An Irreconcilable Difference

by Lynda Fitzgerald

  “No, lass,” she said, taking my hand and patting it. “Nothing like that. They had a bit of a row about which TV channel to watch, but Dr. Jules—”

  A baritone voice behind me said, “Mrs. Graham?”

  I turned slowly to face the doctor. I was prepared for anything except what I saw. If the nurses’ gentle voice had frightened me, the doctor’s expression of kind concern unhinged me completely.

  He took my elbow, gently this time, and led me into his tiny office. My fear grew with each step.

  “Your father is all right,” he said as he ushered me into the chair. I was about to rail at him for scaring me to death when he added, “But I don’t like a lot of the signs I’m seeing with this episode. There’s a lot more withdrawal than I’d like. He’s not responding to any overtures right now. I wanted to warn you about that before you saw him.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “What happened?” I managed finally.

  He pulled his desk chair around and sat, his knees nearly brushing mine. “He and Steve got into a ruckus about which channel they were going to watch. Don was yelling when he collapsed.”

  “Collapsed?”

  He nodded. “We’ve ruled out a stroke, and he didn’t lose consciousness. He’s unresponsive, but he isn’t impervious to pain.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew.

  “I don’t like the fact that he isn’t responding to our voices.” He clasped his hands between his knees. “There’s always a chance he may pull out of this,” he continued. “He’s had a couple of these episodes before. None that have lasted this long, though.” His face softened. “Your mother is with him and has been the whole time. He’s not acknowledging her, but that doesn’t stop her from talking to him nonstop.”

  He got to his feet and walked the few steps to the door, then back again. “I think it’s only fair to warn you that there’s an almost equal chance that he won’t pull out of it. He had some incontinence problems with this one. That’s the first time that’s happened.” He suddenly seemed to realize I was craning my neck to look up at him, and he dropped back into the chair. “There’s no way to tell. He may pull back out, but I’m not overly optimistic.”

  I sat staring at his face for a long time. This was an entirely different man from the one I’d talked to before. He might have the same name and be wearing the same skin, but everything else was different. His eyes radiated kindness, his manner, sensitivity. He seemed genuinely concerned about my father, and even me. I felt a sudden urge to comfort him.

  My voice sounded hoarse in my own ears. “Can I see him?”

  He seemed to consider my request before he nodded. “I’ll go with you,” he said, rising and following me out of the office.

  I was glad he had warned me, although nothing could have prepared me for the change I faced when I walked into my father’s room.

  The window blinds were open, but the drab day offered little light and seemed to suck all the energy out of the space. My father’s bed was rolled up so that he appeared to be sitting, but it was only an appearance. A bit of bare leg showed where the sheet that covered him had slipped. His hands rested lifelessly on either side of him as he lay staring, if such an unfocused look could be termed that, at the wall opposite. There was no animation about him, no movement at all, no color in his skin. For the first time in all the years he had been sick, I could imagine his death, and it terrified me.

  Mother sat in a chair beside the bed. She took one look at my face and broke off in mid-sentence. She came around the bed and put her arm around me. “Look who’s here, Don,” she said as if he might react. “It’s Lou. You’re mighty popular with the ladies.”

  He didn’t even blink. His facial muscles were slack. I might have thought we’d already lost him if I hadn’t seen the sheet moving up and down with each breath. I couldn’t do what my mother was doing. I couldn’t talk and pretend things were fine.

  I saw Mother look at the doctor, who nodded.

  “I’m going to spend a little time with Lou, honey,” she said in the direction of the bed. “I’ll be back later.” She walked over and kissed him on the forehead, then came back, pulling me out of the room.

  We were silent as the door closed behind us, leaving the doctor with my father. She led me out the front door of the Manor. There was a wide porch, Georgia style, with rocking chairs lined up like white wicker headstones. All were empty. The cold air kept everyone else inside. I didn’t feel the chill outside of me, so preoccupied was I with the chill inside. I was still in shock, I guess, at the change in my father.

  Mom pushed me down into a rocker, then sat down beside me. “It’s okay to cry, Lou,” she said, her voice breaking on my name.

  That snapped me out of it. My mother crying? I jumped up out of the chair and knelt down beside her, wrapping my arms around her waist. “Oh, mom, you poor thing. How long has he been like this?”

  She swiped ineffectively at her eyes. “Since about eight this morning.”

  “You’ve been here since eight?” I was incredulous.

  She shook her head. “I got here about seven.”

  “Seven? Why?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t usually come until nine, you know, to give the attendants a chance to get them all up and dressed, so it won’t embarrass them.” She shook her head again. “I woke up with this bad feeling. Nothing specific. Since I was up anyway, I thought I’d come on over.”

  There was more to it than that and I knew it. After a long hesitation, she confirmed it.

  “He seemed—oh, I don’t know—strange yesterday. Almost too animated.” She looked over at me. There were still tears in her eyes, but they were no longer spilling down her cheeks. “I guess I sensed something.”

  Mother had always sensed things. Nothing elaborate or dramatic, like knowing an accident was going to happen to a certain person at a certain time, but vague feelings we’d learned over the years not to ignore.

