"Because of the shadow monster."
"The shadow monster? Sounds scary."
"Yes, he's scary. Very scary."
"So when the shadow monster is not around, then what do you do?"
"We explore. Find stuff and take it back to the cave."
"What kind of stuff do you find?"
Sammie scratched his head as he thought of the stuff he and his bird friend found in his dreams. Something told me he was now editing his story a bit, as kids do sometimes, so they don't say the wrong thing and get in trouble. I thought it strange that he was doing this considering he was telling me about a dream, not something real, and he wouldn't get in trouble for telling me--whether it was a lie or not. I didn't say anything though. Why interrupt his cool story?
"Just stuff. You know? For adventures. Knives. Sticks. Coins. Stuff like that."
"I see. Then you take the stuff back to the cave and put the stuff in a chest, like a treasure chest?"
"No, we don't have a treasure chest. My dream isn't about pirates, Daddy!"
"Sorry," I said, smirking.
"I'm being serious, Daddy! Serious schmerious."
"I said I was sorry."
"That's OK, Daddy. But I'm telling you about my dreams for a reason. I'm telling you 'cause me and Budgie found something weird. It bothered me."
"Oh really?" I said. This piqued my interest. What could it be? I didn't want him to stop so I kept quiet but right then and there, Jessie appeared out of nowhere, screaming and yelling and grabbing us. I didn't know where she came from but she literally came out of nowhere like a nightmare.
"You're it!" she said, screaming like a banshee. She slapped Sammie on the knee. He didn't take too kindly to that.
"Go away!" Sammie said, irritated, swatting back at her. "I'm telling Daddy something. Something private! And important."
"Oh, yeah?! What about?"
"I'm not telling you?"
"And why not?!"
"'Cause!"
"'Cause why?!"
"Jessie," I said, trying to calm them down. I didn't want them to start throwing punches or kicking each other or slapping each other or some shit like that. It could happen. Actually, it always happens. One of their feelings gets hurt, then the little fists start flying. It's a predictable escalation of juvenile aggression. "How about you run around the lake one more time? I'll time you. How's that?"
"Time me?" she said, smiling. "And what do I get for a fast time?"
"Ice cream?"
"OK!" she said, quickly in her starting position. She was ready to bolt. "Are you ready to time me?"
"Yes," I said. I lied. But she didn't know that. "I'm ready. On your mark. Get set. Go!" And off she went at full speed. I had no intention of timing her or taking her for ice cream. I just wanted a little more time with my boy. We watched her run away. "That gives us a little time. Now, tell me. What did you find?"
"Well," he said, sitting up. "Budgie and me, we walk around in this desert world. There's not much around so we walk and walk and walk. When we find something, it's always special because there's not much to find. When we find something, we always take it back to our cave for safe keeping. We never know when the shadow monster will come and try to get our stuff."
"How frightening," I said, patting good ol' Sammie Boy on the leg. He acknowledged me with a nod. "A shadow monster sounds scary."
"Yeah, the shadow monster sucks. He's always trying to get to us. But when we go in the cave, we're safe. So, we went back to the cave to drop some stuff off and we were sitting by the fire. We like to have a fire going to keep us warm and so we can see because it's dark in the cave. We were sitting there, enjoying the fire and eating a snack, when I saw someone at the back of the cave. It was weird 'cause we had never seen anyone else besides the shadow monster so when I saw someone else, I got scared."
"What did you do?"
"I grabbed a stick I had found and I put it in the fire. I put it in the fire so I had a flame to take with me and Budgie--to light our way. We walked to the back of the cave, slowly and carefully. The closer we got to the shadowy person, the more I could see that it wasn't the shadow monster. It was someone I recognized, someone sitting in a wheel chair. Do you know who it was?"
"No," I said. I didn't have a clue.
"It was PeePaw."
