Visiting Uncle

I've felt guilty for having the address to the nursing home where my uncle lives now and not going for a long time. Seeing that I might have a job now -- more on that some other time -- my free time will be gone soon. My uncle, too. So I finally got up the courage to confront his mortality, and my mortality, and took Grandmother and my aunt (his wife) to the home Friday.

I don't know why he's across the river.  Aunt said that they had no room in any nursing home closer to their apartment.  So we had to schlep a half-hour to see him.  I don't know how often she gets to see him; she has no personal transportation, and my cousin (her son) does have a car but no current employment.  However, seeing as she is part of the family, and knowing her, I wonder how much she really cares about being so far away and unable to see her husband on a regular basis.

The home's close to St. Paul but in a, shall we say, gentrifying neighborhood.  OK, maybe it's a poor one.  There isn't a parking lot, just side-street parking.  The building's four stories tall, and the sidewalks weren't shoveled off after this week's snowstorm, so my aunt was clutching Grandmother as they walked to the front door.

When I opened the front door, the signature scent of hundreds of old, destitute bodies living together hit me like a sucker punch.  There were old people everywhere.  Nearly all of them were bound to wheelchairs.  Few of them, it seemed, were aware of their surroundings -- just looking ahead or spacing out, slowly eating their meals or chewing the food slipped into their mouths.  Meanwhile, I saw a lot of employees.  Viscerally, they look to me like God's children, putting up with the deteriorating bodies and minds of those mere footsteps away from the waiting arms of Death.

We go up to the fourth/top floor.  There are so many Hmong people in this nursing home that most of them are collected in their own floor, even though my uncle is not Hmong.  A right, then on the left, then the back half (the one that has the window) is where he is.  I didn't know in what state he would be in, so to not shock myself in case it was a lot more gruesome than I expected, once I saw Aunt go over to him, and once I saw a form of a foot, I stopped myself, then slowly inched my head forward past the end of the curtain.

There he was, my uncle.  His head didn't look too emaciated or deformed.  The thick head of gray hair I've always known he had was still there.  But the skin over his facial bone structure (the rest of his body was under the blanket, which was tucked firmly under his chin) appeared stretched tight, a sign of weight loss.

Aunt started to speak to him, loudly.  Uncle wouldn't respond, just stare at either Grandmother or I, or maybe the space between us.  Then Aunt shouted.  Then she slapped the pillow Uncle was resting his head on.  Hey, no need to belittle the guy and do that, OK?  Annoying.  But, Uncle moaned something inaudible.

Aunt, in Chinese then pointed to Grandmother and asked him, "Do you remember Grandmother?"  No response.  "DO YOU REMEMBER GRANDMOTHER???" she repeated a few more times before Uncle warbled "Grandmother."  At least I think, I couldn't hear him.  Then my aunt pointed at me.  "Do you remember Unforgivable Wetness?" she asked him.  (Of course that's not what she said; names are changed to protect the innocent, namely me.)  It took him a shorter amount of time to, I believe, stammer out my name.  But maybe Uncle didn't want Aunt to slap his pillow again.

His side of the room (the guy with the half closer to the door) looked cramped and old.  I don't expect granite furnishings, but there were old wooden drawers and an adjustable bed that works just fine even though it looked at least a decade old.  The TV was probably older, but it had all the channels an old person would need -- foreign language channels, public access, free TV.  Not that my uncle could understand it anyway, but now that nursing home-issued television set is his only friend.  The same way it was my only friend when I was in elementary school.

So it was the four of us, just standing around.  Aunt tried to talk to Uncle, and Grandmother seemed to talk only to my aunt.  I tried making hand gestures to him, and I got small responses, mostly movements from a bump underneath his blanket, probably his hand or shoulder.  But I'm still not sure that he recognized me or Grandmother and just took us for friendly faces.  He stroked out, and I wonder how much of his memory has been taken from him.  His ability to speak is largely gone.  Sad.

I planned to be there as long as he, and if not he, my aunt, wanted to be there.  I wouldn't know what to say, but I wanted to make sure I saw him in case anything happened.  Doesn't matter if I'm a stranger to him; at this point in his life, I'm visiting him not necessarily for him, but for me.  However, I don't think the visit lasted more than 30 minutes.  Aunt asked us, "So, should we go?" and we did.  She adjusted his pillow and raised up the bed so he could both see the TV and rest his head, and she tidied up the food tray that was bumping up against the curtain demarcating his side of the room from the other guy's.  But that's it for the chores.

I was the last of the three of us to leave the room.  I waved goodbye; the bump underneath the blanket moved a couple seconds after my wave.  And just to make sure, I turned back around and gave one more wave.  I think Uncle responded.  Hope to see him again.  Got this job during days, so I hope this will be good until that assignment's over.  And I hope to Buddha he's doing OK, considering.

You know what's so amazing about him?  He had a Medic-Alert bracelet.  In case you don't know, those are bracelets with quick instructions for any emergency worker who would stumble upon him.  Once I flipped it over.  It said, "Allergic to all antibiotics."  Are you shitting me?  If you're allergic to them all, shouldn't you be dead already?  But he still isn't, and I think he's in his late nineties.

I remember a strapping old man.  He walked with a slow hitch, but he was mentally alert and physicall adept and doing things well into his seventies.  In fact, he was the one who installed the locking knob on my bedroom door.  There is no way in hell I know how to do that.  And he did it for me.  And now, seeing that pillar of strength be just a gaunt face, moving his gaze, unblinkingly, from side to side ... well, seeing him as half the man he used to be makes me very contemplative.

When the three of us got back into the elevator, there was a Hmong guy in a wheelchair.  He made a noise and smiled.  Is he my uncle's roommate?  Is he crazy, or crazy and harmless?  And still the waft of old men's stink wafted in the air.

I'd rather die than live out my last days in an unfamiliar place like a nursing home.