The Luna Park Gazette

My father's Christmas presents are still wrapped and waiting for him under the tree. But it will be a long time before he sees them. My dad had a seizure a week ago and it looks like he'll be going to a nursing home for another period of rehab. He just got home in November after being away for a month and now he's back on the chain gang. Only this time its worse. As one of the doctors explained to me, my father's condition has come down a notch for good. They can help him in rehab, but he will not have the same mental and physical abilities he had before. I saw him yesterday and I have to say he looked terrible--like an ancient infant, helpless, confused, drifting between sleep and consciousness. We're heading into a new year, but for my father every day is the same. I had come from the Patient Relations (hah!) Department on the first floor, where I had gone to look over several sets of dentures that had no owners. The hospital managed to lose my father's own pa...

Christmas comes but one a year and all I can say is thank God for that. My father is back in the hospital, having suffered a seizure on Saturday night, so forgive me if I get a little Ebenezer on you. I had just gotten off the R train at Prince Street and was hanging out in the Housing Works Used Book Cafe when my cell phone went off. It was my sister, telling me that my father had just been taken out of the house in an ambulance. I was supposed to meet up with my bud Hank to see Letters from Iwo Jima , but I knew that couldn't fly. I told my sister I was on my way, called Hank to tell him the story, and then I was back on Prince Street, where I hopped on the N train to Brooklyn. I guess I was numb, or perhaps I thought it wasn't that serious, but then my cell phone went off while I was on the Manhattan Bridge, indicating I had a message. It was Edith, our night aide, and she had apparently called me first before dialing up my sister. "Robert," she wailed into the pho...

When my father went into the emergency room the other night, the EMT told the head nurse of my father's condition adding that "he denies pain." I thought that this was an unusual expression. They didn't say my father wasn't having any pain; just that he denied having pain. It sounded like they way trying to avoid any kind of legal problem should it turn out my father--or anybody else--actually was in pain. It makes me think of Peter denying Jesus three times before the cock crows, or a suspect in an old black and white crime movie denying a murder rap. That phrase came back to me today, my father's first full day after being discharged from the hospital. I'm trying to deny a whole lot of pain, but the pain is not denying me. First, I went to the hospital yesterday to pick up my dad. When I got there Mary, his aide, tells me that my father doesn't have his dentures and nobody at this pig sty masquerading as hospital knows where they are. I found this ...

I had to take a late-night ambulance ride the other night when my father fell down in his room. It was about 2 am Tuesday morning and I heard this tremendous crash, falled my father's voice shouting out " Robert! " I ran into his room and found him stretched out on the floor right next to his bed. His head was propped up against the night table and we found he had a nasty lump back there. Thank God I had Edith, my dad's night aide, staying over with us. We just set up a baby monitor that night and it worked perfectly. Edith and I got my dad off the floor and we checked for broken bones. He was not very responsive, but with the dementia that's not surprising. I debated calling an ambulance, knowing that I'd have to spend the rest of the night in the emergency room and then go to work the next day. My father had a preliminary kind of stroke called a TIA during the summer and then a real stroke back in October. Both times he fell and both times I let him talk me ...

I had another one of my bizarro dreams the other night and I still can't get it out of my mind. In the dream, I see my late mother sitting at the kitchen table in our home. I see her in profile and we exchange some words, but I can't remember what they were. She nods toward the hallway and I see the spirits of our various pets who have gone on to their reward. Now, it's not the actual pets--Casey, Schnapps, or Phoebe--but somehow I just know it's them. The animals are fighting amongst themselves and bouncing all over the hallway. I have one distinct image of a mulitcolored lamp from my childhood being tugged by some unseen force. As I watch, a cat becomes visible pulling on the lamp with its teeth. I start talking to the spirits. I am very upset, close to tears, and I tell them that we loved them all very much when they were alive, but we really need them to get along in the after-life. I don't remember much after that, which is probably just as well as the little I...

