‘Don’t you worry, Dad; Mother’s comfortable here and we’ll have her home soon’s the doctors say she’s ready.’
Mother charges in.
‘Believe me, nobody wants to get out any faster than I do.’
Mom insists I talk with the doctor about her indigestion theory. I tell her I’ll make an appointment.
When we get home, I talk to Dad about the things he has to learn.
‘I’ll never remember all that, Johnny. You have to remember I forget.’
I start making lists. I print these lists in capital letters with a felt-tip pen on five-by-seven cards. It’s like computer programming. I reduce it all to yes-no facts, on-off thinking; binary. I try to make everything simple and clear. For example, when I say wash dishes, I list every act involved in washing dishes. There are thirty-seven distinct steps, such as: put one squeeze of soap in the water, or pull stopper from sink, wring out sponge. I hang this card over the sink. For dusting, I list all the things that need to be dusted, where the dustcloth is and finish with ‘put dustcloth back on hook in hall closet.’
It’s fun for me; and Dad enters into the spirit of things. He isn’t insulted. He likes having me tell him what to do in clear terms so there’s no chance he can make a mistake. It’s the boss-worker syndrome again.
I put one set of cards on a clipboard with the jobs in order as they need to be done during a typical day. He carries that clipboard around. At night he puts it on his night table beside him.
Next morning he dresses himself, makes his bed and comes out, heading for the bathroom, with his aircraft-carrier cap on his head. He’s reading from the clipboard as he shuffles down the hall. It’s pitiful and funny, but he’s happy; it’s like a treasure hunt. That evening, when he isn’t watching television, he goes over his board, looking at the different cards, asking me questions.
‘I can do this; I’m sure I can get this all worked out.’
I also begin preparing him to care for Mom. I’m worried she’ll have another heart attack at home after I’m gone. So much can be done in those first minutes. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and external heart massage can be the difference between life and death. Dad has to learn.
I start talking to him about it, but something in him doesn’t want to listen; he doesn’t want to be involved with such a stressful situation. But I press on. It’s somewhere in here I can’t baby him.
‘Look, Dad, I’ll show you how. You only need to follow instructions.’
He won’t meet my eyes.
‘This is something I learned in the army, Dad; hundreds of people’s lives have been saved this way.’
I hate lying to him, but I’m pulling out all stops. The only time I ever gave mouth-to-mouth or external massage was to an old lady in France and she was already dead. I learned what little I know from my personal bible, the Merck Manual.
When the station break and ad come on, I talk Dad into getting down on the floor in front of the TV. He lies out and crosses his hands on his chest like a corpse. He stares at the ceiling, still not looking at me. I kneel beside him, put a hand under his neck and lift.
‘Now open your mouth and stick out your tongue, Dad.’
He does it, I grab hold under his chin, lifting and pulling back at the same time; I pinch his nostrils shut with my fingers; he’s looking at me. All the time, I’m explaining in what I hope is a calm, quiet voice.
‘Now right here, Dad, is where I put my mouth over yours and breathe for you.’
He begins struggling. He twists his head and turns on his side.
‘Oh, no; don’t do that!’
He gets to his knees.
‘I wasn’t going to actually do it, Dad, I was only explaining!’
I lie down on the rug and ask him to take hold of me the way I did him. I work his hand under my neck and stick my tongue out. I position his other hand so he can pinch my nostrils. His hands are shaking so he almost pulls my nose off. He keeps sneaking looks at the TV for the show to start again. He looks down.
‘Do people do this to each other in public, John?’
‘Sure, you might have to do this for Mother. If she has another heart attack, you’ll need to force air into her lungs so oxygen gets to her brain. It’s the only chance she’ll have.’
He leans back. He pushes himself up onto his feet and backs his way to the platform rocker.
‘That might be right, John, but it looks sinful. Do men do that to each other? Maybe sometimes God just means for us to die.’
I relax and watch TV with him. I can understand his feelings but he’s got to get over it; it’s too important.
At the next break, I want to show him something about external heart massage. I talk him into getting down on the floor again.
‘Now look, Dad, while you’re doing mouth-to-mouth, you should also give external heart massage. This is to get the heart beating again. You have to push hard, once every second, right in the center of the chest.’
I lean over and begin pressing him with the heel of my hand on his sternum about half as hard as you should for effective heart stimulation, but hard enough so he gets the idea.
‘Hey, that hurts! That would really hurt a woman; you’d be hitting her right on the … in the … breasts.’
‘She wouldn’t feel anything, Dad, she’d be unconscious. It’s better having a few black-and-blue marks than being dead, isn’t it?’
He lifts himself up on one elbow.
‘She’d never let me do that, Johnny. She’d never let me hit her like that. I’ve never hit a woman in my life. I could never do that.’
‘You’d have to, Dad; it’d be a matter of life and death.’
The program’s on again; it’s about some smart dolphin, if you can believe it. Dad settles with a deep sigh into his rocker. He’s breathing hard and sneaks a look at me as if he’s narrowly escaped from a crazed sex maniac.
While he’s busy with the TV, I write out on cards, in big letters, the hospital phone numbers, the fire department, the nearest ambulance and Joan. I stick these cards on the wall over both phones, the one in the living room and the one in the bedroom. The big trouble is Dad never uses a phone. It’s hard even getting him to pick up a phone and hold it when someone else has called him. To be honest, I’ve never seen him dial a number. We didn’t have a phone when I lived at home. It’s only here in California they’ve had one. I hate phones myself, but Christ, in this world, spread out as it is, you can’t just ignore them.
So it’s going to be tough preparing Dad to dial a number, then get across an emergency message. I try reducing it to simplest terms. I tape the message over each of the phones. It says:
THIS IS A HEART ATTACK EMERGENCY. THE VICTIM IS UNCONSCIOUS. COME IMMEDIATELY. ADDRESS 10432 COLBY LANE, OFF OVERLAND AT PALMS.
I have Dad repeat this till he knows it by heart. We practice dialing Joan’s number with the phone on the hook till he can do it. Then I go into the bedroom and call Joan. I tell her Dad’s going to phone and practice his emergency-call routine. She says she’ll wait.
I put the phone down and go into the bathroom. When I come back into the living room, Dad’s watching dolphins again. I crumple onto the floor in front of him and lie there with my arms spread.
‘Now, Dad, I’m Mother and I’ve just had a heart attack. Call Joan and give her the message.’
He gets up and stands over me.
‘Are you all right,