With This Ring

Dear Rachael Rachel,

I swear I’m not stalking you. Unless some unforeseen circumstance arises, I don’t intend to begin any future blog entries with a direct address to you. However, I feel the need to elaborate a bit on just what kind of man my father is. He is just as irascible as his phone call to you would suggest, but he is also something rare and wonderful. Before I attempt to convince you of that characterization, let me give you a little background into my parents’ marriage, at least as much as children can know about their own parents’ marriages.

 All of her life my mother was a caregiver. She raised her own seven children, served as a foster parent for scores of others placed in our home over a twenty-year span, and  babysat dozens of local infants and toddlers. To say that she acted as my father’s caregiver also at the same time would not be too much of an exaggeration.

 My father, a dairy herd manager, worked very long hours, setting off to the barn each morning way before dawn and returning late every evening. He often went back to the barn for several more hours after supper, and he worked many weekends . In other words, he wasn’t home much, and when he was, he was often napping or eating. He squeezed in some precious games of wiffle ball with us in the backyard on summer evenings or cards around the dining room table in the winter, and looking back on how little free time he had makes me appreciate those memories even more.

Because of his work, Dad wasn’t much of a help around the house; in fact, he was probably often more of a hindrance some days as far as my mom was concerned.

Rachael Rachel, my mother catered to my father. I have no childhood memories of  him cooking anything. Anything. I never saw him open a can, operate a toaster, or  punch the time and temperature into a microwave. If my mother had to leave the house over lunchtime, she put everything in pans, which she set on the stove so that all Dad had to do was warm the contents when he got home. On thousands of typical days, Dad walked in the house for lunch, and Mom filled his plate, delivering it to him in the living room where he had settled down to watch The Young and the Restless, followed by TheBold and the Beautiful. If he wanted seconds, he yelled, “Mom,” and she retrieved his plate, refilled it, and returned it to his waiting hands. If he needed a back rub, he yelled, “Mom,” and she sat on the floor beside him, rubbing his aching back. If he wanted to watch a videotape, he yelled, “Mom,” and she dashed into the living room, set the channel on the TV, popped in the tape, and hit Play. (Dad can now operate a VCR, but don’t even get me started on the DVD player, or as he calls it, “the VDV player,” my brother Jeff gave him for Christmas one year.) She made sure he woke up on time every morning, and if he took a lunchtime or evening nap, she made sure he was awake in time to return to the barn (or she allowed us to lift his lids and giggle as we watched his sleeping eyes roll around in his head while whispering, “Daaaaddd. Daaaad. Daaad. Dad!” until he mumbled something bordering on coherent).

I never heard my mother complain about their arrangement. She took care of him, and even he would tell you that. He also credits her alone for the fact that each of their seven children has become a productive, functioning adult; he says he wasn’t around enough to have made enough of a difference. I disagree, but that’s a subject for another day.

About six years ago we began to notice some odd behavior on my mother’s part. I feared Alzheimer’s; I even called her doctor to express my and my siblings’ concerns, but the doctor assured me we weren’t losing her to Alzheimer’s. I’ll save the long details of her frightening, often confusing, decline, but nearly three years later, she was finally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Her health, her mobility, and her mental state have deteriorated at a distressing rate. Medicine has restored some of her mental faculties; prior to finding the right combination of drugs, there were days she was afraid of my father, days she had no idea who he was, days their fifty-plus years meant nothing to her.

My father cried. Often.

But he never complained.

He ran the vacuum cleaner. He helped Mom dress, shower, and walk. He waited on her as she once waited on him. He called doctors and  ran errands. He did the grocery shopping and the laundry. He held her hand and wiped her face and spoke in soothing whispers when she lay on the couch whimpering. He took over the cooking, even experimenting with recipes he found in magazines. He read the Bible to her and he played soft music to calm her down. He sat up with her on nights when she was too agitated to sleep.

He stayed even when we ran. When watching her decline became too much for us and we went running to our various homes across the state, he stayed.

Today my father’s mood is determined by my mother’s health and mental state. He is happiest when she laughs. He tells her she is funnier now than she’s ever been. He calls her baby, he feeds her her meals, and he defies any of us to suggest that he should consider placing her in a facility. He’ll only grudgingly acknowledge that he will have to do that someday when she is at her very worst – incoherent, unable to walk even with assistance, gone to us. When she is bad, teetering on the brink of no-return, he is depressed and quiet, easily moved to tears.

Rachael Rachel, I have a sarcastic streak that runs deep and wide. I grew up in a family that loves to laugh, often at each other’s expense. We cover sadness with humor, often dark humor. I know it’s not everyone’s style, but even when my sister Leslie and I are crying over something we find incredibly sad, one of us invariably says something with a bit of a bite, and we’re doubled over with laughter.

Yes, we make fun of our father. Our father makes fun of our mother. My brothers make fun of each other, and Leslie makes merciless (Yes, Leslie, I said merciless), albeit deserved, fun of me. Sometimes we even make fun of our older sister Bunnie, who is so sweet she makes the rest of us look like slobbering cannibals. But don’t let our wise-ass senses of humor fool you. We love each other, and my siblings and I are in awe of what our father has done for our mother for the past five years.

In sickness and in health, for better or worse, my dad stepped up in a big way. He can make me crazy, that’s for sure, but his tears bring me to tears, and his laughter is as welcome as a cooling breeze.

So goodbye, Rachael Rachel. I’m fairly certain you won’t hear from my father again. He’s had some fun at your expense, and for that, I sincerely apologize once again. But now that he’s had his little laugh, I’m suspect he’ll wander off to play with some other shiny object, if only to distract himself for a little while from the day-to-day commitment he’s made to my mother.