Speaking of Mr M

from August 14

Which we weren’t, but here’s an update nonetheless.

Mr. M’s volunteer returned from her vacation, and I stopped visiting. Nothing against Mr M, I thought he was adorable, but I needed some time to take care of some business things, and I was running myself ragged. That, and his volunteer came back from vacation. Otherwise I would have kept going, of course.

A couple of weeks passed by, as weeks will, time which included the Great Northwest Heat Wave of 2009, a time which burnt out a few of my brain cells and left me, afterwards, stumbling about in a parody of myself as I tried to remember what I’d been doing before my only mission in life became survival.

And I thought of Mr M, and wondered how he was doing.

The other night charming husband and I drove up to a Starbucks with the intention of grabbing some sort of drink (for him) on our way home. And there out in front of Starbucks was, not Mr M, but the hospice chaplain.

“Charlean!” I squealed, in a paroxysm of joy. I like Charlean.

And Charlean had news for me. Mr M’s sisters had flown out from Boston to see him. In person! After years of being estranged from his family, isolated, homeless and alone out here, his sisters flew to see him. And now they’re looking into finding a facility in Boston to move Mr M too, and our hospice is willing to send someone along to help him get there, he being in the condition he’s in. One of Mr M’s sisters is a nurse, which is also fabulously helpful of course.

Isn’t that great? I am so happy that his sisters have so willingly accepted him back. I don’t know what happened between them before, and now, it doesn’t seem to have mattered. Maybe he just drifted away, as people will sometimes do. His son seems to be a bigger issue, but hopefully that’ll work out too. I hope so. Life’s too short, isn’t it?

I Lost My Patient. Then I Found Him.

from July 17th

I went to see Mr M yesterday, a day so hot that I’d rather have been indoors and not in my car, especially since my car is currently lacking air conditioning. Hot is a relevant term, since some people are quite happy in the sort of weather that makes me wilt, but all the same, it was hot.

When I got there I noticed the smoking woman from the last visit was outside again, smoking. I went inside and headed for Mr. M’s room. His roommate was there, the smoking man with only one leg, sitting comfortably on his bed, but when I walked over to the other side of the room, behind the curtain, there was no Mr. M.

The roommate indicated he had no idea where he’d wandered off to, shaking his head as if to say, “How the hell would I know?” Not overly friendly, but the man’s missing his leg, so I give him a break.

I went out to the nurse’s station, which is right next to the room, and I ask the overly extended person if she knows Mr. M’s whereabouts.

“He’s in his room,” she says, certain that she knows his location.

“No, he’s not there.”

She comes out from behind her desk and goes into the room, as if I’m mistaken, I just didn’t look for him, obviously he’s there. It’s not as if he wanders around by himself all that often after all.

He’s not there.

“Maybe he’s in the restroom,” she says, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“Maybe he’s in the shower,” she says, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“I don’t know where he is,” she says, “but maybe he went out the back,” and someone else walking by confirms that he was last seen headed for the back door. “He goes out there sometimes to get a snack.”

Okay then. At least I have a destination now. I head down the hall, turn left, and go out the door marked, “Back Door.” I see a big sign saying, “No smoking except in the designated area.” It occurs to me that he went for a smoke, but since I have the cigarettes with me still that’s not exactly likely. There’s a fenced-patio, a couple of vending machines, another building with laundry facilities. There’s no Mr. M. I look around the corner, to a grassy area. No Mr. M. I walk along the path and find a smoking area, under some trees, a couple of inside chairs and a can for butts, and a picnic table. But no Mr. M.

I look in corners and in darkened areas, but no Mr. M.

I wonder if he’s run off. How far can a man in a wheelchair get?

I go back inside.

I look out front, thinking that perhaps he found his way out there, but he’s not there, just the smoking woman. I go back to his room, and someone asks if they can help me. “I’m just looking for Mr Marshall,” I say, and she tells me, “He’s in his room.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her, and she goes to look. He’s not there.

“I think he’s out back,” she says, “You should go look there.”

Despite the fact I was just there and no one at all was out there, I go back. I mean, I’m here, what else am I going to do? So I go out back. He’s not there. This was not exactly a surprise to me.

Coming back in I see him, coming up the other end of the corridor, the one that runs along the front of the building.

“Where the hell have you been,” I greet him with.

No, I don’t. That would be rude. Instead, I ask him how he is, and he starts to tell me about his long journey, out the back, around the side, up to the front, down the corridor. It’s as if he’s in training for a triathlon.

