Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen - 12

I’m not exactly sure what I expected, moving back here. In my more naive moments, I had probably hoped for a sense of renewal, if not an all-out catharsis. A sustained feeling of fulfillment. And of course, I had hoped for some kind of reconciliation with my father—or at least, a chance to apologize for the horrible way I acted as a grief-stricken teenager. But he doesn’t even know that I’m his daughter, so I’m not sure how I expected that to work. Maybe Nina was right: what I signed up for was caregiving, but what I sought was a miracle.

If you had told me a year ago that looking after my dad would soon be my day-to-day, I would have congratulated you on the great joke. And if you had asked my dad, fifteen years ago, who would be taking care of him in the twilight of his life, he likely would have suggested anyone but me. But here I am, doing it. We continually surprise each other. We even surprise ourselves.

For the first few weeks after Nina’s departure, I do my best to adhere to her instructions: I wake my father at 7:00 A.M . He brushes his teeth. I give him his morning pills (Flomax, Aricept, baby aspirin). We select his outfit for the day. Physically, he can still do most of this on his own, but I need to be there to keep him on task. Otherwise, he gets derailed and wanders into the great room with no pants on. I’ve seen it happen.

But it isn’t long before the carefully conceived schedule that Nina left us falls by the wayside; and by the time July rolls around, I have all but discarded her timetables and spreadsheets. I just don’t see the point in waking my father up if he is tired, or putting him to bed if he isn’t. That doesn’t mean we are doing anything particularly wild, only that we might go to the dump on Tuesday rather than on Friday. We might hit the post office on Wednesday rather than on Saturday. We never have much to throw out, and we don’t receive much mail, but we enjoy the adventure of tossing our trash and the subtle drama of opening our P.O. box to see what might lurk inside.

Sometimes it occurs to me that I should at least attempt to cultivate a social life here, but the prospect is daunting. I’m worried about running into people I used to know, about having to recap the last decade. What is there to say? I haven’t been back, but I haven’t moved on.

I had set a goal to find a job by the end of June, but my search is proving trickier than I expected. I inquire at a few local businesses (the Locust Inn, Lorne’s All-Day Diner) about part-time positions, but most have already hired their summer staff, and the ones who still have openings would need me to work early mornings or late nights. I can’t manage that while also taking care of my father, who needs steady supervision, lest he decide to wander off or take the boat out. There are unending ways to get into trouble at Catwood Pond—I would know. My next thought is to try to find an at-home aide to stay with him while I work, but I quickly realize the cost of hiring someone would cancel out whatever I could make in a local service job. For a moment, I wonder if I should get a job as a home aide—it seems like a decent gig—and then I realize the nonsensicality of becoming a care worker so that I can hire a care worker, like a snake eating its own tail. The truth is, looking after my father is already a full-time job, albeit an unpaid one. I need something that allows maximum flexibility—and some degree of mental stimulation.

That leaves remote work, which I figure I could do from home while also keeping an adequate eye on my father. But as I search various job boards online, it’s clear that most of the roles that interest me require a college degree. Suddenly, I fear that I might be wholly unemployable, which is ironic given the diversity of gigs I’ve had in my life. I’ve managed to shapeshift from cleaning stalls on a ranch to waiting tables at a Michelin-starred restaurant. And although I’m still willing to do all manner of work, being my dad’s caregiver means I can’t be as flexible as I once was. I can feel my stress mounting, but I tell myself I have time. We have enough money for now.

One afternoon, my father and I are sitting on the porch. He used to spend hours with a book here, but reading has become tricky for him. He will pick up the newspaper or a magazine out of habit, but put it down before long, defeated. I know he still has the capacity to read—he sometimes recites a headline to me—but it seems he can no longer follow a narrative thread for long enough to get through a whole article, or a chapter, or even a paragraph. So we have a new afternoon tradition: I read poetry aloud to him, and he promptly falls asleep.

As I leaf through a heavy anthology, my dad looks at his watch and says, “Carl should be here soon.”

“I don’t think he’s coming today,” I say gently. I happen to know that Carl is out of town and isn’t expected back until next week. Letting my finger land on a random page, I commence reading Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking.” By the time I get to “We think by feeling. What is there to know?” my father is asleep—his mouth open and emitting jagged snores at uneven intervals.

From here, I can see across the pond to the far shore, a mile away. In my lifeguarding days, I could easily swim there and back, but I haven’t attempted it since the summer after Seth’s accident, when grief made me restless, and constant motion was the only thing that kept me from disintegrating. I had once heard that if a shark stops swimming, it dies. And maybe I feared the same would be true for me. Or worse—that stillness might mean aching like that forever. So I lived the next decade in a feverish effort to keep moving: new relationships, new experiences, new distractions.

This is the first time I’ve sat still in years.

Suddenly, I hear heavy footsteps on the stairs of the porch, and Carl appears in his summer uniform: brown work boots, navy pants, blue T-shirt.

“Hi there,” I say. “This is a nice surprise. I thought you were still out of town.”

“Came back a little early,” says Carl softly, not wanting to wake my dad. He hands me a basket of colorful heirloom tomatoes and a huge jar of honey with the comb half-submerged. “My friend up north keeps bees.”

“Oh, wow. Thank you,” I say, getting up and gesturing for him to follow me inside.

I wouldn’t say I know Carl well, but we have established an easy rapport since I arrived in May. A month and a half in, it’s safe to say he is my best local friend—not to mention my only local friend. As we stand in the coolness of the unlit kitchen, I pour us some iced tea and cut two fat wedges of lemon.

“Plans for the weekend?” he asks.

