| During this visit down to North Carolina, the desire to smoke was not so overwhelming. Last November, all I wanted to do was have a cigarette. Like every fifteen minutes the urge to light up was driving me to force Martha's sister to go outside and blow smoke in my face. I do think that most of that was the noticeable impending death of Frank and Gen's constant, and I most certainly do mean constant, scratching her arms. But this time, the smoking thing was not so much. I was however chain chewing Orbit Sweet Mint gum.
All of our luggage was searched except for the one bag that I was sure they would not only search but blow up. In that bag was all of our 'gear'. We traveled with a pretty serious looking massager; a big blue exercise ball; the foot pump for the big blue exercise ball, a neck brace for guess who, a laptop and weird looking camera equipment. Apparently, this bag did not raise any suspicion but all of our black clothing and socks really caught their eye.
Martha's mom is so scrambled that stuff just disappears into thin air. She forgets where she puts things and then, well she forgets that there was anything to begin with. Several weeks ago, she received a check for $16,000 for Frank's life insurance policy from PPG. She told Martha's sister that the check had come so we knew it was there, somewhere because it wasn't in the bank. When we get down there and start going through all the paperwork, we find that some of the paperwork is filed away in the locked closet, some of it is in one of six desk drawers, or it is in the green lock box that Gen is now keeping behind Frank's chair, instead of the locked closet.
There is no order to her filing madness. Forms that needed to be filled out and returned are hidden behind old bank statements, or merged with solicitations for credit cards. In one desk drawer, Martha finds several checks in a stack that need to be deposited but not the $16,000 check. All the while we are digging around in the back of our minds, we are looking for that check.
Gen now insists that she never received a check.
"Now girls, really, in your heart of hearts, don't you think that if I had received a check for $16,000 that it would have made an impression???" She kept saying over and over. "Nope, I never got one, and that PPG, I tell you they have never sent one damn thing to me."
It's All About Drugs or Money
I was standing in the hall closet, where all the important paperwork is supposed to be locked up. I'm in the middle of this little room where directly in front of me hanging on hangers are some of the ratty bloodstained shirts that Gen wears. They are bloodstained from three years of her scratching her arms raw. She first started scratching due to an allergic reaction to Coumadin (warfarin) which turned into necrosis and now, no longer on the Coumadin the scratching has become just flat out neurosis.
Looking past the shirts and to the right I start to pay closer attention to a long vertical row of bookshelves. There is a bunch of paper and crap on top and when I reach up to touch there, I hear a thud from behind. Something had fallen behind the bookcase. Now if it was that easy for me to drop paper behind there I just know there is a landslide of crap back there from months of Gen throwing stuff on top and her not being able to hear it fall down behind. Or hearing a thud and not understanding what it was. As far as Gen goes, the power of deduction is gone. She keeps her purse on the floor yet she's in a walker and has enormous trouble bending over. Stuff like that.
I yank out the shelves and I'll be damned, if there isn't a shit load of paperwork back there. I also found an envelope marked MONEY with roughly $200 dollars in twenties in it.
All day long Gen had been saying that she didn't have any cash and needed to go to the bank.
I show the money to Gen and then hand the whole thing to Martha. All the stacks of opened envelops and manila folders I put on Martha's lap. After a few minutes of digging around in it, Martha finds the check.
I show the $16,000 check to Gen and she looks at me and asked me where I got it. I tell her that it was in the closet and she swears that she has never seen that before in her life. She then looks at it again and asks me if it is a bill. Obviously, a $16,000 check did not make an impression on Gen Harvey. We all laughed and ha, ha, ha.
I go back to the closet and just stand there staring at the ceiling while rubbing my face I close my eyes and try to clear my head. I open my eyes and I'm looking straight at the shirts. I turn away and put the bookshelf back but this time against the wall as far as it will go. I'm really pushing it against the wall, wondering if I should maybe hammer it to the wall. In doing this I grab a bunch of empty red file folders that were on a shelf and throw them on the floor. I notice that there is another white envelope mixed in there and when I pull that out, fuck me if there isn't another wad of twenties in that one.