I hand him the pack of cigarettes I got him the night before (my husband choosing to stay in the car as I shopped for cigarettes, something I’ve never bought for before, not wanting to enable him in helping a smoker smoke), and the lighter I thought would come in handy. It’s yellow. I got it because it was pretty.

“Where would you like to go now,” I ask, and he wants to go out front to enjoy his new cigarettes.

We go out front, and I park him in the shade, and I sit on the outdoor couch. I’m exhausted. I’ve been running around in the heat looking for a 61 year old man in a wheelchair, and he’s in better shape than I am. And Mr M talks.

I mean, he talks. And he talks. Two of his sisters have called. His sisters! They’ve called the facility! He tells me about his sisters, one’s an RN, another sister has a bit of a delicate of constitution and they haven’t told her about him yet, and his brother is a janitor in Boston at the federal building. His son, he tells me about his son, and how there were problems with that relationship because of a girl, but his sisters will talk to him. He tells me about his dad, who got sick and told no one and no one knew until he died. He tells me about being homeless in Portland, and how he’d sleep under Burnside, by the Portland Saturday Market, and how the cops would come wake everyone up in the middle of the night and tell them to move on. Vancouver is, he tells me, a much better place to be homeless. It was in Vancouver that he got picked up by the police, and it was then that he found out he had cancer that couldn’t be fixed.

He speaks quietly, so much so that when there are other people talking close by, smoking woman and smoking legless man, who has come out, I can barely hear him, and I miss some of the things he says, but it doesn’t really matter. He talks about how they want him to come back so they can look after him, and how he’s not sure if that would work, but his sister is an RN, so it might work. It’s all still theoretical, of course, and he knows that.

He smokes two cigarettes, taking a long break in between. It’s hot, even here in the shade, and eventually his voice winds down. I think he must be exhausted. I ask him if he’s ready to go in, and he says he is, he’s getting hot, but he’s not tired.

I wheel him inside. I’ve already opened the door twice, once for legless man and then for smoking woman. I’m getting quite good at this door opening thing. I wheel him back to his room, but he doesn’t want to get out of his wheelchair. He says it’s more comfortable than the blue chair they usually place him in. I park him next to his glass of water, and I ask if there’s anything he’d like when I come back on Friday.

He thinks for a moment. There’s so many things he hasn’t had in so long, after all.

“A couple of stamps,” he said, “I need to write some more letters.”

From July 13th

Last week I went to see Mr. M a total of three times. Wednesday I asked if he wanted to go outside, it being a cooler day. I’d given him his M&M’s, not just one bag, but four, in case one wasn’t enough. I’d started with five, but ate one before I got there. So shoot me. I’m a bad volunteer. As soon as I asked if he wanted to go outside he rose to his feet, and asked for his baseball cap on the other side of his bed. He got into his wheelchair, his hat on his head, and we went for a stroll.

 

We were looking for places to have a cigarette, but there’s not much to the grounds of this particular nursing home. An area right in front for residents to sit, in the shade, and a parking lot. We sped out into the parking lot, as much as two can speed when one’s in a wheelchair, and looked around the buildings, but the pavement was bumpy and we came to the conclusion that there was no place to hide.

 

This because no one had told us that it’s okay for residents to smoke right outside the front door, to the left, with a table and a comfy sort of couch for those of us not in chairs. We didn’t find that out on Wednesday. We roamed with abandon, and then we sat outside, enjoying the cooler weather and the flowers, and the green of the grass and the trees. We didn’t talk much. Mr M. seemed to like feeling the air.

 

Friday he wasn’t feeling very well (hence his inclusion in the hospice program) so I stayed just long enough to ask if he wanted me to come back on Monday, after handing him a couple of chocolate chip cookies I’d picked up from Subway. He nodded his head before sinking back down into his chair, nodding, then sinking, curled slightly to alleviate the pain.

 

Today I returned, and he was up in his chair. The weather today is muggy (which I always thought sounded like the weather was attempting to mug someone, but it seems to be a popular usage and, I think, a correct one), cloudy, with cool winds. I asked him if he wanted to go sit outside, and he stood, got right up, and then tried to reach across his bed for his hat.

 

“Whoa,” I said, “why don’t you sit down in the chair, and I’ll get your hat.”

 

I was afraid he was going to fall over onto his bed, and then where would we be?

