Chapter 2: The Night of the Christmas Lights
The first stroke took Dad on a Tuesday in March, five years ago, while he was salting the front steps.
The neighbor, Ray Delgado, found him on the walk with the bag of rock salt still in his hand. By the time I got to the hospital, the left side of his face had slid half an inch, and the doctor was using words like deficit and long-term placement.
I was fifty-two this spring. Back then I was forty-seven, divorced, and the billing coordinator at the county hospital, a job I was good at and liked more than I admitted. The rehab place Dad’s insurance would cover had a two-star rating and a smell in the hallway I still remember.
I gave my notice on a Friday. On Saturday I moved back into my old bedroom, the one with the glow-in-the-dark stars still on the ceiling.
Dad held my wrist in the ICU that first week. His grip was still strong on the right side.
“Mags,” he said, slurring around it. “The house is yours. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”
“Hush,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He went nowhere for five years. Neither did I.
People think caregiving is sad. Mostly it’s logistics. Blood thinner at eight, blood pressure pill at nine, the swallowing exercises, the speech therapist on Tuesdays who called him Francis and made him grin. I put in grab bars. I had a ramp built over the front steps where he fell. When the tub got too dangerous, I had the whole bathroom gutted and turned into a walk-in shower with a fold-down seat. I paid for it out of my retirement savings, because Dad’s pension barely covered his medications.
I kept every receipt. That part was Dad’s idea.
The summer after the stroke, when he could talk well again, he made me drive him to the bank. He wore his good cardigan. He had me wait in the lobby while he talked to a woman at a desk with a notary stamp, and then he called me over and made me sign under him.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Paperwork,” he said. “So you don’t work for free. If I outlive the money, you don’t get nothing back. You keep every receipt, Mags. Every single one.”
I thought it was something for Medicaid. I put it in a blue folder, and I put the folder in the hall closet, and I put the receipts in a shoebox on top of it. Billing people can’t help themselves.
Doug called most Sundays for the first year. Then it was every other Sunday. Then it was a text on Dad’s birthday with a picture of a cake from a bakery in Scottsdale that Dad couldn’t eat.
He came home at Christmas. Four days, every year, with Kristen and the boys at first, and later alone. Dad would perk up like someone had plugged him in. Doug would push the wheelchair around the block and post a photo of the two of them on Facebook. Nothing like being home with Pop.
Forty-one people liked it the first year. I counted.
Last Christmas, Doug came alone. Kristen had a thing with her mother. The boys had a tournament. Doug was quiet that visit. He took a lot of phone calls in the driveway with the garage door down.
On December 27th he said he was taking Dad to see the lights on Bancroft Street.
“It’s nine degrees out,” I said.
“I’ll keep the heat on. Come on, Mags. Let me do something for once.”
That sentence got me. It was the closest he’d ever come to admitting anything. I bundled Dad into his coat and the plaid scarf and waved them off.
They were gone four hours.
When they came back, Dad was gray and shaking, and he slept for fourteen hours straight. Doug said they’d stopped for dinner. Doug flew out the next morning before I was up.
Two weeks later, in January, Ray Delgado drove Dad to the bank while I was at the pharmacy. Dad came home tired and wouldn’t tell me why he’d gone. I was too worn out to push.
The second stroke came in May. Dad died in June.
Now I sat at the kitchen table at 418 Larkin Street at midnight with the copy of the new will Harold Fisk had given me, and I read every page the way I used to read insurance denials. Slowly. Line by line. Looking for the trick.
The trick was on the last page, under Dad’s signature. His handwriting was so shaky it looked like a seismograph.
Executed this 27th day of December.
It was signed on December 27th.
The night Doug took Dad to see the Christmas lights.
