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Nursing Home Reflections

Anger, and What It’s Good For

Several months after my dad arrived at his nursing home, a new resident showed up. Sharon (not her real name) is a chatty sort — lively and friendly, with an open manner and a helpful heart. She has Alzheimer’s, so conversations with her tend to be circular, and her own contributions often repetitive.

One day my dad was present when Morton, another resident (that’s not his real name, either), yelled “Shut up!” at Sharon. My dad, never the most patient of men, was incensed. Every latent chivalrous bone in his body rose to Sharon’s defense, and a war was born.

Though Sharon was never again a focal point, the battles escalated, inevitably, because Morton and my dad shared a table in the dining room with two other men. Morton began a campaign of verbal abuse; my dad pushed back. Morton, whose health problems did not require any obvious medical devices, began to ridicule my dad’s ability to use his wheelchair. Eventually, Morton took hold of the table and shoved it into my dad and his wheelchair. My dad picked up a glass of water and tossed the contents all over Morton, and then, as he put it, “It felt so good, I did it again.”

My dad’s dislike of Morton became boundless. Truthfully, Morton really wasn’t a nice man. He had been at the nursing home for several years and was utterly and completely miserable and absolutely willing to take out his misery on everyone else. He was, to be frank, simply nasty. But nasty people exist, and entering a nursing home isn’t likely to make a saint out of someone who has no natural inclination toward sainthood.

Dad moved to a different table, but for a long time, just about every day, my dad would describe some new horror perpetrated by Morton. I saw Morton in action; I knew my dad wasn’t making this stuff up. “Nobody likes him,” my dad would say, and it was true. You couldn’t — he was just gratuitously mean.

Hating Morton was a consuming activity. Sometimes the focus my dad put on what Morton did diverted energy my dad could have used to pursue more enriching activities — like interacting positively with others. His anti-Morton passion festered in his soul. I got a bit fed up with it — my dad was a grown man and a thinking person, and surely he could put this aside, especially since he and Morton rarely crossed paths any longer. But my dad couldn’t. That was the critical clue — my dad needed Morton.

I began to notice that these tales of Morton were particularly important to my dad at times when he was more anxious than usual, had slept poorly, or when he felt physically a little out of sorts. Times, in short, when he felt threatened, whether he was overtly conscious of it or not. I began to suspect that hating Morton was a tool that helped my dad vent other frustrations he may not have been willing, or able, to express.

Eventually, I realized that my dad came alive when he was carrying-on about Morton. He sat up a little straighter, his face colored a bit, he spoke forcefully and definitely. Amid all the uncertainties of his life in the nursing home, the awfulness of Morton was something he was absolutely convinced of; something he knew and understood and could feel passionately about.

Then Morton left. He didn’t die, he just left for elsewhere. My dad was lost. He hoped that Morton had been thrown out of the nursing home, but that didn’t seem to be the case, so there wasn’t even the small consolation that would have allowed. I watched, astonished, as my dad went into a tailspin — a genuine decline. Without Morton, it seemed, life had little meaning.

Until one day when I mentioned Althea (again, not her real name), one of his new table mates. He’d adored Althea. She looks like an angel, with a peaches-and-cream complexion and the twinkling eyes of a naughty elf. My dad had said that she was very, very funny. Not on this day, though. “She’s a bitch,” my dad said. “Wait a minute,” I said, “are we talking about the same person?”

We were. I took a closer look at my dad. He was sitting up straighter, an eager glow on his face, bombarding me with Althea tales. She rips the flower arrangements apart, she hogs table space, and so on. “It’s war,” my dad said. “I’m not giving up until she’s moved to another table.”

I’m the kid here. You can imagine how un-thrilled I was to learn that my dad had a new focus for his less-noble emotions. And you can imagine my fears — a glass of water was once sufficient, but would Dad eventually punch someone? Would it be delicate, angelic Althea? Yes, she does all the things he claims. Yes, she’s no angel. Still — should junior high school really be the model for mature relations? It all drove me nuts.

But then, for the first time since coming to the nursing home, my dad got sick. He spent ten days in the hospital and he is still very, very tired. He’s no longer ranting about anyone; he just doesn’t have the energy. And I am wretched. I wish he could get excited about something; I wish he cared. I wish, to my complete and utter horror, that my dad was hating someone again.

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