Now, for those of you who don't know, PeePaw was the nickname for my dad, Sammie and Jessie's grandfather--Marvin Burchwood. PeePaw was the name Sammie gave him when Sammie was a toddler. Sammie's mother and I tried to tell Sammie to call my dad Grandpa but, when he tried to pronounce it, all he could say was PeePaw. And it stuck! My dad--from then on--was forever known as PeePaw. Funny thing was, if you had known my dad when I was younger--like when I was a teenager--then you would know that PeePaw was a funny name to give him considering he was such a cranky, onerous, son of a bitch. He was the crankiest, most onerous, biggest son of a bitch you'd ever meet. It's true. Much later in his life, Alzheimer's Disease would decimate his body and mind into a softer version of himself and then PeePaw seemed to fit more appropriately as a term of endearment. PeePaw was what both my kids lovingly call him.
"You saw PeePaw in your dream?" I said, sitting up, more attentive. Sammie's dream just got a lot more interesting.
"Yes."
"And what was he doing there--in the cave?"
"Well, at first, it looked like he was sleeping. He was bent over in the wheel chair. I could have sworn he was sleeping. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to wake him up."
"But did you wake him?"
"I looked at Budgie to see what to do. He always gives me good advice. Budgie is my best friend. So I looked to him and he acted like I should wake up PeePaw. So I reached out to touch PeePaw. You know? On his shoulder. And when I touched him, he fell over. He fell out of his chair onto the ground of the cave!" Sammie's eyes opened wide as saucers. I could tell the sight of his grandfather falling out of his wheel chair affected him. What a traumatic thing to witness for a little boy like Sammie.
"Oh no! How frightening. What did you do?"
"Well, I wanted to pick him up. You know? Help him. I got down on the ground so I could try to help him up but as soon as I touched him, he turned to dust. His whole body turned to dust and blew away when I tried to touch him. It was so... weird. Budgie couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it either."
"I bet. Sounds very strange indeed," I said, rubbing my chin, thinking about my jerk father. The idea of him turning to dust was appealing.
"Do you think PeePaw is OK?"
"Oh, he's fine," I said, sitting back on the bench. I looked in the distance for little Jessie and I could see her running along the jogging trail toward us. She was running at full-speed still, as if a demon was chasing her. Isn't it amazing how much energy children have? I wish I could bottle all of her energy and use it when I really needed it. I always need a boost of energy. Getting older sucks that way. "He's at the nursing home eating tapioca pudding or ice cream or custard or apple pie or something like that. He's all good."
"Are you sure?" Sammie said, looking more worried. "I'd hate for anything to happen to PeePaw. I love PeePaw."
"I know you do, son."
"I love PeePaw to death."
As soon as he said that, Jessie was upon us, panting and sweating and flustered and bright red in the face.
"Time! What was my time, Daddy?" she said, panting and wheezing all over the place. "Was it good enough for ice cream?!"
"You bet," I said, standing up. I extended my hand to Sammie so he would get up, too. "Let's go get some ice cream, son."
"But what about PeePaw?" Sammie said. He looked really concerned but I wasn't worried about it. It was just a dream, nothing more.
"What's wrong with PeePaw?!" Jessie said. Now she was worried just like Sammie. It was a child-catastrophe.
"Nothing is wrong with PeePaw. Sammie and I were just taking about him. Nothing's wrong. It's all good. Let's go get ice cream."
"Ye
ah!" they both said.
"I'll race you to the car, big brother!" Jessie said, again in her ready position.
"I'll beat you, sis!" Sammie said, then they sprinted towards the car.
"No fair!" she said, following him.
I watched them run off into the distance, their little arms flying, their little legs pumping. Nothing like a promise for ice cream to rile up my kids into a friendly game of "beat-you-to-the-car." I followed them but at my own leisurely pace. I wasn't about to sprint after them. I didn't have the strength or energy to do that. What sane parent does? I reflected on the talk I had with my son and enjoyed the fact that he felt comfortable enough to talk to me about his dream. I was surprised to learn that they were recurring dreams and that he had a friend that was a parakeet. How cute. I wondered how long he had had these dreams. What did they mean? Did they mean anything at all or were they just random stories his brain was releasing while he slept? Who knows. I'd have to look into it. Dreams are fascinating. Dreams are very fascinating, indeed. You can learn a lot about yourself by analyzing your dreams. It's true.