"Found more money!" I yell from the closet. "Bring it here." Martha said between rapid gum chewing.
All in all Gen had over $300 in cash and $17,000 in checks just shoved in various nooks and crannies of her two-room apartment. Now, that's just in the places where stuff should be, we didn't go through everything. There were two other closets, two dressers and a nightstand that remain untouched. They never came to pick up Franks cancer meds so in addition to wads of cash I found 400 Oxicodine pills (complete with refill) and a massive vile of liquid morphine mixed in with all his other cancer, not so fun drugs. This is after just two and a half months of her living alone without Frank.
Two Conversations and a Found Object
One:
"Martha was such a dumb kid. She was dumb in school, dumb in college and now look at her. Where did she learn all this?" (Moving her hands rapid fire as if she is smacking the shit out of a keyboard.) "The world is such a confusing place." — said to me in front of the Olive Garden while watching Martha walk through the parking lot to get the car.
Two:
"How did the two of you meet?" asked Gen.
"On a Guns and Ammo website", replied Martha, who was being a total smartass. The joke was that this is what we are going to start telling folks when they ask, but not Gen, for god's sake.
What she heard instead of the joke was priceless.
"A drunken what?" she asked completely confused while rubbing her right ear. I almost choked on air I was laughing so hard.
Found:
Martha's sister brought an old book for Martha to keep. It is the Great Big Joke Book and here is the inside page.
Codeine: It's Like Cocaine Without All The Great Ideas
We had to buy Gen two new phones because every time Martha would call her, the phone would make these horrible screeching sounds and they could never hear each other. We thought the phone was broken, but again once we got there I saw exactly what was going on. The channel button was right next to the answer button. Every time she answered the phone, she kept switching channels. Of course, there is no explaining this, just throw the fucking phone out and get her a simple $12.00 pick up and answer phone. We bought two of them so she can have one by her bed, instead of limping with her cane into the other room to answer the phone.
Gen has a nasty little habit of throwing things out if she doesn't know what it is. If it looks like trash, it is trash. She did this with the phone cord I had placed on the bed. While I was on the floor, under Frank's bed installing the cable into the phone jack she picked up the curly part of the cable that connects the talking part to the phone part, and threw it away. I saw her toss in the trash just as I was climbing out from under the bed. I went over there, pulled it out to the trashcan and connected it to the phone. She saw me do this but just smiled at me. The whole phone thing in general is a complete mystery to her. She answers it upside down. Seriously, the talking end, she puts to her ear.
She is like a toddler. You have to keep one eye on her and you must always pay attention to what she has in her hand. Having raised a child and a sneaky one to boot, I am familiar with this and actually reinstated the eyes in the back of my head, which certainly came in handy, I tell you.
I needed to have an ID card from her wallet that had her social on it. I had placed the card on top of a stack of paperwork that Martha needed to take to the bank. It was on the coffee table in front of me when I noticed that Gen kept looking at the card, then looking at me and then scratching her arms without saying a word. After a few minutes I get up to get a drink of water, knowing full well that once my back was turned she was going to snag the card.
I get a drink, I sit back down, look at the coffee table and the card is gone.
"Where's the card?" I asked Gen. She smiled the smile that she gives when she either cannot hear what you have said or does not want to hear what you have said.
I asked her again, "Where's the card that was right here?" Pointing to the exact spot on the coffee table where the ID card had been.
"What do you need that for dear?" she asked.
"The bank." I answered.
"Oh right, right." She dug the card out of her wallet and handed it back to me, smiling.
All day Monday (the same day my iPod charger broke), I kept thinking that it was later in the week then Monday. By 2:00, I could have sworn it was Tuesday, by 5:00 Wednesday and by 8:00 Thursday.
