January 31, 2011

My dad asked, “How did you find me?”

I replied, “I knew where you were dad, so I just headed in that direction.”

He marveled, like the concept was laden with mystery. His eyes wondered to someplace far away and back to mine and he smiled and said, “Jeepers.”

We took a long walk through the building. Many residents doors were open. Myriad elderly residents were posed in their rooms in wheelchairs before large screen tvs watching black and white movies with Carry Grant or Jimmy Stewart. There was one exception. A woman who may have been 90 was sitting completely motionless in a wheel chair watching an exercise channel. The woman on the screen was 20 something, vivacious, full of enthusiasm and vigor. She was jumping up and down coaching the woman in the wheelchair. "Ok, two more, and one and that's it! Now let's....”

As we passed by the room my Dad held up his hand. He could’t say what he was thinking. I said, “Are  your hands still strong dad?”

He said,“Oh yes!”

At the end of each hallway I would bring my dad to the window. At one window I said, “There is my truck, down there, the green one.”

The sun was shining bright outside. The large building cast hard shadows on the massive piles of plowed up snow. I felt sad that this wasn't my father's world, beyond the glass. The world that he had ventured out into for 80 years.

At another window there wasn't much to comment on. We both looked out, expecting more.

We eventually returned to the doors from which we had came with the keypad lock. A nurse or attendant held the door open for us and greeted my dad back. As she held the door open for him he stopped as if there would be a conversation. He re enforced his stance. She said, “Haven, sweetheart, you better follow that young man.”

He said “Oh.”

He followed me back to a large room where I had first found him. We sat on a window seat. Side by side. The slanting shadows, through the windows were behind me.

I told him I loved him and that I was going to leave. As I expected he interpreted this to mean he was coming with me. I hugged him and wished some how I could avoid the pain of tricking him to stay. He followed me to the door, I typed 1998 into the keypad and we watched the green light appear. As I opened the door I told him he had to stay on the inside and I was leaving. He further pushed the door open enough for his passage. Now we were both in the foyer, beyond the keypad.

“Dad, follow me.” I suggested. Returning back inside he followed me over to the nurses station. The nurse asked how she could help us.

I said, “Haven Freeman is as determined to leave as I am.”

She said,“Haven, why don't you come with me?”

As she walked him out into a large sun room in the opposite direction of the keypad door I heard her say, “Yes, your son will be here when we come back.”

As I typed 1998 into the keypad, opened the door and walked out into the sharp bright sunlight the pain followed me just like my shadow.