I Have Seen the Future, and It is Frail

Finally. I got the chance to meet Mrs. Fossilfuel.

I first met the overnight caregiver, Sondra. She's in her forties, pitch-black dyed hair, trying hard to look goth, not achieving it.

She was helping Mrs. F. to the bathroom alongside her walker. Mrs. F. looked up from her hunched-over stance and said "Candy, I'm grateful for you." I said "I'm grateful for you, too."

I had to start boarding up my tear ducts, because I don't do well with such frailty. When I used to go with my dad to visit nursing homes, I got headaches from gritting my teeth at all the blatant misery, and at all the feeble, incoherent bodies.

This woman is coherent. And very very particular about: Everything.

Sondra showed me around. She spoke a long, dizzying litany containing instructions like this:

"...and she HATES it if you leave this cabinet door open..."

"...and she HATES it if you have on the TV, even at a really really low volume..."

"...and you can only pee in THIS bathroom and she will ask you if you messed up the toilet bowl..."

"...and look, here is her silverware. See this spoon? This is her SON's spoon. It has a black floral design on the handle. Do. Not. Give. Her. This. Spoon. To. Eat. With. And see this? This is her son's knife."

And so on. Her son lives in Seattle. But is perhaps somehow gifted in the telepathic arts, and knows when Someone. Used. His. Spoon.

Sondra was about to clock out and showed me her pan of chopped potatoes on the stovetop. She said Mrs. F. finished "not lunch, but breakfast at noon. (Right then I thought, "Bitch, she's 98. She can eat whenever she f*cking feels like it.") She'll need dinner at some point, and you should fry these potatoes but do not get them mushy. And steam half a zucchini and a whole carrot and make sure they're springy. She only wants them springy. You will hear about it if they're not springy."

Piss. OK, first of all, I do not cook. Ever. I have never fried potatoes, and I've used a steamer maybe twice before in my life. So long ago that I couldn't even remember how it fits in the pan. I was going to get bitchslapped by Mrs. F. and I would be shamed into the next century.

Sondra made her sound like a persnickity she-beast. Since Mrs. F. was within earshot but out of sight, Sondra inserted sweeping arm-moves and sarcastic eye-rolling and even a snarky leg kick that easily translated into "Yeah. Get a load of the old hag." Sondra rubbed me the wrong way.

As the day progressed, I found out that she also rubs Mrs. F. the wrong way. When her son called, I of course eavesdropped. Partially to get a better read on her, partially because she's unsure how to work the phone. Oh, and also because I'm nosy. I was delighted to hear her say "Oh son, this new woman, I liked her immediately. Her name is Candy and I just like her looks. She's an older, married woman."

A 98-year-old called me an older woman.

She went on: "But this other girl, Sondra, she's just weird. She tells the most way-out tales you've ever heard. I'm afraid to be around her."

She also told her son that she doesn't need four people coming from that agency. And that those people are all "after the buck." Good God. If she knew what we make, she might rethink that. But then again, she may be calibrated financially to think that this particular hourly wage is big money.


The two most somber moments of the day:

1. Helping her urinate into her makeshift bedpan, a large cottage cheese container, as she stood next to her bed, me steadying her. She was too tired to make it to the bathroom. Her thighs, unbearably thin, shook uncontrollably as she waited a long, long time to produce any output.

2. Helping her change out of the slip she thought she had wet on (she hadn't), into a fresh one. It is a delicate affair. She does still have some modesty, even after the indignities she has endured. I put the new one over her head, wrestled gently with the straps, as she tried to shimmy the old one downward. I had not been told that she has very recently had a mastectomy. Inside my head I was on fire with grief for her. My inner voice was screaming at me: DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING FOR HER!!!

And this was the thing that got me through the cooking. I thought "Candy. Look what she's enduring. You can surely cook some damned vegetables. Buck up."

So I cooked, and I made her drink of choice: hot milk with half a teaspoon of instant decaf crystals mixed in. I was terrified she would find the food unacceptable. I prettied it up as much as I could.

"Oh, that tasted good!" she said. I cannot believe how happy that made me.

Take that, Sondra. She hates your cooking because you're weird.

When my relief got there at 6 in the form of Sherrie, the favorite, I found out just how weird Sondra is. She has told Mrs. F. that she can raise the dead. Bitch is crazy.

I go back next Friday. Until then, it's part time office work. There is much to learn from Mrs. F. Just thinking about the tiny things she demands control of shows how desperately we all want control of something. A dishtowel, a meal, a spoon never to be used, the way we live our lives, right up to the very end of a century, if we're wildly blessed with that kind of time. Though I can't decide if it's a blessing or not, to end up so frail, so alone. But she seems to be fighting for every day.