Jenifer, Fred’s wife, tells me, when I arrive at Fred’s today, that he wants me to wake him up so I can make him something to eat and put cream on his Agent Oranged arms and legs. I go into his room and he has the covers pulled up over his head, a self-made mummy. I start to talk to him to wake him up, and Jenifer comes in behind me, turns on the lights, and bellows, “Wake up!” Hers is not the gentle approach. She’s with him every day though, and I am only here a few hours a week.
Fred rouses himself enough to pull the covers off his head. He’s listless. He looks tired and frail and insubstantial, as if he were turning into a wraith. Can he be getting smaller? I’m not sure how.
He asks for eggs with cheese. I ask if he’d like some toast, too, and he says yes, half, cut in quarters.
Out to the kitchen I go, Jenifer trailing behind me. Her mother should be along to pick her up anytime now, and until then she will watch every move I make, as if not trusting my ability to scramble a couple of eggs with cheese.
I can’t fault her for that. For Jenifer, rules and procedures are the most important thing. It’s how she retains information, it’s how she learns. She’s not very likely to do things out of order, and she expects that I too will follow this order
I get out the eggs, break two into a bowl. Put a pan on the stove, turn the stove on, and put a bit of margarine in the pan.
“The non-stick spray is in the pantry,” she tells me, expecting me to follow the rules. I thank her for letting me know but do not move towards the pantry.
“It keeps things from sticking,” she tells me, since I obviously haven’t caught on. I agree with her that indeed it does, and then there’s a car outside, honking for her to come out and go to church.
I scramble the eggs with milk and Velveeta, salt and pepper to taste. My taste, though I don’t taste it. Toast a piece of bread, put margarine and a bit of sugar-free strawberry jelly on it, and cut it into fourths. I arrange the toast triangles around the edges of the plate and put the eggs in the middle. I’ve used the first plate on the top, a blue speckled plate that could be army issue for all its decorativeness.
I take the plate, a fork, and a napkin back in to Fred’s bedroom.
Fred has pulled the covers up over his head and gone back to sleep.
“I have eggs for you,” I say, and start to pull the covers back from his face.
His eyes blink, open slowly as if not sure what I want with him. Then it comes back to him, and he reaches for the bed controls to raise himself from laying to sitting, at least sort of. He blinks a few times in an effort to clear the sleep from his eyes. I swing the table over the bed, the plate of eggs now in front of him.
He picks up the fork, trembling, his hands engaged in their own rhythm. He brings a forkful of eggs to his mouth and looks, for at least a moment, happy, as if the eggs meet all his expectations. Perhaps they do.
He reaches for his coffee, cold now, and I worry about the possibility of him spilling it, so much does his hand shake. The table is in the way, so I pull it away so he can drink, then help him set it back down and move the table close in to him so it is right beneath his chin.
I sit on the porta-potty, lid down, by the bed while he eats, repeating the table maneuvers when he wants a drink. He eats all the eggs and half the toast, then says, “I don’t know where, but there’s some applesauce . . .” and I finish for him by saying, “I’ll get you some.”
I bring a small bowl of applesauce back to him and he eats it all, but declines any more.
“I’m eating like a pig,” he says, “Everything that gets put in front of me.” He makes a face to indicate how ridiculous this must be.
“That’s good,” I say, “You need to eat. Eating is good.” He smiles at me.
He’s worn himself out with eating, and he tries to remember what else it was he wanted. I stand, egg plate in my hand, while he starts to talk. He tells me there was a meeting, about him, in this room, with everyone wanting to know how to make him comfortable. He talks about his caregivers, how good they all are to him. He counts me among them but I do not, not really. I’m just the Sunday volunteer, filling in on a day no one else is available. It is always just Fred and I alone; I never see anyone else involved in his care, just notes they may, now and then, leave behind.
“Cream,” he remembers, “Have you put cream on my legs?”
“No, but I certainly can.”
I put on the white plastic gloves I wear when doing personal care. I pull up the covers at the foot of the bed to reveal two thin little legs, the skin so brittle it looks like thin parchment paper, so dry I don’t know how it stays on his body at all.
I rub cream into his shins, the skin is so frail and dry I worry about tearing it. Can it tear? I don’t know. I’m an accountant, and we’re not taught much about these things in accounting school. I rub cream on the shins and the calves, carefully.
It’s cold to him, and so I cover the frail legs back up and tuck the covers in neatly around him.
He adjusts the bed so he’s laying back down again, and I tell him to get some sleep. He pulls the covers back over his head, making himself into a mummy again, and I turn out the light on my way out.
I wash the dishes and pan I’ve dirtied, steal a piece of bread and toast it. I hadn’t eaten yet today and after I got here Jenifer told me she’d be late. It’s not like me to take food from a patient’s house, but I rationalize away one piece of toast.
Then I sit in the living room, only the sound of the oxygen machine saying anything at all, and I write this out in longhand in the book I always carry with me.
And this is where I am now. When I get home this afternoon I will type this out, and then post it. You will come along and read it, and think, perhaps, that you are glad it is not you who is dying. I hope so. Fred would tell you to live now, enjoy yourself now, because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
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