, hoping for a little chat.
She explained to me how she’d told him she was very flattered by his invitation but that it wouldn’t be right or possible to do something so personal, and that she could easily lose her job over it. She’d let Dad down very gently and had appealed to his reason without embarrassing him or hurting his feelings. I saw right then that compassion and communication skills were her biggest strengths.
Dad never did take that cruise through the Panama Canal (or anyone else’s canal for that matter).
Dad had our familly’s little black VCR in his little care room apartment. One day, he told me “I’ve never seen a blue movie,” and he asked me to get him one. I heard myself mutter “Never…?”, and felt my face flush red. I thought my whole body was going to turn inside-out from sheer awkwardness.
Our family had created and endured more than its share of dysfunction during my life, and even the least offensive of Dad’s acts had never been discussed or explained by him. We kept our shit hidden and unspoken. We didn’t solve issues or seek clarity, and we certainly didn’t talk about awkward topics like sex. Masturbation sent you to hell or something, and sex talk was absolutely unheard of. All those ideas flashed through my mind when Dad asked me to procure him a VHS porn video.
“Yep, sure would like to watch a blue movie…”, he said hopefully.
There was no way in hell I was going into the adult section of some video shop just so he could get caught by a Nursing Aide for watching a porn movie with the sound up way too high. I wondered if shit like that could get him kicked out of the care home or something. He’d waited most of a year for a room to open to get in there in the first place.
“Ew! Dad! No way! God!”
A disappointed “awww…” was all he said.
