Giving Thanks

 A few weeks ago I was in Macy's with my mother.  We were standing on the escalator going down when she started to sway and get faint.  I held her up and we got to the bottom and found a chair and after resting for a few minutes she started to feel better.   An employee came up to us with a warm smile and asked if she could help.  She led us to the salon area where there was a plush couch and got Mom some water and said we could wait there as long as we wanted.  She looked so familiar to me but I couldn't quite place her.  When she returned a few minutes later I asked her where I knew her from.  "Dominick's," she smiled.  Of course- she had worked at the deli counter for as long as I can remember and was always so nice.  She said she had been at Macy's for a few years and it was a little less stressful.  Then she asked how my father was doing.  "He passed last year," I said.  She looked shocked-even well in to his Alzheimer's Henry looked vital and healthy, in spite of the plaque buildup in his brain that was causing him to flush pudding cups down the toilet and swear at sprinklers and forget my name.  We would go in so I could get him his favorite Krakus ham.  "He was incredibly charming and I loved watching the two of you together," she mused.  "I'm sorry for your loss."  I flashed her a smile and thanked her and turned around to see if Mom was ready to go before I had the chance to get teary.

"The Holidays" are coming and I know this because I'm starting to want to crawl under the covers and hide for the next month.  Right now the two things I'm most thankful for are that I will be at work tomorrow, and that I have some pretty fantastic friends to provide support.  And really, a nursing home isn't a horrible place to spend Thanksgiving- if you work there.  The families and residents and other staff are happy that you're there, and you get to sing "Albuquerque Turkey" and play with Marley the dog who is coming in to visit, and watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade because Matt Lauer and inflatable pilgrims make people happy, and connect with residents who don't remember that it's supposed to be a happy holiday, and share what you're thankful for with the ones who do.  "A whole buncha good kids," said my 91 y/o former ENT surgeon, when I asked him last week.  He had ten total, but we didn't have the heart to tell him that one passed away last year so in his mind there are still ten and that's okay. 


Nursing homes are different if you're the resident, or a family member visiting the resident.  I'm fortunate to work in one where the staff truly cares and the residents have a good quality of life, but the place my father was in for the last two and a half years of his life was a shithole and going there any day was difficult, but the holidays exacerbated that.  Stupid decorations that made me cringe, Lawrence Welk holiday specials on the TV, staff who made it clear they didn't want to be there.  Dad was on a pureed food diet so I would make him pumpkin pie filling and tried to feed it to him.  Pumpkin pie was always on of his favorites- a close second to anything chocolate.  Years back, when he was living in his apartment, I would make a pie, stick it in the oven, we'd walk the four blocks to Starbucks for hot chocolate, and by the time we got back the pie would be ready.  It never ceased to amaze him.  At the nursing home, he wouldn't eat the pie that was sent up on the tray for the holiday lunch, but he did take a few bites of mine before giving me the face that made it clear he was done. 

After work tomorrow I'll go to dinner with a friend's family, who have taken me in the past two years.  It's a very lively but safe atmosphere, and her husband makes the most incredible cornbread stuffing.  Her mother and my father were at the same not-shitty nursing home for four months, before my father got kicked out for bad behavior.  She lost her mother a few months after I lost Dad and her family has been a rock for me.  We'll share food and wine and more food and more wine and discuss which Beatle we would want to sleep with and laugh about olives and I'll probably wear some cute boots, but if I came in slippers and sweatpants they wouldn't care. 

Then I'll come home and go to bed and Thanksgiving will be over and I'll wake up the next morning and go to work and hope that I can put it out of my mind for a while because while I'm so very thankful for so many things, and make a point to remind myself of them on a regular basis, I would give anything to be able to share pie with my father.  I hope there's pumpkin pie- and wine- wherever he's looking down from.