 

We maneuvered out of the room, a trickier proposition now that Mr M has a roommate. We headed outside, and to the right of the front door, and I sat in a chair, and he sat in his wheelchair. I looked over to the left of the door, and there were two residents in wheelchairs. And they were smoking. They’d been there when I’d entered, but I hadn’t noticed that they both had cigarettes in their hands.

 

I told Mr. M, “Look, they have cigarettes!”

 

He looked over their way, more than a tinge of envy on his face. He has big brown eyes, and I can tell when he wants something.

 

“I’m going to go see if I can get a cigarette.” I walked over to the two and said, “Excuse me, but Mr M hasn’t had a cigarette in 8 months, and he’d really like one. Do you think I could get one for him? I’d be happy to buy you more.”

 

I’m not above groveling.

 

One, the woman, said, “I only have one left, but I can go in and get more,” and the other one, a man, said, “That’s okay, he can have one of mine.” He waved off my offer of compensating him.

 

The woman said, “He better come over here though, this is the smoking area.”

 

So I gave Mr M the cigarette and lit it for him with the lighter I’d also borrowed, then wheeled him over to the smoking area. I sat on the couch, since I was the only one who hadn’t brought my own chair.

 

And Mr M, who hardly talks to anyone because he has no one, talked to the other two residents. They talked about smoking. The woman said she would never quit, and she came to this nursing home because she could smoke outside. The man, who was missing half of one leg, said if he could quit for 8 months he’d never go back. Mr. M puffed, and said 8 months was the longest he’d been without a cigarette.

 

The woman said she thought there were cigarettes available for sale at the nursing home, a claim the man scoffed at, but said it might be possible. I thought one cigarette was fine for Mr M’s first day of smoking, but didn’t say so. Instead I let the moment slide away, after saying I’d look into it and find out.

 

The man left us, rolling out into the sun for a bit, then rolling back up. I got up and opened the door for him, this particular nursing home being bereft of things like automatic doors. There is, however, a doorbell that one can push if one wants assistance. I then held the door for two paramedics who were bringing in a woman on a stretcher. She looked rather lively, for someone in her condition, and said hello to me as she passed by.

 

I went back to my spot on the couch and said I’d developed a real talent for opening doors for people. The woman laughed and said it was a good skill to have, and Mr. M smiled.

 

The woman asked Mr M where he was from, and they talked about the weather, and train travel, and why Mr M came out here. He said it was his asthma. Mr M came out here from the east on a train. Halfway here, or in Nebraska, he got off the train and realized his asthma was already much better.

 

He was homeless for a year, he said, before he ended up in the nursing home. “It’s better to be homeless here,” he said, referring to Vancouver, “than it is in Portland.”

 

My own expert on where it’s best to be homeless, in case I should need to know.

 

The woman gave Mr M the last half of her last cigarette. “D’you want to finish this?” she asked him, and handed it to him, then to me said, “He was looking at it, I thought he needed it more than I did.” I liked her. He finished her cigarette, and, if I’m not mistaken, he rather enjoyed it.

 

The woman went in then, and I held the door for her, and then rang the doorbell so an attendant could wheel her back to her room.

 

I took Mr M in, and we wended our way back to his room, after stopping at the front desk to ask if there was any truth to the rumor that they had cigarettes available for sale. I did not receive a positive response to this question, but I told them it was no problem, I’d just get him some cigarettes myself, and they seemed relieved, as if this is not an uncommon request and they’re forever denying people the one thing they want most in the world.

 

The man who’d been outside, the man with one leg, was in the other bed now. This was Mr M’s roommate, but they don’t seem to communicate much. Mr M sat back in his chair, and I put his hat back on his bedside table. I sat down on his bed, the only place for me to sit. I don’t stand well. I tend to fall over. I asked if there was anything else he needed, other than cigarettes, which I’d bring him Wednesday, when I come back. He said no, and he lowered his head and whispered, “I wrote my sister two weeks ago.”

 

“Haven’t heard back from her yet, have you?” I asked.

 

He shook his head.

 

I wish I knew her name, her town, so I could call her, but that’s not my concern, is it? I’d like to tell her that her brother is dying, and that he’d like to hear from his family. I don’t know what their relationship is like, what he’d done, or what they’d done, or what happened, but because I am who I am, I want to fix it. I can’t fix it. I can’t even fix my own failed family relationships much less anyone else’s. Maybe I want to fix it because I can’t fix my own, as if fixing someone else’s will allay some of the feelings that still drift around me.

 

Instead, I take his hand, and I tell him I’ll be back the day after tomorrow, and we’ll go outside and have a cigarette. It’s not much, but it’s something.