December 7, 2008

SUNDAY WITH FRED

Fred looked good today, or at least as good as someone dying from emphysema can look, which is to say, he looked happy, and he’s as active as someone can be who rarely gets out of bed, and then only as a necessity. Though each week he looks a bit frailer, he still laughs more uproariously than someone on oxygen should, and he is always happy to see me.

When I got there today he was playing a golf game with his new Playstation. His last one finally quit on him, and for his birthday he got a new one. There are not many activities he can do anymore, so anything that keeps him entertained is good. His little television/VCR sit on a table close to his bed, but not so close that he doesn’t need help when he wants to watch a new movie. That’s one of the things I’m there for, to attend to whatever he wants while his wife is off at church. We have a good time together, Fred and I, and though sometimes he does nothing but sleep, he always feels like he should be entertaining me while I’m there, as if I’m some sort of special guest, and not a hospice volunteer. I’ve explained this to him, that I’m there to help him with whatever he needs, and if it’s sleep he wants, to just go right ahead. I can entertain myself quite well out in the living room while he does his thing.

Today he and his wife wanted to tell me how much they appreciated the birthday cards Fred received last week from people he didn’t know, people who wished him happy birthday, his 65th, and thanked him for his service in the Marines. “It brought a tear to my eyes,” said Fred. “Yeah,” said his wife, Jenifer, who’s learning disabled, “It did, make sure you thank them.” I told them I would. All I’d done was let people know that it was Fred’s birthday, and that if anyone wanted to send him cards, I knew he’d like that. And people, some of whom don’t even know me in real life, sent him cards.

Later, after Jenifer left for church, Fred told me that he so much appreciates how kind people have been, and that people, as a whole, have made up for the unhappy memories of coming back from Vietnam, a place he didn’t want to be in the first place, and being spit on.

I made Fred a bowl of oatmeal. He also likes my grilled cheese sandwiches and eggs with cheese. He wanted to finish his golf game and then finish a movie he’d been watching, so I told him he knew where to find me if he needed me. He laughed, and I said, “Well, don’t come looking for me! Just call me and I’ll be right here.” I sat in the living room with my MP3 player. It’s always peaceful at Fred’s on Sundays while his wife is at church with her mother.

After the movie ended, with what sounded like several loud explosions, Fred called me, accidentally saying “Monica,” instead of “Monique,” which he always apologizes for, and I always tell him it’s okay. “No, it’s not,” he says, “Your name’s Monique.”

He starts talking about Vietnam. The VA recently decided he was 30% disabled from Vietnam, from being exposed to Agent Orange or something, and Fred said, “I wish they knew it was all of me in those rice paddies, not just 30%!” But he’s not bitter, he says these things as an amusing anecdote. He tells me of terrible things he saw in Vietnam, things that may make some people uncomfortable to hear, but I’m not into censoring what people need to say. Sometimes things just need to be said and heard, even when it’s hard to say, and hard to listen to. I empathize, as much as someone who served 6 years in peacetime can. I hold his hand when he extends it, and I listen to his stories. “War criminals,” he tells me, “Some of them should have gone to prison,” and when they wanted him to run over someone’s head with heavy machinery he wouldn’t do it, but the POW talked anyway. Later they took the POW up in a helicopter and let him out, without a parachute. Fred can’t say he killed anyone, but he shot plenty, and he was an expert marksman, qualified for the Olympics, so there’s a pretty good chance he did, but it’s not something he wants to think about. But what bothers him the most, still, is the dog he had to kill. A camp mascot who was so sick, and the medic could do nothing for her, and suggested Fred put her out of her misery. There was no ammo, so he beheaded her. This is the worst thing he’s done, he tells me, and being a total dog person myself, I tell him he did what needed to be done, and I know it must have been hard.

He gets a tear in his eye again, when he tells me how grateful he is to everyone who helps him now, and how he hates relying on people (always making sure to tell me it’s not that he doesn’t appreciate everything everyone does for him, as if I’ll be offended), but he tells me it’s just watery eyes.

His conversation meanders, and I would get lost if I didn’t keep listening, for eventually he comes back around to his point. In the middle of a story he starts talking about cotton balls, and I come to understand he needs Caladryl on his shoulders and his neck. I get the cotton balls, put on my gloves (I touch him and hug him when arriving and departing, squeeze his hand now and then, all without gloves, but I’ve been trained to put gloves on), and dab on Caladryl on the dry red areas. His skin is so dry and fragile anymore. Then he wants the white cream on his scalp and face, and I dip into the container of white cream and rub white cream over his forehead and into his scalp, and along his cheeks and his nose. I make jokes about how I’m restyling his hair, it’s going to be spiked by the time I get done with it, which is easy to do when the hair is short and it’s full of white cream. I take special care to make it stand up, and I tell him how cute it is, the perfect look for him. We talk about using green food coloring next time, and I say that for Christmas I can use red too, so he'll be appropriately decorated, the perfect Christmas elf. He does have elflike qualities, he's small and growing frailer, and if there were a standard for elf eyes, Fred has them.

He keeps talking, about his time living in LA, about how he used to drink, way back then, about fun things he did, even in Vietnam, things that don’t involve killing or even war. He laughs now and then, and asks if I’m French, he knows some of the language. I tell him I’m not, and then I tell him where my name really came from, it’s still a family joke that my father was retelling as recent as last summer. Fred says it’s a good name, it’s musical, and I attribute this to the morphine.

When his wife came home we were still laughing, and when I said goodbye and that I’d see him next week, he said to make sure I told people thank you for making him feel special and appreciated, and he thanked me for coming. “I’m happy I could be here,” I answered, and went out in the pouring rain for my drive home.