Maybe it was the shirt after all. I had a date last night with a woman I met online. We had exchanged IM's and a few phone calls and I felt really good about meeting her. I didn't want to get too excited, I didn't want to get all worked up about some I had yet to meet in person, but this woman came off as attractive, intelligent and funny during out chats, so I confess I was a little psyched to meet her. I got dressed, trying to look good without showing that I was trying. I picked a gray striped shirt I hadn't worn in a while and strutted out of the bathroom to get a second opinion. Over the years, I've done this with my mom or dad, but my mother's been gone almost five years now and my dad is suffering from Alzheimer's, so I went to Edith, his Jamaican home care aide, who was sitting in the kitchen reading a newspaper. "So, Edith," I said, "I've got a date tonight. What do you think?" Of course, I wasn't really looking for an ho...

Let's pretend this never happened. Mary called me at work on Thursday. I recognized her number on the call screen, but still I had to ask "Mary?" when I picked up the phone, as if I weren't sure. We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes and then she got to the point of her call. "I'll be back to work on Monday." Needless to say, I was very happy indeed to hear this. It has been less than a week since Mary said she was quitting and things haven't been going very smoothly in her absence. Edith, our night-time aide, has been filling and she's been nothing of fantastic. Especially since she agreed to take on a new live-in gig on extremely short notice. Edith is very effecient, dedicated, and hard-working. (Not to mention brave, thrifty, clean and reverenet; okay, we won't mention it.) But Mary was running all the little things around here and handing the reins over to Edith, while certainly not impossible, would have been a real pain in the ka...

Looks like someone stole my idea... I still can't believe this is happening, but I have to accept it: Mary, my father's health care aide, who has been with us for the last 18 months, who basically ran this house and took care of my father's every need--has quit. Like I said, I can't believe it. I got the call yesterday morning when Mary told me she wasn't coming back. No two weeks' notice, no attempt at getting a replacement, she just cut and run. I think of my fantasy of hopping aboard a passing ocean liner and getting away from my father and my life forever, but Mary beat me to it. As I pleaded with her to stay, explaining that I have a full-time job and can't possibly take care of my father, Mary started crying. She said she couldn't deal with my father's sexual advances anymore. Now, believe me. I know my old man is a pervert; he always has been. And with the onset of dementia or Alzheimer's or whatever the hell he's got, his behavior has...

I got a nice lesson in karma the other night on my subway ride home. I read this fabulous book on Tibetian Buddhism recently and I've been trying to adopt some of the principles that the author discussed. I found the whole karma business fascinating--the idea that every action you take causes a reaction in the future--intrigues the hell out of me. I tried discussing this with my shrink during one of our sessions and he started interrogating me. "Do you believe in karma?" he asked. "Well, I suppose--" "You really believe in karma?" I felt like I was being accused of something so I immediately denied all knowledge. I told him I like the feeling I get when I do good deeds, but, as a rational 21st Century humanoid, do I really believe good things will result from my acts of kindness? Well, I guess not, but I don't think I should have to pay this guy to shoot down my little delusions. The big ones, of course, but save me some bits of craziness or what...

It's been three days and it feels like three months. My father returned from the nursing home on Thursday and I feel like a ex-con who just had his parole yanked. Yes, it's his house and yes, he's my father, but I'm still feeling a little stressed. The pick-up alone was a piece of work. I recently took over the retail beat and--wouldn't you know it?--Thursday was not only the day of my father's discharge, but also the day that the montly same-store sales were released. So I had to get into work by 8 AM, bang out a couple versions of the story and then get on the subway and head out to Coney Island. Piece of cake, right? I'm still struggling with the retail sector, so the story came together rather slowly and as I kept on slamming in the numbers from all the major retailers, I had one eye on the time ticking away in the lower right hand corner of my computer. I think I turned out a fairly decent story, and I see now where I can do a better job next month when...