Bitter Pills and Glimpses
It's mid-morning, and already I”m beaten down and on the verge of calling the kids to tell them I've given up on getting Norma to take her pills. But I don't call, realizing that doing so would just screw up their day without appreciably improving my own. Something has to be done though. What started out as a mere annoyance and occasionally a touch of comic relief has metastasized into an ugly test of wills that I'm losing.
Everyone who's heard my laments has offered me sure-fire solutions for getting Norma to down her three-times-a-day regimen of 20 pills. Grateful though I've been for their advice, nothing has worked more than once—if even that I've tried submerging the pills in spoons of applesauce, yogurt and honey, pulverizing them, chasing them down with Coke, orange juice and chocolate milk. Yet there she sits with her teeth clenched, adamant and immovable, steadfast in her refusal to make my life easier.
Last night in frustration, I tried to tilt her cup of water to an angle that might wash the pills down that she'd chosen to chew instead of swallow. I succeeded only in soaking the front of her T-shirt. This so pissed her off that she tried to spill the remainder of the water on me. After I'd precipitated the least arousing wet T-shirt display in erotic history, I dried her off, maneuvered her into a dry garment and whispered reassurances to her until we become pals again.
On Sunday, our two daughters, Rachel and Erin, visit, dutifully wearing their masks and seating themselves a safe distance away from us on the front porch. Rachel's brought her daughter, Jaden, who will be heading off for her first year at Ohio State in a few days. Norma and I haven't seen her in months because of the quarantine. We even missed her drive-through graduation ceremony I adore her beyond measure and practically have to tie myself to my chair to keep from embracing her. But I make do by paying grandfatherly attention to her every gesture and utterance. When they first arrive, Norma is their center of attention. Everyone talks to her, asks how she feels, jokes with her, flatters the pretty dress she's wearing that Rachel bought her. But she offers little response beyond a labored smile and a bewildered attempt to focus on whoever's speaking. Then, as the rest of us try to catch up on all the topics we've been spatially deprived from chattering about, I watch from the corner of my eye as Norma fades like spent applause from our notice.
I'm too much a just-the-facts, inverted pyramid type of guy to be much of a storyteller. But on recent nights when Norma calls me again and again into her bedroom, I've been sitting in the darkness beside her bed and dredging up faces and incidents that might, at best, spark her memory or, at least, soothe her and hasten her to sleep. Tonight, I remind her of the times we stayed at Ralph Stanley's late mother's house during his Hills of Home Festivals and how we had to resort to dial-up internet to send out our dispatches. . . of her co-writing an award-winning computer textbook for Merrill Publishing . . . of the guitar and leather-sleeved varsity jacket Steve Wariner gave her after he won his first CMA award and thanked her by name for it on national television. . . . of sitting and chatting with Randy Travis on his bus at Jamboree in the Hills while he played us the music video for “Heroes and Friends” that spotlighted twinkle-eyed Roy Rogers.
“How do you remember all that?” Norma asks.
“To spare you the trouble,” I say.
I recite the names of people who've been close to her and ask if she can see them in her mind. She doesn't answer or respond as I reel them off. “Do you remember Alex?,” I say, referring to her beloved step-father, Alex Wheeler. He had the kind of presence most people would remember. A corn farmer with a granite sharp face and a grin that seemed to say, “You can't fool me,” he taught Norma to drive a tractor before she was old enough to drive a car.
“Yes,” Norma says, finally latching on to a shred.
“And remember us sitting on your front porch, watching the barges go up and down the Ohio and listening to the boat engines?”
“I wish I had that again,” she says.