Tag Archives: old age

Non-fiction

An Average Sunday

Leave a comment

My father sat in his kitchen, and we talked about football because we were going to spend all day watching games on TV. Sadly he got the names wrong of the football players and the teams as well.

“Who’s Baltimore playing?” he asked.

I’d told him about five minutes ago. I almost yelled at him.

“They’re playing the Raiders, Dad. I thought I told you five minutes ago.”

“That’s right,” he said.

The conversation went on, and he kept getting people’s names wrong. I thought about looking up dementia on the internet, but all that would’ve done was make me more worried. I should’ve learned my lesson after all those years of trying to diagnose myself after looking up diseases online, which was never a good idea for a hypochondriac like me, and that was what I wanted to do for my father.

We sat together in the living room and watched the games. He kept getting the players’ names wrong on the television before he went and picked up pizza.

“Where’s it from?” I asked. I was hoping Domino’s at least.

“It’s from WinCo,” he said.

“WinCo? Isn’t that like a grocery store for poor people?” I couldn’t imagine the pizza tasting any good.

“We order from there all the time,” he said.

What was with my parents to where they would order pizza from a place like that? Pizza, which I hold sacred to me, has to come from a reputable place. When I used to live in Los Angeles, there were great pizza places abound. A New Yorker would argue with me and say there were hardly any good pizza restaurants in that city. But a New Yorker could be snobbish about pizza anyway. Don’t ever mention pineapples when they’re around. Since I don’t hold Coachella Valley as a pizza mecca, I gave up and said, “Okay, we can order from there.” They may as well have ordered from Walmart if Walmart served pizza, which they don’t, but that was the regard I held for WinCo. I’ve never been inside one, but I can only imagine something different from Whole Foods.

When he went to pick up the pizza, I sat in the room with my mother, who was focusing on her iPad on the couch, and I asked her, “What’s with Dad? I know I asked you before about his cognitive functioning.”

And she said, “We’re both losing our minds. You’ll have to watch us because we’re forgetting things more often. Both of us worry about dementia. That’s why I do these crossword puzzles all the time, and your dad spends all day looking up ancestors online to keep his mind going. He doesn’t even bother helping with your financial future because he’s afraid he’ll make mistakes. We don’t have too much to worry about now, but when we don’t know how to start the car, you should be really concerned.”

I worried the time would come sooner than later. They’re knocking on the door of their eighties.

“I can’t sleep much anymore,” she said. “I was drinking cherry tart juice and chamomile tea with licorice root to fall asleep. Everything helped except the licorice root was making me burn too much body fat, so my skin began to sag. I had to stop taking it because I was losing too much weight.”

Wait. Licorice root? It burns fat? What the hell? Sign me up. I ordered it on Amazon right away.

A woman using a walker rolled into the coffee shop this morning, and I thought about my mother and how eventually she’ll have to use one. She has beaten herself up after playing tennis for so many years. She fell the other day on the court. The tread on her shoes was wearing out. I worry about her playing. She’s a klutz. I love her, but she’s still a klutz, and a klutz at her age is playing with fire on the tennis court. To think she’ll have to give up her favorite love someday depresses me. I dwelled over that when she had back surgery six years ago, when she was in the hospital for a week. I had a rough time with her in there. I couldn’t stand to see her unconscious in a hospital bed, so I stayed away from there as much as I could and tried to enjoy the air in Venice Beach near where she stayed. After that long, I still have vivid memories of when she was there and how hard it was for me to cope. But they’re still around, and that’s all that matters. And the pizza from WinCo was actually very good.

Non-fiction

Getting Old

Leave a comment

Yesterday, for Father’s Day, my parents took me to the 849 Restaurant & Lounge in Palm Springs. The decor was all white with old-fashioned wooden chairs and tables. They gave my mother a miniature coat rack for her to hang her purse and sweater on. I ate fried chicken with a biscuit and mashed potatoes. My father ate Chicken Milanese, while my mother ate Scottish Salmon with rice cakes. It was the best dinner I’d had in months.

We got to talking about old age. My father is seventy-eight. He doesn’t think he’ll live for another ten years. My mother didn’t say anything about that. She must agree.

