The Hamlet

I drove my car – fast – through a pile of leaves this morning – I enjoyed watching them ride in the air current that curled around the rear of the car and then disappear.

Before - when I used to read things other people wrote that had nothing to do with what might become a resource for my students or a direction for my art - I used to read William Faulkner.

I have a terrible memory for novels and can barely recall the plot-lines of any of his stories although I believe I’ve read nearly every one. I don't think I was ever really taught how to read properly. I guess I’m content in knowing that I enjoyed them while I read them. I do remember several characters but only in the same way I remember high-school friends – in their general actions and apart from details that provide definition – except for Ike Snopes.

Ike is an idiot. He is an amoral being incapable of comprehending his own existence in the dark. Ike lacks connectivity to an agreed upon code of time and he is entirely without moral sensibility. Ike is responsible for two things – sweeping the porch and making his bed. Two things are important to him, a block of wood he constantly drags behind him with a string and a cow with which he is quite intimate.

Ike’s time is the immediate moment and, if anything else, merely comprehensions of the familiar. No memories, no recollections. “Yesterday was not, tomorrow is not, today is nearly a placid and virginal astonishment at the creeping ridge of dust and trash in front of the broom and the sheet coming smooth.” ("The Hamlet") He can see no further in the past than the block he drags behind him.

How wonderful it would be to be entirely unaware of what we should have done, to live only in the moment we inhabit, in a space that is amoral and amorphous – edges rounded naturally from a flow that is undetectable – spared from all consequence. How horrible it would be too.

Labeled Clothing

Down the nursing-home hallway was an old friend of Mammam’s – but they knew nothing of each other anymore. Anna Johns was a bit more alert than Mammam at this point and, just as Mammam did earlier, she could converse in a chit-chat manner that didn’t always immediately make clear her mental limitations. I visited The Manor with my father and we paused in front of Anna. My father said in that tone reserved for children and geriatrics, “Hia Anna! How are you?” “I’m good. Who are you?” she said immediately. “I’m Rose Topolski’s son, Walter.” No response. My father asked, “Do you know what your name is?” She promptly reached down, took the light blue slipper from her left foot and read the label inside, “Anna Johns.” she said confidently.

A Violet and a Rose

At first we would bring Mammam home from the nursing home for Sunday afternoon visits but as she began to resist return, those visits became less frequent and eventually stopped. Visiting Mammam, surrounded as she was, with people in similar mental states, was always funny, exhausting and heartbreaking. I remember wanting to go and then, upon arriving, I would immediately want to leave. The halls smelled of living decay, excrement, cafeteria food and disinfectant.

Mammam’s first roommate was Violet. I forget her last name. Violet probably weighed no more than 85 pounds and spent most of her time sitting in silence propped up in a wheelchair/highchair hybrid. On a somewhat regular basis, Violet would brace herself, take a few deep breaths and scream a brief obscenity in a volume that was highly disproportional to her frame. The otherwise quiet hallway would suddenly be filled with an ear-piercing “BASTARD!” or a blaring “FUCK!” You could see that this was not a small task for Violet and after a while we became familiar with the build-up of energy she needed to let loose these bits of her limited vocabulary. She would sit up a bit, take one or two deep breaths and one of us would intervene, “Violet!” we’d warn sternly. Her exhale would deflate her posture and her body would slouch in a bit of resolve - she’d quietly murmur, “fuck.”

As the Crow Flies

My father later said that it was the most difficult thing he had done in his life. Before he took Mammam to the nursing home – The Manor, they called it - there was a long discussion about the idea of having her live with us in our house. I don’t remember who thought what, but I remember that it was a discussion had time over time for a number of years leading up to her admission. I don’t recall a debate on the decision.

The Northumberland County Mountain View Manor is on Trevorton Road. Looking at it from a distance one can realize just how close our house (A) was to The Manor (B). Because of the terrain, the roads had been built to climb the mountains in a serpentine fashion. From our house to The Manor was nearly a three mile drive - but as the crow flies, it very close. I didn’t know that then.

They told my parents that it would be best if we didn’t visit her for a while at first; they wanted her to acclimate to her environment. Her environment wasn’t entirely new to her however. Many years earlier but only several years after Dzjajie died, Mammam found it necessary to seek employment. After some training she took a position as a ‘Nurse’s Aid’ at The Manor. Years later, as a patient there, she thought she was at work again and she turned out to be a great help around the nursing home. As her Alzheimer’s progressed that changed and, for a period, her risk of flight was high. She wanted to leave. Eventually she didn’t understand the possibility of leaving. Then her brain stopped running her body and she was bed-ridden. She was in a fetal position when she died.

Wedding Portrait

Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pandowdy

Memory and communication are similar in that we long to have both in some pure sense. With both, our best gauges are far too susceptible to contamination to make them reliable.

I recently had the chance to spend time with my mother, whose hearing has declined significantly, and my father, who has progressed beyond the first stages Alzheimer’s. Among other variables, communications between them hinge and sway on the general comprehension of the moment at hand and the irregularities of ambient sound. Similar symptoms manifest themselves in their conversation regardless of the cause.

“What’s in them?” My father pointed to two white unmarked pie boxes on the counter.

“Pie – I told ya three times!” She was putting away the dishes.

“Ooh – what kind?”

“I said before - there is what is left of the raisin one and there is a new Shoo-fly Pie.”

My father immediately broke into singing what was clearly the closing line of a song, “Shoo-fly pie and apple pandowdy, I never get enough of that wonderful stuff!” My mother joined him to sing the same line again and when I said that I never heard that song before, neither of them heard me over their own voices. Apart from that line, neither of them knew any other lyrics.

My mother took a plate from in front of my father, "That dish isn't clean." he said.

My mother turned her head quickly toward me, "Did he say that fish ain't meat?"

I laughed and said loudly, “No Mom – he said that that dish isn’t clean.”

“Oh – I know that!” she said, slightly irritated.

I wasn't certain that she heard me and I didn’t know who she was talking to. I didn’t know if what she knew was that the dish wasn’t clean or she did in fact hear what he said.

I looked at my father as he began singing again and realized that he was unaware that he had not been heard. I thought about what that meant and wondered how often it happened in their every day. “Oftener and oftener.” I said softly aloud.

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