So, a couple of weekends ago, after a Friday night seeing Sweeney Todd and a Saturday so busy getting stuff wrapped up that I wasn’t able to go see my buddy Manya’s Mercedes in Carmen, on Sunday, I flew down to Raleigh/Durham to visit my dad and brother. Nothing eventful about the flight or the car pickup. But, new things – instead of driving north to Durham, I was driving southeast (and pretty close) to Raleigh, where my dad just moved into an Atria assisted living facility, which I had never seen.
Dad had given me very specific instructions, including a place in the parking lot where you make a right turn and suddenly out of nowhere there’s a huge speed bump, and I followed them just fine. Checked in at the front desk, Dad came down. We went out to the car to drive it around to the side, which is closer to his apartment, and my brother showed up with two outdoor chairs to put on Dad’s new balcony. Sam went in the front, and I drove Dad around the side. We went in the side entrance (you need a fob) and up to the 4th floor, where I got to see the new place.
It’s nice! It’s a two-bedroom apartment, with two bathrooms. The main room is one-quarter kitchen (small, but complete, with an an island and a dishwasher), a quarter dining area, and half living room, which then leads out to a small screened-in balcony. This is somewhat similar to what Dad’s condo had, except that was completely enclosed (a ‘three-season room’) and this is actually technically outdoors. Back to the main room: off to the right is Dad’s bedroom, bathroom and closet. Off to the left is the other bathroom, which has the cat box and the laundry machines, and the other bedroom, which is Dad’s office. It’s a nice space, a good size, and functionally comparable to the condo had, except no guest room.
The three of us decided to go to the dining room for lunch, where we all had cobb salads and ice cream. The dining room isn’t bad! For every meal, there are standards that are always on the menu, then there are specials. For Dad, all three meals are included (although he only usually takes two meals there a day) and everyone has the option to order it as takeout instead, or even (I guess) have it delivered. I only ate two meals there – the other was dinner – but the food is fine without being spectacular.
Sam took off, I fixed a problem with Dad’s TV, then he and I went to the grocery store – he got a couple of things and I got stuff for my hotel room, like soda and distilled water. Then I dropped him off and went to my hotel to check in. It was only about ten minutes from Dad’s place. The hotel was a Holiday Inn Express and was perfectly adequate, although charmless. I had a nice big room. The big downside, which I griped about, but did nothing to fix, was that the in-room fridge (a) froze everything and (b) constantly made a noise like coffee percolating. They did have fresh-brewed coffee on demand in the breakfast room, though, and it was pretty good. I’ll probably stay somewhere else next time, just to see what’s around.
Back to Dad’s to watch the news and go out to dinner. He’d lost his cell phone, we spent some time trying to find it. We went out to Nantucket Grill, pretty much right across the street. (I found out during the week that he’s within a quarter mile of two or three shopping complexes with a lot of really nice restaurants, a grocery store, an Ace Hardware and stuff. It would all be totally walkable, actually, except nothing’s actually designed to be walkable so it’s probably best if he just does the two-minute drive.) Dad got scallops, which looked great. I got a burger and fries which wasn’t bad, but was way too heavy for what I actually was hungry for. Nevertheless, we both got desserts – big slices of cake that we both mostly took home. I dropped him off at 800 and went back to my hotel room.
I’d discovered on my last trip to Toronto that some hotel room TVs will let you ‘cast your phone’ to them, so you can watch (for example) Netflix without having to log into your account directly on the TV. This TV seemed to have a cast feature, but it involved changing your wifi to a special one it listed, and then when you had that wifi on, you couldn’t get content from the actual wifi, it made no sense. But I discovered a channel with Law & Order SVU and just watched one of those.
Monday Dad had a very early doctor’s appointment closer to his old place, so I picked him up and drove him there and did a drugstore run while he was there (I now need sunglasses and keep losing them.) We got a late breakfast which was really good at a place called First Watch. We both got the same breakfast sandwich, which came with a salad, nice meal.
Then we tried to find Dad’s cell phone. I knew this would be a nightmare, as it involved logging into the Icloud website. If it’s a website Dad doesn’t use daily, it’s a tossup whether he knows what the password is, and we went round and round trying to guess what it is, or reset it. Tried to use Dad’s travel laptop to do an endrun around the main computer’s browser, which was not letting us get further, and the travel laptop needed a software update and it was just one rabbit hole after another.