“Oh, you know us. We’re going to get crazy,” I say. I think about my friends in the city, who are inevitably hopping between outdoor bars and backyard barbecues and rooftop parties now that summer is in full swing. I feel a pang of anxiety about missing out on something, losing ground, drifting into orbit, never being heard from again. “We’ll probably take the canoe out later.”

“Perfect day for it,” says Carl. He seems to pick up on my listlessness. “You doing okay, in general? This must be a big change for you. Living here.”

“I’m fine.” My knee-jerk response. But then I actually consider the question. “A little lonely, I guess. I used to have a big group of friends here when I was younger, but we’re not in touch anymore.”

He nods, then surprises me by asking: “Are you practicing self-care?”

I nearly spit out my iced tea. When I worked at Actualize, I heard that term about ten times a day, but I haven’t thought about it since I moved here. I would never have pegged Carl as the self-care type, but his question makes me think.

“I guess I think more about my dad’s care than I do my own. But I’m having a nice enough time. We love the dump—we went yesterday.”

“Going to the dump is your self-care?” Carl asks, and we both laugh. But then he says seriously: “Doing this for a parent can become all-consuming. Just don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.”

We stand in silence for a minute, but Carl doesn’t seem to be in a rush. He never is. Eventually I say: “It’s weird—my dad said you would come by today. I told him he was mistaken because I thought you were out of town. But here you are. This keeps happening.”

“What does?”

“He keeps making these little … predictions. Or prophecies,” I say. “But I’m sure they’re just coincidences.”

“Why are you sure of that?”

“I mean, he’s not exactly on the pulse. It’s hard to know where he is, mentally. But every once in a while, he has a conviction about something—like he knows what’s going to take place, and then it does. It’s happened more times than I can count this summer. Just little things.”

Carl doesn’t look surprised or skeptical. In fact, for a moment, I think he is about to reveal something, but he just nods and walks to the sink to rinse his glass.

“Have you noticed it, too?” I ask.

“Absolutely. He’s tuned into something. I’ve always thought so.”

“Nina disagrees. I mean, she doesn’t think he’s psychic.”

Carl shrugs. “It’s subtle. Sometimes what he says is vague, or it takes a while to make sense. But he has a definite awareness. For instance, he knew you would come back.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes when he would mention you, he would say ‘When Cricket moves back…’ or ‘When Cricket comes to live with me…’ like it was inevitable. And this is for as long as I’ve known him. Three years ago, he was saying that.”

“But I had no intention of moving here until a few months ago. This was never the plan.”

Carl shrugs again. “He thought it was.”

“So weird. Nina never mentioned him saying that. But maybe she didn’t notice. Or maybe she just discounted it because of his Alzheimer’s. I mean, he doesn’t even know who I am. He doesn’t understand that I’m his daughter.”

“Maybe not in the day-to-day, but on some level, he knows.” Carl seems certain in a way that assuages my skepticism. “Arthur’s memory is faulty, but I’ve always felt he’s still working with the fundamental truths. He has even helped me process some things. I once joked that he’s my own personal oracle.”

I snort my iced tea. “Ah, yes. The renowned oracle at Catwood Pond…”

Carl laughs softly, his crow’s feet crinkling.

“Well, I’m relieved to hear I’m not going crazy,” I say.

“You’re far from crazy,” says Carl. “You might even be onto something.”

After Carl leaves, I putter around the great room, not so much decluttering as moving the clutter from place to place. I rearrange some of the bookshelves that surround the fireplace; I dust the standup piano; I reset the pieces on the backgammon board; and I twirl the burnished wooden globe on its stand. “Adventure calls. Where should I travel next?” I ask as I spin the orb. Then I close my eyes and drop my finger like a pin. I take a deep breath and look: the Adirondacks. My finger has landed exactly where I already am, and I have to smile at the anticlimax.

I look out the window and see my father’s head resting against the back of his chair, his hair puffing in the breeze. After a moment, he begins to stir. He stands up and starts for the door, but then seems to reconsider or forget what his aim was, and he moves back to the chair, where he sits and trains his gaze on the pond. I wonder what occupies his mind in this moment. I didn’t used to think of “sitting” as an activity, but we do a lot of it these days. Sometimes just watching the busyness of a squirrel can fill an hour. The anticipation of a rainstorm can occupy a whole afternoon. I’ve never been into meditation, but I think this is what meditators are after: the ability to do nothing but feel everything, to hold on to life so lightly that it has a chance to bowl you over.

As I watch my father watching the water, I am hit with a future-ache about the time when he will no longer be here. I’ve heard it called anticipatory grief , but that’s too clinical for me. There’s no adequate label for this feeling of something eating away at you, the growing realization that someday you will be devastated—so why not start now? Get ahead of it. Beat your heartbreak to the punch.

I retreat to the kitchen and cut up two of Carl’s tomatoes—one that is streaked with orange and yellow, and one that is so red it’s almost purple. I sprinkle them with olive oil, a little salt, and then carry the plate out to the porch.

For a moment, my father is surprised. He looks as if he’s trying to place me. “Well, hello.”

“Hi, Dad,” I say, hoping to reorient him to who he is, who I am, who we are to each other. “Did you have a nice snooze?”

“Did I ever!” he says, clapping his hands onto his thighs. “What do you have there?”

“You were right again. Carl did stop by, and he brought these,” I say, holding the plate out to him.

“Well, will you look at those beauties! You know, you can spend all summer waiting for one sensational tomato.”

He pops a slice into his mouth, contemplates the flavor, and then nods. “That’s it. That’s the one.”