  I couldn’t bear to see her in pain. “He’ll get better, mom. You know he will.”

  She seemed to regain her bearings. She patted me on the hand, smiling tenuously. “He might for a little while. But we have to accept the fact that it won’t last.” She breathed in and out several times. “I didn’t mean to fall apart on you. I was going to come over and talk to you a little later. I’m so sorry you had to walk into that unprepared.”

  “The doctor warned me.”

  “Still, seeing is different than hearing.”

  I nodded.

  We sat like that for a long time. I lay my head in her lap and she absently petted my hair. Her wordless love helped more than any tranquilizer ever could, and I hoped that worked both ways.

  Eventually the cold forced us to move. As I got stiffly to my feet, my gaze was drawn to the door of the Manor. I could see the doctor watching us from inside.

  When he realized I saw him, he came out on the porch.

  “Don?” Mother said.

  “There’s an attendant with him,” the doctor told her. “We’ll keep someone with him today and tonight and see what tomorrow brings. I don’t expect anything dramatic tonight.”

  His warm glance encompassed us both. I was struck anew at how different he seemed. This must be how other people saw him. I didn’t know why he singled me out for his wrath up until now. His next words told me that he was thinking along the same lines.

  “When you’re here again, Mrs. Graham, I’d like to have a few minutes of your time. I feel I owe you an apology.”

  I was still too numb to react. I nodded, mute, and followed my mother out to the parking lot. I registered that our two cars were almost the only ones in the parking lot and surmised that it must be the lull between visiting periods.

  “Come home with me,” Mother said when we reached her shiny new convertible. It didn’t occur to me to refuse.

  We each drove our own car. When we arrived at her condo, she fixed us a late lunch—or early dinner, since it was nearly four o’clock
. It was only then that I remembered I had eaten nothing the entire day. I roused enough from my funk to help her set the table.

  Eventually, we moved from the kitchen to her tiny family room, where she built a fire. The sun was setting, and the temperature was falling quickly. Still, she opened a window so we wouldn’t roast; it didn’t take much of a fire to heat the small room.

  We sipped tiny cups of espresso and watched the flames flicker gold and blue. Why, I wondered, is the smell of burning wood so comforting? Is it an association developed over our lives of past happy times gathered around the fireplace, or is it more elemental, a throwback to fire representing safety, maybe, or the communal gatherings of our far distant past?

  When we were settled snugly on the sofa with a soft throw spread across our legs, I began feeling more like myself, and Mother began to talk. “I remember when Don was first diagnosed,” she said. “I walked around in a daze for weeks. I couldn’t believe this was happening to him—to us. I did the same thing you did for a while, pretended he wasn’t sick. It was easy to do, since he didn’t act sick. Then he started dragging me around to all those nursing homes.” She looked over at me, her face bleak. “I tried to get out of it. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head.

  She stared back into the fire. “I didn’t want to know what we were facing. What I’d be facing. He wouldn’t have any of it. He shamed me into going with him. I came very close to hating him for it. It tore me up to see those people sitting around in wheelchairs like zombies drooling on their chins. I still did a pretty good job of pretending that Don would never be like that. For a long time, it worked. Then, after a while, it didn’t seem as horrible to me. It became more familiar, less frightening.” She smiled again. “Don desensitized me. I don’t know if he meant to. By the time I realized what he’d accomplished, he had no memory of the visits. But that’s what happened. By the time he went into Bradford Manor, I was fairly comfortable around people with AD.”

  She got up and refilled our cups. For once, I was glad for the caffeine. It seemed to be clearing my head.

  She put another chunk of wood on the fire, and curled back up on the couch beside me. There was something so companionable, so right, in being together like this.

  She began to speak again. “Despite all that, today was hard for me. I can only imagine how awful it was for you.” She reached over and stroked my arm. “We both have to face the fact that we’re going to lose him, Lou. It’s not going to be an easy loss, either. I’m not saying that it’s ever easy to lose someone you love, but it’s a little less painful, I think, when the loss is quick. My father died of a heart attack. He was there one day and gone the next. It was terrible and sad, but it was…clean. We could begin to mourn him immediately. It didn’t drag on. He didn’t deteriorate before my eyes. That’s the toughest, I think.

  “I think I began to mourn your father the day I put him in Bradford Manor. That was two years ago, and I’m mourning him still.” She rested her head against the back of the couch. “At first I didn’t know what I was going to do. Then—" She glanced at me. “I’m afraid this is going to sound cold, but I realized that he was the one with the disease. It wouldn’t make him any better if I deteriorated along with him. I had spent so many years tending to him that I’d given up most of my friends and all of my outside activities. When he was no longer in the house, I was alone in a way I’d never been in my life.”

  “You never said anything. I could have spent more time with you.”

  “You could have,” she agreed, “but that would have been a stop-gap measure, a Band-Aid on a bleeder, not a solution. I realized that I needed my own life, not a piece of yours.” Her smile took the sting out of her words. “That’s when I started to fill up my time. I made a list of the things I’ve always wanted to do.” She rose from the loveseat. “I’ll show you.”