As I walked along the jogging trail, I looked out on the lake at the ducks swimming and the turtles sunbathing and the fish popping their faces out of the water and the people jogging and walking and enjoying themselves. I thought about a time when I believed that this neighborhood would be the place where I would live until the kids left home for college and I would retire there and would live happily ever after until I was old and gray and tired. It's funny how you make these kinds of plans yet they never seem to turn out that way--not for me anyway. Back then, when I was thinking about growing old in this neighborhood, I had no idea that, in reality, I would be divorced way before I ever got old and gray and that my bitch-cheating-wife would die in a bizarre car accident with her dipshit boyfriend. How was I to know all that back then? No one plans things that way. No one, I tell you.
As I walked to my car, thinking about this and that and the other, my cell phone rang. I pulled the annoying device from my pocket and read the digital words on the little screen, the words announcing who was calling. I saw the name of the nursing home where my dad lived in San Antonio, Texas: Autumn Grove. They were calling me about my dad, no doubt, but they never called me unless there was a good reason, either about a bill or something serious, like an emergency. I didn't really want to know so I didn't answer the call. I let the call go to voicemail. I figured if it was important then they would leave a message to call them back. And sure enough, they left a message. I reluctantly listened to the message.
"Please call us back," the message said. A sweet voice on the other end said, "It's about Marvin Burchwood. We need to discuss something with you."
Then I hung up the phone.
Shit.
***
***
Marvin Burchwood. What can I say about retired Army Colonel Marvin Burchwood? Do you think it was easy dealing with a man named Col. Burchwood? Probably not, right? You would be correct. But that clichéd image of a brusque, barrel-chested, buzz-cut block of a military man was a little different from the reality that was my father. My dad was a brusque, barrel-chested, buzz-cut block of a military man on the inside; his exterior appearance was closer to pudgy and doughy, a slight man whose internal rage was way beyond anything his external appearance revealed, which was that of a short, Jewish man with a high forehead from a receding hairline and large, metal-framed glasses perched on his straight, thin nose. He was mad about everything in his life and made sure to let everyone in close vicinity know it. No one was immune to his rage--not my mom or me--and that's the way it was until my mother unexpectedly passed away from an aneurysm which then segued into his irreversible bout with Alzheimer's disease. In fact, he didn't really take on the PeePaw persona until the Alzheimer's dulled his personality like a jagged rock smoothed over time by the deluge of water from a mighty river. The angry Col. Burchwood I knew as a timid kid was not known to Sammie and Jessie. They just knew him as PeePaw--a forgetful, Teddy Bear of a feeble, old man. He was a force they would never reckon with, only hug and share cookies with. How strange. I never would have imagined that when I was a kid. I really thought he would torment me all my life. Life is strange, isn't it? It's true.
Before my mother passed away--a sweet woman named Beverly Burchwood--the signs of Alzheimer's disease in my father were there but not prominent enough to take seriously. My mother had a beautiful soul and nasty Col. Burchwood really didn't deserve such a kind, docile wife. No one expected her to pass away so suddenly like she did, what, with her caring hippy ways and her healthy eating habits and her knowledge of meditation and yoga and all. Not long after she abruptly passed away from the lethal aneurism, my father's health changed quickly. Forgetfulness soon turned into repetitive storytelling to confusion and anger to complete helplessness, as if her passing was the disease's cue to cut loose. After several disappearing acts where he would get in his truck then drive away and not come back, I knew something had to be done. I received several calls from different neighbors that described waking up in the middle of the night to my dad banging on their doors then angrily pissing on their front porches, I really knew something had to be done. But it wasn't until the San Antonio Police called to inform me that my dad had physically assaulted the kind woman I hired to clean his house once a week that I finally did something about it. My dad told the police--who came to his house after the maid called 911 and screamed she was being murdered--that the innocent housekeeper was a witch who had broken into his home and tried to steal the apricot preserves he loved so dearly from his refrigerator. The police were very kind to my dad, especially after they learned he was retired military and perused the military certificates, plaques, and medals that decorated his house. Cops are generally kind to ex-military, no matter how messed up or sick the retirees seem to be. I guess they can relate to the military lifestyle, PTSD, and whatever. The police are simply the military for your city, am I right? Well, that seems right to me anyway. They were the ones to suggest Autumn Grove. 'It's a nursing home for vets,' they said. 'He will be taken care of.'