Elderly time is a whole other way to deal with the stresses of a day. It's all about food. Lunch is at 11:30 and dinner is at 4:30 with only about thirty minutes flex time allowed. All we did was eat, and we only ate at Wendy's or Subway. Lunch, dinner, lunch dinner, lunch, dinner. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc all the way to Saturday. We broke it up at little and went to lunch one day at the Olive Garden where we totally hooked in to the soup and salad deal while listening to Paul Anka sing Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit". Another day we went to a place called The Village Tavern when after forty minutes of nothing but water and spinach dip I lost my New York shit on the waitress. Then there was the old favorite, The Golden Corral, an all you can eat buffet that has to been seen to truly understand the appalling level of obesity in this country and how it is directly related to economic status. Or as Gen likes to say, "This place really attracts the blacks."
She Was Stunned By the Floral Arrangements
On Thursday I had interview with a company in Durham and not just any interview but a five hour interview. Yep, in five hours I spoke about my career and myself ad nauseam. The interviews were staggered and mostly in groups. I have been at this awhile and my experience is vast, (the world does not revolve around The Voice) so I was able to not tell the same story twice (for the most part) except for the reason I was considering the move to North Carolina. Nothing like coming out to a dozen strangers while on a job interview. I usually save that nugget for later.
Actually, that day was even bigger in its events then just an interview. My interview was at 1:00 so Martha and a nice realtor and I drove around Durham looking at homes. We saw five different places and found the perfect house, just slightly out of our price range of course. Let me just say that it has a big oval shaped Jacuzzi tub and a garage. So the morning was spent house hunting and the afternoon was spent working it. Perfect job, perfect house, weird day. Oh right, adding to the level of complexity was the time crunch we ran into between the realtor and the interview. We left the realtor in plenty of time to grab lunch but we got lost. The idea was to park at the company because it was in downtown Durham and restaurants are everywhere, grab some lunch then send me on my way. Well, we pulled up to the company fifteen minutes before my scheduled time. I drank some water, kissed Martha and walk in there with nothing more in my stomach then the yogurt and pretzels that I had three hours prior.
Instead of sitting in the car for five hours, Martha actually drove away from the building and went to the art museum. And, she found her way back, without maps or without me in the car. I am so proud. Like I said, weird day. I always find it strange when life can just lay it all out and show you how everything could be different. Perfect new house, like 2006 new, perfect job with nice normal smiling people to work with, and roads that Martha had little trouble figuring out once she had me out of the car. Oh and one more thing, it was in the mid 80's the first five days we were in North Carolina, but on Thursday it was around 85 degrees with about the same for the humidity. I was in black, lightweight and kind of breezy black but still nonetheless black. Some of the women who interviewed me had flip-flops on I however, had my biker boots.
I spent a good deal of Friday alone with Martha's mom. Martha and her sister had a bunch of errands to run so I stayed with Gen. We talked about everything. Mostly old stuff, like her old stuff. Her mom and dad, Colorado where she grew up and about her sister who died of kidney failure when she was only twenty. There are so many reasons that I love talking with her about this stuff but a few of them are rather simple to understand. When she speaks about this stuff, she is real clear, things are not confusing and she can move back and forth through the decades like a pro. We'll be talking about memories she has of her grandfather and then move right on to when she first married Frank and they lived in a cockroach infested military housing before Martha was born, then back around to more general topics like what it was like to be a child in the depression.
I think all this remembering is good for her. She seemed sharp and not at all depressed and there was no scratching. Her short-term memory is shot but all the hardcore stuff is still there, plus after a few hours of using her brain like that she was actually a little more on the ball with the daily stuff. Afterwards, when we were looking out the window at a cookout that the Assisted Living folks had set up, commenting heavily on how neither one of us would be caught dead (yes, ha, ha dead) out there, she asked me to order her some books. I have not seen her read anything other then the paper in almost two years, right about when Frank started to get sicker. I can't imagine losing a spouse after sixty years of marriage. I can't imagine knowing he was dying. I can't imagine any of it. |  | | Fried Bologna |  | | Mother & Children |  | | Gen & Martha |  | | The Artist |  | | Blooming Shoe Tree |  | | Untitled Farm House |  | | Pause | |
