Old Dogs and Old Men

Her heavy hips remind Angel Girl not to rise needlessly, so she lies on one side with her front paws splayed around her water bowl, lapping the cool liquid greedily.  Her thirst hasn’t changed over her long life.  Nor has her epicurean delight in all things food related.  Whether it’s a meal that’s devoured in a flash or the rhapsodic sniffing of tantalizing kitchen aromas, the old girl hasn’t skipped a beat.

The same can be said of Dale.  Give him a well-done steak and a baked potato, or a juicy cheeseburger and fries, and all is right with the world.  I’m grateful for this because I know that the difficulty with swallowing, a prominent symptom of PSP, is possibly lying in wait to make our lives more miserable.

Over fourteen years ago, I tucked a little 1 ½ lb. mutt inside my hoody after finalizing the adoption with the ASPCA.  Dale proudly drove Mother and baby home where we immediately bathed the new addition because she smelled like she’d lived her first weeks in a compost heap.  Our only regret about that day is that we didn’t also adopt her yippy brother.  They would have been fast friends during those early years of chewing up all un-closeted shoes or pulling unguarded toilet tissue rolls from their dispensers.

Without a playmate, we tried to make up for any loneliness our 8-to-5 schedules caused by creating an environment of entitlement for her.  We often, of course, rued that decision.  In fact, a friendly observer once remarked, “After I die, I want to come back as a dog in the Shorts’ household.”  She took our largesse and our love for granted and in turn offered total devotion and frequent wet kisses.

On many a summer day I’d admire them from the kitchen window — my bronzed, shirtless husband striding across the expanse of our backyard with a short-legged ball of fur trotting behind.  I couldn’t imagine life without either one of them.  (Actually, I think Dale was a forerunner to today’s hip-hoppers who carry their dogs as accessories because his full head of near-black hair was complemented by Angel’s ebony plumed-tail.)

When Dale would pause for a dip in the pool, a frenetic puppy would follow him around the deck, never diving in, but begging to be splashed.  It tickled us both to watch her gleefully jump and lap at the explosion of droplets raining down on her — quality time with her Da.

But that was the past.  That was before a milky cataract obliterated vision in one eye, and now threatens to do the same in the other.  That was before arthritis invaded her joints, making jumping impossible, and walking painful.

These days, Angel spends the better part of 24 hours sleeping, sometimes deeply with a distinctive little snore, sometimes a light snooze with her good eye cocked for activities around her.  She goes outside reluctantly to potty and occasionally to lie in the shade for a few minutes while I garden.  When she’s ready to go back inside, she hesitantly extends one paw as a feeler toward the back stoop, ensuring it’s there and gauging its height before clumsily hopping up and through the door.  She limps toward her next nap, often beside Dale who regularly “rests his eyes” while his broken body leans over the right side of his chair.

After a good afternoon nap, all three of us will parade to the bathroom for Dale’s shower – he on his scooter, Angel limping up the rear.  No matter what, she’ll never retreat from her perceived duty as shower guardian.

I often wonder, “Where did the days go when I watched my husband ‘stride’ or my puppy ‘trot,’” movements once as natural as breathing.  The images are fuzzy now and I question my memory.  Did I hallucinate that these two loves were once so vital?  From a distance Dale’s hair is still near-black.  Upon closer inspection, the strands of silver are evident as are the myriad facial lines reaped from a life fully lived.

When the two are napping together, the rhythm of their snoring duet fills my heart with a mixture of joy and sadness.  Is he dreaming that he’s still behind the wheel of his macho truck?  Is she dreaming of the mischievous antics of her puppy days?  I hope so.  In dreamland, they can re-live their days in the sun for a while longer – at least, until the Sandman’s last call.

 

She Ain’t Heavy; She’s my Mother

My oldest son, Patrick, came to visit last week – all the way from the East Coast.  It seems like the distance between Northern Virginia where he lives and North Texas where we live gets farther every year.  He might as well live on the moon.  Or perhaps it’s the span of time between his total reliance on me and my growing reliance on him (and his brothers) that is getting shorter, coloring my perspective.

The sweet sound of baby coo’s proclaiming me the center of his universe is a vivid memory to me, but no memory at all to him.  His nuclear family has shifted, as it should, to his wife and children, and I am now an ancillary.  Nonetheless, I am cherished, and Patrick came to assess first-hand how we’re coping with PSP, and to lend some practical advice.

Isn’t that funny?   My motherly cautions, “Wear a hat.  It’s cold outside” have been replaced by filial cautions, “Don’t lift that.  It’s heavy.”    When did our roles reverse?

As young people, we turned to our parents, school advisors and other elders when making major decisions like where to go to college, and what to study.  With little life experience under our belts, these decisions were daunting and we appreciated guidance in evaluating our choices.

Now, it is we, the old folks, who are faced with daunting decisions: how to spend our remaining days, where to live, what kind of environment do we need?  But no longer does inexperience hamper our decision making.  Instead, we’re encumbered by too many life experiences in our repertoires.  Essentially, we can’t “see the forest through the trees.”  We feel overwhelmed and want to put our heads in the sand until this disease “goes away,” until we can resume our “normal” lives.