I called Autumn Grove soon after the attempted murder and they gave me their spiel which was that they were a home for ex-military and, since my father was high-ranking and had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he was a shoe-in. I moved him in all by myself; my ex-wife was too busy boffing her boyfriend to assist me at the time. Not far outside San Antonio was his new home: Autumn Grove. That was never the place he imagined he would spend his last days. In reality, you never really know where you'll be at the end of your life. No matter how hard you plan, you'll just end up where you end up. Life has a funny way of doing that to you--unraveling in unexpected ways against your best-made plans. It's true.
So, during and after my divorce, Autumn Grove became kind of a destination for me and the kids--a place to get away from the misery I was experiencing in Austin with my separation and divorce--and we spent time with my dad even if he didn't know why there were two whacky kids he didn't seem to know jumping on his bed and calling him PeePaw. Sammie and Jessie just wouldn't accept it when he said he didn't know who they were. They thought he was playing a prank on them. Unfortunately, he wasn't. Unlike when I was a kid, though, he was never mean to them. If there was a silver lining to the Alzheimer's, then it was the dulling of his angry personality. He didn't rage against the people in his life anymore. He only got angry at inanimate objects, like furniture. When his memory would relapse and he became reacquainted with the people around him, the congenial part of his personality would reappear, and he would welcome them with open arms and smiles. Like a record skipping then repeating a delightful chorus to a pop song, he would greet whoever was accompanying him as if he hadn't seen them in years and was happy to get reacquainted with them. Not so with furniture. Whenever he would forget the placement of the furniture in his room (stubbing his toe on the bed frame was a familiar frustrating predicament), his rage would explode from within him and he'd bash and hit the th
ing like he wanted to destroy it. But he never did this with people; he was Marv to the staff at the nursing home and PeePaw to my kids.
I returned the call to Autumn Grove when we got back to our apartment later that day. The women I spoke to on the phone, Ms. Robyn, was a kind woman and said nothing but sweet things about my dad, Marv. Ms. Robyn explained to me on the day I moved my dad into Autumn Grove that she had retired from a career as a realtor to manage Autumn Grove, something that she knew was her destiny. When I asked her how she knew it was her destiny, she told me, "I just love old people to death. I LOVE THEM!" When I told her at the time that loving my dad would be like loving a cactus, she just laughed and said, "You'll see. I will love your dad, too." If you ever have to put your parent into a nursing facility or assisted living or a hospital or whatever, make sure they have someone on staff like Ms. Robyn. Otherwise, your mom or dad will be fucked. Most retirement places, they don't give a shit about the elderly even though that's their business. Most of those places are really just in business to suck the government benefits dry and steal your loved one's savings, not to take care of their clients. It's true.
Anyway, I asked Ms. Robyn what the issue was. "Do I need to come down right away?" I said, worried.
"Well," she said, smacking her lips, thinking of an appropriate response, then releasing a high-pitched whistle from her pursed lips. "Tell me your definition of right away."
"Well, I have two small children to take care of and it's hard to just leave at the drop of a hat. Can you tell me exactly what's going on?"
"He hasn't been eating," she said, matter-of-factly. "Not even the cookies. And you know how much he loves cookies."
"Yes, I know. But do you know what is wrong with him?"
"It's hard to say. Maybe he's just done."
"Done? What do you mean by done? Like, done done?"
"Yes, like done DONE," she said, punctuating with another high-pitched whistle. "But you never know. He may snap out of it. He may smell those delicious oatmeal raisin cookies and get out of this hole he's in. But I don't know for sure. I just know what I know."
Sammie & Budgie Page 16