They’re going to a funeral today. They have to drive three and a half hours out of town to attend it. The person who died was a family friend, and he was ninety-four years old. I saw him at the Greek church celebration a few weeks ago. He was in a wheelchair, missing teeth. He’d known me since I was a child, but when I asked if he remembered me, he said no. His daughter used to babysit me, so we were closer at one point in my life. A lot has happened since then. His wife had dementia, and she’s been dead for over ten years.

I’m turning forty-seven next week, and my mother will turn seventy-eight in August. Birthdays aren’t what they used to be. That’s for sure.

One of their friends baked me a raspberry cheesecake with a graham cracker crust. Last night, I helped myself to two and a half slices and couldn’t stop eating it. My parents and I sat on the couch in my apartment and didn’t have much to say.

“You need to make friends,” my father said to me. “That’ll get your mind off work.”

I couldn’t agree with him more.

“I’m seeing a neurologist this week because of this pain in my head,” he said.

“Your father bumped it twice on a golf cart,” Mom said.

He can’t remember people and places like he used to. He gets names wrong. It worries my mother, and it worries me, too. He used to be pretty sharp, but those times have passed. We have to remind him of things. Who knows where he’ll be in five years? The same for me. It’s difficult to think about, and I would rather not think about what will happen to me once they leave. Age catches up to us all. What else can we do but have friends to grow old with?

Fiction

An Uncommon Night

Leave a comment

Last night was the one-hundredth-year celebration of the Greek Orthodox church in my hometown. I showed up with my parents and my aunt and uncle from the east coast. All of our relatives from that town came to celebrate, including my uncle from near San Luis Obispo.

We stood inside a banquet room, talking, gossiping, and eating appetizers like hummus, pita, kalamata olives, and feta cheese. I mostly ate because I didn’t know anyone there besides my relatives. They were busy talking to strangers, and I was shy around people I didn’t know. I’m socially awkward like that.

Not too long after we got there, my uncle from near San Luis Obispo began shaking as he stood at a table. People noticed him, so they hurried over to help him. He’s in his seventies, and he carries a cane for his bad knees. I knew earlier there was something wrong with him by the look of his blue nose. Actually almost his whole face appeared blue. I thought he might’ve been drunk because he liked to drink. People tried to help him from shaking. They even brought a chair over for him to sit in, but he collapsed and fell to the floor, passing out. Everyone gathered around him and watched him.

We called 911 to come pick him up. The fire truck showed up not ten minutes later because the fire department was only a few blocks away. They pumped his chest, broke one of his ribs, and hooked him to a monitor. His vital signs were okay, but I heard later that his heart had stopped. It was tragic watching him on the floor because I’d never seen him that way.

The firepersons rolled him on a stretcher to the nearest hospital, although my uncle was protesting not to go. He’s the type of person who says he’s fine even when he isn’t.

After they carried him away, the festival went on. There were about two hundred and fifty people who’d shown up. The price was a hundred dollars a plate of Mediterranean food. We sat at round white-clothed tables. My favorite cousin sat next to me. We’re the same age. Of course the main topic of discussion was my uncle. I was still shaking after what had happened. It could’ve been a heart attack, or it could’ve been a panic attack. I know after years of experience with anxiety. But after I heard from my father that his heart had stopped at some point, I realized no, it wasn’t a panic attack.

I looked at my cousin and told her, after she said she couldn’t believe everything, to get used to it because now we’re old enough to where people close to us are going to start dying or ending up in hospitals just like my poor uncle. She agreed.

But the festivities continued as if nothing had ever happened. It was strange. The Greek dancers started dancing in a circle. We ate Greek chicken, lamb, more pita, more hummus, and drank more wine. I thought about my uncle for the rest of the time I was there and about what I’d said to my cousin.

My mother sat at the next table over with her sisters, and I kept looking at her, thinking someday I’d have to take care of her. She’s fine now, but she’s in her late seventies.

“When my mother goes,” I told my cousin, “it’s over for me.”

And I meant it. My mother is my world. It was a morbid celebration. No one expected that someone like my uncle would collapse, even with a lot of elderly people there.

The older I get, the more I’m preparing for funerals and hospitals. I didn’t dance. I just ate. The food was excellent. Now it’s Sunday morning, the morning after the festival. I’m still full from the chicken, lamb, and baklava, and I’m wondering about my uncle and whether he’s still at the hospital. I’ll drive back home today, a three-and-a-half-hour trip back to Palm Springs, and tomorrow will be another workday. But I’ll keep him in mind.