And then we took a break and did other stuff. And about mid-afternoon, I decided to go back to the hotel and Dad told me to look in my car to see if the phone was there. Mind you, he’d only been in my car for about 30 seconds the first time, and the phone had been missing after that. Well, guess what. The phone was indeed in my car, under the passenger seat, where it had fallen out of Dad’s pocket. He had actually said right from the beginning that he thought it might be there, but I’d thought that was unlikely. So… listen to your father. But track his passwords for him.
After hotel chillout, back for news and then to a local Italian restaurant called Bella Italia. This was typical of a lot of restaurants we tried – perfectly fine food with not-that-great service. They didn’t have booze, just beer and wine, which was fine. He got a seafood pasta thing and I got the ‘penne rustica’, chicken and sausage with broccoli, mushrooms, spinach and pasta in a garlic oil, plus we both got caesar salads. we both got dessert, I got tiramisu which was actually surprisingly good.
Back to the room for a bit, then I headed out.
Timeline gets fuzzy now, since I stopped taking notes. But Tuesday, I think, was the day he had a very early eye doctor appointment which he took himself to. I got myself up leisurely, then went to his place to work on my own projects on the computer until he came back. We did some organizing of the rooms he hadn’t fully unpacked. Dinner that night was at a sushi place, which was really good. I think he had salmon, but I had a sushi dinner place kinda thing.
Wednesday was a big deal – that was when the nurse representative was coming over to evaluate Dad to see if the long-term care insurance would pay for the assisted living place. I don’t know why they’d deny him – he’s in his nineties, and he’s having the staff come in to help him shower, tie his shows, remind him to take his meds and so on. Anyway she was really nice, but we still (at this point) don’t know the results. She did give dad the “Trump test” of subtracting backward from 100 by 7, and although Dad is very math-oriented, he at some point skipped digits, saying 89 instead of 79. She didn’t blink, just kept going with what he said. Also when he drew the clock showing 8:20 or whatever, I didn’t see clearly, but it looked like he put a 6 in the 5 slot as well as the 6 slot. So… maybe there’s some brain sputtering going on there, although he’s very much still on top of things.
Wed night, Dad’s lady friend Amanda came over to see the new place. She wanted to eat in the dining room to see what it was like, so we did, and it was really good! (I had chicken cordon bleu or such.) Then it turned out later that she’d left her purse there, so we had to track it down before she left.
Thursday I just came over to help with more stuff and do my own stuff. We tried a couple of more restaurants. During lunch, I found out that my brother-in-law had passed away, so quick messaged my nieces and also figured out that if I kept the car once I got home, I’d be able to go to the funeral in Tappan with no real problems. Sam came over mid-afternoon and we went out alone together to have our brotherly moment. I’d wanted to check out a park near Dad’s to see if it was a place it would be worth him driving to for powerwalks. Sam and I went there, turns out it’s very odd – basically just a very steep hill of grass. Not good for Dad, but we schlugged up there and caught the views.
Then we got Dad and went out to the same restaurant that Dad and I had gone the first night. Dad asked for a local gin for his martini and ended up with a purple martini! That was weird, but it didn’t taste like it had liqueur in it or anything.
This time I got the scallops that he’d gotten and they were really good.
Then we went back to Dad’s place and made our goodbyes.
Because of schedules, I didn’t plan to stop by Dad’s on Friday as I left, and I would have stopped by Sam’s, but he had (remote) meetings. So I just left. I was driving to Baltimore, but decided to do it off highways so it took the entire day. And I’ll pick up that part of the trip in the next installment.
Postscript: I really like Dad’s new facility and I especially like that he has (friendly) eyes on him all the time. Part of the routine there is that when you get up in the morning, you hit a button that basically says to the office “I’m still here”. I guess if you don’t hit the button, they check on you. He has the opportunity to make friends – not only in the dining room, but they have activities every day. They have shuttles to all the obvious places and once he switches doctors to the ones close by, he can get rid of his car, which is another low-level-worry that will go away. He’s doing really well. This isn’t ‘graduated living’ or a ‘nursing home’ – if his health goes downhill, we may have to find something else. But this is absolutely a good fit for him right now. His condo has been getting spiffed up and is going on the market very soon, and I expect that will sell with no problems.
And we move into our new normal.
The Toast Point Page 