  She came back holding a piece of paper. Printed down its length in her tidy script was a long list of items. I noticed Tai Chi and golf immediately. Several of them were crossed off. “They’re things your father would have hated doing, so I put them off.”

  She suddenly looked embarrassed. “You probably think it’s silly, this list thing, but when things are really bad—like today—I look at my list. It helps me realize that I’ve accomplished quite a bit, but even more importantly, it reminds me I still have a lot to do.”

  She fell silent, staring at the paper in her hand. Finally, she turned it face down on the coffee table. In a lighter voice, she said, “It was hard at first. Then it got easier until it actually became fun. That’s what I wish you would do.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re mourning your marriage, Lou. You have been for a long time now. I’m not saying that’s wrong. What you and Darren had for all those years was wonderful. He’s a very special man, but the marriage is over, honey.”

  My lip trembled suddenly, and I felt tears begin to slip down my cheeks. “I know that.”

  She put her arm around me and pulled me to her. “You may know that, but you’re not letting go. You’re not moving on. You’re telling your children to face facts and get on with their lives, but you’re not doing it yourself. You’re setting a pretty poor example.”

  “No, you’re wrong. I’ve made my adjustment. You know that. It’s not me that’s the issue here. It’s the kids. What they’re going through.”

  “If you want to pretend it’s all about them, that’s fine. But it’s about you, too. It’s about your life, your pain. You may think that you’ve accepted the divorce, but there’s a world of difference between accepting a fact and facing the reality of it. And until you do that, you’re life will be stuck in the past.”

  “No, I—” The fire hissed and crackled across the room. Sap, I registered in some region of my brain. And maybe some moisture. Not seasoned long enough. I should bring her over some of mine. It was over two years old and well dried out. “It’s hard,” I heard myself say.

  “I know it is,” she told me, “but it’s harder hanging onto what no longer exists. I know that from firsthand experience.”

  I looked at her then, and I admired her more than ever. I had long been amazed at her energy and resiliency, her wisdom, her zest for life, but I don’t think I had ever understood what a price she paid for them.

  “You can handle this, Lou. What’s happening with your father. Darren. Even what your kids are going through. You’re a hell of a woman. You can do this.”

  And although I wept harder at her words, in that moment, I began to believe I could.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning, a new and determined Lou Graham went to visit my father. I’d slept deeply and dreamlessly and woke a little afraid the feeling of self-sufficiency my mother’s words had instilled in me would be gone, but it was still there. Only stronger.

  Even the gray morning didn’t dampen my resolve. I wanted to see my father. I wanted to know how he had fared during the night. I could have called, but I wanted to see for myself. It took only a few minutes to jump into the shower and get dressed. I didn’t bother with makeup beyond a touch of mascara. I pulled a brush briefly through my new, not-at-all frizzy curls. Then I was on my way.

  The sun broke through the clouds before I was halfway to Bradford Manor. The nurse’s smile when I walked in reflected it. “He’s better,” she said. “He’s still in his room, but he’s aware of what’s happening around him.”

  I think, this time, my smile outdid hers for brightness. “Would it be all right for me to go in?”

  She nodded, and I was down the hall in a flash.

  Aware is a relative term. He seemed aware of the television playing softly in the corner. He did look my way when I entered, but his eyes returned immediately to the TV screen. For now, that was enough for me. I sat in the chair beside his bed and enjoyed being with him.

  The television set was a new addition to the room. The rooms ordinarily didn’t have televisions. This encouraged the residents to use the dayroo
m, where they had at least a chance of social interaction. TVs were only put in the rooms when the residents were forced for one reason or another to stay in bed.

  As I sat watching him watch the screen, I thought back over all the years of our lives together. He was a wonderful father: not overly strict or dogmatic as some were, but neither had he overindulged me. He’d treated me with kindness and respect, expecting the best from me. I had tried to live up to his expectations, frequently succeeding.

  I thought about Darren and Greg and how their relationship would change—was changing already, and would change even more in the future. I wished they could share what my father and I had known, but I knew that was impossible.

  It would be easier for Jana. I felt certain she would be able to reconcile in her mind whatever came. She was reeling now, but it was more the newness of the situation than any real weakness in her belief system. That would pass, and she had Bob and the kids to stabilize her in the meantime.

  My thoughts wandered along this path for a while until the door to my father’s room opened. I looked up expecting to see Mother. I was, in fact, surprised I had arrived before her, but I passed it off to the exhaustion I’d seen on her face when I hugged her goodnight. Instead, Jules Proctor walked into the room.

  He smiled at me. He had a remarkable smile, I realized, a warm, encompassing smile that reached out and touched you. I couldn’t resist smiling back at him.

  “How’s our boy?” he asked, coming to stand beside my chair.

  “Very intent on his television program,” I answered in a soft voice.

  “That’s a good sign.”

  We both watched my father for several moments as the television droned softly in the background. His breathing was slow and regular. His eyes never turned our way.

  “Do you have a minute?” Jules asked finally.

  When I nodded, he motioned toward the door.

  With a last look at my father, I got up and followed him out of the room.

  He led me through the nearly deserted dayroom and out the double doors into the courtyard. I smelled bacon and toasted bread as we passed the kitchen, the scents of normalcy, of home.