Patrick, however, and his brother Tim, who lives nearby, are able to cut through our paralyzing clutter and present simple options.  We listen, and choose, not easily, but with more clarity than we had before.  We’ve decided to sell our home (which I’ll address in future posts).  It’s too everything – too big, too expensive, too much work, too barrier-fraught for Dale to navigate.

I don’t know what we’d do without the help of these sons who buoy us while we are at sea.  They are our living, breathing Gantt charts and they’ll be there to help us bridge each milestone.

At last, I understand my mother’s words from a June night 26 years ago.  We had just left the hospital in a haze of grief after my sheet-clad father was pronounced DOA following a sudden heart attack.  We gathered at the family homestead to support Mother and to begin the dreaded phone calling.  At some point, Mother put her handkerchief in her lap and looked at our faces, her babies, “I don’t know how people with no children get through something like this.”  At last, I understand.

 

Grief Comes Early

The somber expression on the neurologist’s face spoke volumes – correction: screamed volumes.  A synopsis of Dale’s symptoms coupled with an overview of what to expect with atypical Parkinsonism  (no precise diagnosis at that point) left us scratching our heads about our future.

I asked the doctor if my 69-year-old husband could still drive for a while.  Mustering his best diplomacy, the doctor asked Dale, “How would you feel if a dog ran out in front of you, and you hit it?  Worse, how would you feel if a little child ran out in front of you, and you couldn’t stop?”

Dale paused, trying to take in the doctor’s questions.  Then, “I guess I’ll give the truck keys to Carla.”

Dale never drove again after that conversation.  Neither of us talked about it for a couple of days.  We went home and stared at the truck he loved, each wondering how all our times together in the truck could be history already.  My late mother drove until she was 87, giving it up reluctantly when some of her children hid the car keys.

Drip-drip-drip.  Another piece of Dale chiseled away.  Another surreal impact on our lives.  From the time a teen-aged Dale glimpsed his first muscle car and turned up the amp on a Beach Boys tune, driving became part of him.  For a man, turning over the keys not only means forfeiting his independence, but also forfeiting his masculinity.  Dale wasn’t ready for this.

Drip-drip-drip.  The realization dawned slowly on me that I would henceforth be doing all the driving.  The grocery shopping, the chauffeuring, all the quick errands like grabbing a gallon of paint at Home Depot, or picking up chlorine tablets at Leslie’s, dropping off the cleaning, making a bank deposit – all that are typically shared by a married couple based on who’s available or whose commute wound by the store.  All this now fell to me, and I wasn’t ready.

Somehow, we adjust our routines to accommodate the newest loss, reinventing ourselves – again.   And we mourn — because grief comes early in progressive diseases, and takes up residence.  Its unwelcome presence permeates our daily lives, and it promises to stay until long after Dale’s and my last good-bye.

The Daily Shower

Oh, we humans love our ruts, our daily routines that we take for granted, and assume will be as constant as the sun rising in the East.  We choose our ways of doing things, then practice those ways over and over until they become habits.  After thousands of rehearsals, the habits are part of us, inextricably woven into our being.  When our habits are changed or interrupted by external forces, we, too, are changed — and we begin to lose ourselves.

For many years, Dale would get up before dawn, enjoy freshly brewed coffee, spend some time in prayer, and catch the morning traffic report in preparation for his commute.  Then he would shower, shave, dress and launch his day.

No more.  No longer can Dale autonomously decide when to take a shower, because he can no longer take a shower independently.  He must coordinate it with my schedule.  The daily rite now looks like this:

At an agreed-upon time, Dale rides his scooter to the bathroom door and swivels his seat to face the doorway.  While he undresses, I run the shower to warm the water and lay out fresh clothes on an armchair reachable from his scooter.

I take the “transfer stool” out of his closet where it’s stored and place it next to the shower.  (A “transfer stool” has an extra-wide seat with large suction cups attached to the feet of the legs on one side.  The legs can be placed across the threshold of a shower or tub so that the user can slide safely into the shower and “transfer” to a shower stool.)

Dale then shifts from his scooter to a physician’s stool in the doorway of the bathroom while I turn off the water and set the “transfer stool” in position.

Dale wheels over to the “transfer stool,” moves onto it from the physician’s stool, and slides into the shower to the shower stool.  I remove the “transfer stool” and when he nods that he’s ready, I turn the water on, and close the shower door.  (All of his toiletries are arranged on a low shower caddy.)

When finished, Dale opens the shower door, I hand him a towel, put the shower stool back in position, and wait for him to slide out.  As a fall-preventive measure, I help dry his lower legs and feet so he doesn’t have to lean over so far.

Dale shifts back to the physician’s stool, finishes grooming in the bathroom, and transfers back to the scooter where he dresses.

I stow away the “transfer stool” and we’re done for another day.

What used to take minutes, requiring no forethought, is now a grand production.  One of many.