Making My Father’s Bed

Dad needed his laundry done. That means that today, I gathered it all up, loaded it into the washer, and later I’ll dry it, fold it, and put it away.

If you’ve ever cared for anyone who’s old, or very sick, you’ll know what’s involved here. It’s all filthy. Completely filthy. From when he doesn’t make it to the bathroom in time, from years and years and years of his sweat. The whites will never be white. Literally decades of dirt is what I’m up against here. He wears tshirts that are almost as old as I am. At least, I’ve been seeing him wear them for my whole life. When I find something--a pair of boxers that are little more than threads dangling from a waistband no longer elastic, a gauzy tshirt you could watch television through--I throw them away.

He hates that. A year and a half ago, when I bought him some new shirts, socks, underwear, tshirts for Christmas, I got yelled at. “I don’t need any of this stuff! There’s nothing wrong with what I have!”

I have no idea where this comes from. Maybe a clinging to what was familiar, a fear and hatred of seeing things get discarded because they’re old and worn out. Maybe when he takes his ancient tshirt reading “Pennsylvania Agriculture!” out of the drawer, he remembers the State Fair back in the 1970s, where he manned the Department of Agriculture booth, and his second wife, not yet racked by cancer, brought his young son to see the fair and visit him.

Of course, my buying him the new clothes for Christmas came from my selfish desire that he not be who he is. I want him to resemble, if only slightly, the dads one sees in the LL Bean catalog. Silver haired, teaching the grandkids fly-casting wearing a beautiful chambray shirt and snug-fitting cords, well-groomed, engaged.

The filthy, stinking sheets he’s slept in for the past two weeks get stripped from the bed. Deposited in the washer with his dirty towels. As I set to work making the bed, I can’t help thinking about how complicated our relationship has become in such a short period of time. I’m about to start on my third year here in Bucks County. In two years, the number of Things We Don’t Talk About has grown. So many little resentments have built up. On my side, and I’m sure on his side, too.

When I went to Inferno, leaving him alone for five days, he was incensed. “Why do you have to go away?” And he’s not just talking about five-day trips. He means ever. As in, going into Doylestown to check out the arts festival that they’re having.

A few weeks ago, I pointedly said to him, “Dad, I’m forty years old. If I were to spend weekend after weekend sitting here at home, that would mean that I was clinically depressed, and I hope that you’d take action to find me a good psychotherapist.”

He answered by saying that he would want that. Because he gets lonely when I’m not here.

And it’s not like we’re even in the same room, little less talking, when I am home. He sits in the spare bedroom, his “den,” smoking cigars and watching television. From ten in the morning until eleven thirty at night. Coming out once to eat something for lunch, and once when I call him for dinnner.

But on those rare occasions when he needs something back there, a lightbulb changed, new batteries for the remote control, whatever, and he calls out for me, the first time it’s with a hint of frustration in his voice (“damn lightbulb burned out again”), but the second time, seconds later, it’s panicky. Frightened. Where is he? Why doesn’t he answer?

And this will go on for years. Like George Bush, I went in without an exit strategy.

When I got together with my brother, visiting from Florida, I told him about the bad summer I’ve had, how hard it was when my father was positively delighted to learn that I didn’t have the money to drive down to Florida to visit my brother, stopping along the way to see friends and my Aunt Ellen in South Carolina. Nothing so much as a “well that’s too bad.” How when there’s a conflict between my father’s increasing dependency and my desire to have something resembling an adult life, he doesn’t even seem to be conscious that his gains are anything like a loss for me. Second childhood: he gets his way and that makes him happy. Case closed.

My brother said, “Look, he’s got nursing home insurance. You don’t need to be there if you don’t want to. You can get out.”

No I can’t. I can’t do that to him. I just can’t.

So that’s how complicated our relationship has become. So frought.

And yet, and yet, having watched my paycheck disappear within twenty-four hours after I put it in the bank, and leaving the bulk of my bills unpaid, and scrutinizing the Mega Jobs Section of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Doylestown Intelligencer in vain (there’s totally nothing!), here I am making his bed. And taking such care with it. Smoothing out all the wrinkles in the fitted sheet and the top sheet, adding an extra blanket because the nights are getting cooler, arranging the two pillows my step-mother used in their place next to him, tucking everything in securely just like he likes it...

I’m soothed by this. By doing a good job for him. By making everything nice. Almost in inverse proportion to my frustration. Yesterday, I surprised him with one of his favorites, grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches for lunch, and last night for supper, I made a fish chowder he really enjoyed.

“It’s so good what you’re doing for your father.” How I hate to hear that. “You’re a good son.”

Just once, I’d love to relate my situation and have someone reply, “What kind of a parent would ask that kind of sacrifice from a child? A father should want his son to have a rich, full, and successful life. That’s wrong!”

And, of course, it certainly causes me to remember that there will be no one to care for me. Most of my close friends are older, my brother--my only living relative really--is fifteen years my senior. I’ll bury the lot of them. And I’ll roll around for weeks and weeks on end in my own filthy, soiled, stinking sheets, waiting, perhaps, for the home health aide to change them for me.

There. The bed is made. Beautiful, clean, fresh. You can bounce a quarter on it. Over the din of the Eagles game my father is watching in the next room, I hear the buzzer letting me know that the dryer is done. Time to fold his laundry.

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