Notes on my aging father

My brother and I switched places at the dining room table midweek. We never spoke about it, it just happened. A metaphoric shift in places, seats, perspectives. We spent the first two weeks of the new year at our childhood home, helping to care for our father who had a terrible fall on New Years Eve. Fifteen days of sporadic sleeps and scattered purging. The attic, garage, mudroom, playroom, laundry room — excavating things we hadn’t seen in years or perhaps thought we had lost. We find dark, musty corners of the closets we used to hide in. Photos that had lost their frames and newspaper clippings with tattered edges and fragile corners. T-shirts with the stains of youth.

My brother and mother cook incredible meals each night. I clean up and make my mother her after-dinner tea. We sit in the moment, exhausted and together. We have become a new kind of trio, keeping busy and pushing the stress away however we can. I eat frozen peppermint patties and clean around the house. My brother makes huge fires and moves furniture. My mother does the crossword puzzle and grocery shops. The home health aide sits faithfully by my fathers side and every now and then I hear her laughter coming from down the hall. He shows off my childhood artwork and tells her I am the real artist in the family, that my brother would have made a great doctor.

A bitter wind blows the tree branches and a rolling, eerie hum falls over the house. The shadows dance on the walls and windows, my mother clicks the thermostat up another notch. We set the table with leftover holiday napkins and fresh glasses. These are the times we were always told to plan for. The days we knew were coming but never wanted to talk about. When sips of Ensure and standing up are enough to make you cry with relief and the crack of a well-timed joke makes you feel like you are actually right where you are supposed to be. When the tuck-ins are theirs and we stay up late cleaning walls and stoking the fire.

There is another wind advisory for the night and a coating of icy snow outside reminds us that it is already mid-January. My father asks what time it is and then tells me that time has no meaning any more. Maybe he is right. My brother drags the broken grandfather clock away from the corner. The snow starts to swirl and fall and the fire pops. John Coltrane drifts in from down the hall and I notice my father tapping his foot to the beat and for just one suspended moment, it feels like Christmas Eve.