After the doctor checked him out, he was giving him some advice for a healthy rest of his life, telling him what to eat and what not to eat. My Dad sat there attentively, thinking about baseball scores.
I guess the doctor's eyesight must have finally come into focus, because, after taking a good look at my Dad, he asked me, "How old is your Dad?"
I answered, "He's 97."
You think the doctor would have already known that.
The doctor put away my father's file.
"Oh, let him eat whatever he wants," he told me with a wave of his hand.
He turned to my Dad.
"Eat whatever you want," he told him.
My father nodded, and the doctor turned back to me.
"And he doesn't have to come back unless he is sick."
I had planned on asking the doctor if my father could stay there with him, but that settled that.
Speaking of doctors, a cousin of mine (I'll call him Bob [since that's his name]) had one of his knees operated on Thursday. Both of them are bad, but his doctor was only willing to risk making matters worse one knee at a time.
"As long as you're having surgery," I suggested, "why don't you have your doctor give you huge breasts?"
"I would," Bob told me, "but if I had big breasts I'd never accomplish anything."
I went through the obvious jokes.
"Are you going in a Bob and coming out a Caitlyn Jenner?"
"Which knee is he working on? The left knee, the right knee, or the weenie?"
His surgery went off without a hitch, and my wife, saint that she is, recommended that I go visit him.
"Why don't you come home, shower and change, and then go visit him?" she suggested.
Well, I was out and about, doing this and that, just a-coming and a-going, so that wasn't going to work.
First off, I was closer to him where I was at than if I went home.
Secondly, it was late in the afternoon. If I went home and showered, I probably wouldn't go. It's simple physics.
Newton's Law states: "A body at rest STAYS at rest," and you can't argue with Newton.
You know why?
Because he's dead.
No, once home, I'd only want to stay home.
"They"--Bob and his wife--"have always supported us," she reasoned logically, and if there's one thing I can't do, I can't argue with logic.
"There'll be a lot of people already there," I grumbled, half-heartedly.
"It will mean a lot to him," she said.
"He won't be feeling well."
"You'll make him feel better."
"I don't want to go."
"Well, you're gonna go," she said, finally, and, if there's one thing I've learned, you NEVER argue with my wife.
It's not that I wasn't planning on visiting him, but I thought I'd wait until he felt better and was already comfortably home. I thought I'd go with my wife on Sunday, maybe even take my Dad, and, since he has a swimming pool, we'd bring our bathing suits and appetites. At the hospital, they charge for meals. At his house I could always shame him into grilling for free. Well, free for us, that is.
"You can't baby that knee, Bob," I'd tell him.
So I went to the hospital to see him after I was done with my shenanigans. He was spending the night in the hospital. Well, I'm glad I went, because it was a sad sight.
He was all alone in his hospital room.
No one was there.
His father wasn't there, his brother wasn't there, and his sister wasn't there. His son didn't fly in from out-of-town, his daughter was at a dance recital, and his wife was at the dance recital with her. Aunts and uncles? Cousins, nieces, and nephews?
Forget it.
Just about every holiday, Bob, who has a big spread, has his family over for a good time and some good food. Everybody shows up. They swim, they eat well, and they have a good time.
They... weren't there.
Last summer, a nephew of his asked if he could invite a few friends over to swim. Bob, good guy that he is, said sure. Those few friends turned out to be A LOT of friends. His nephew didn't think to supply food or drinks or towels, he just assumed they would magically appear. Bob had to go to the store and buy sodas and hot dogs to feed these animals. His wife suggested pizza.
"Do you know how much it would cost to buy enough pizza for this many people?" he told her. "Hot dogs will be fine. Cheap hot dogs."
When the party was in full swing, he looked at his backyard. It looked like the scene from the movie Caddyshack, when the Country Club let the caddies take over their swimming pool.
"The girl-watching was good, though," he told me later.
When his nephew had enough of the festivities, he went home, leaving all those strangers there enjoying themselves until the wee hours of the morning.
"Didn't your wife say you were going to get pizza?" one of them wanted to know.
Well, his nephew wasn't at the hospital either.
Just me.
Which is a long way to get to the point of my story:
Facebook.
Personally, I'm not on Facebook. I have no interest in inviting people into my life, and I have no interest in seeing a picture of what they're having for dinner.
Bob's on Facebook, however, and for some reason our conversation in the hospital veered off into that direction. He said he got together with some old high-school buddies, and they were talking about all the old classmates they were able to contact through it.
"Did you see Cindy?" one of them asked the others. "She looks old."
"How about Sarah?"
"Yeah, she looks like my grandmother!"
"They haven't aged like a bottle of fine wine, more like a gallon of milk."
(That last one's me, interjecting something clever.)
A bunch of fat, balding, middle-aged men complaining about how the girls of their youth are no longer attractive.
So, at the hospital, Bob got his iPad out for me and we strolled down Memory Lane. Some of the girls still looked good, but when you say, "She looks good," you have to qualify it with, "for her age."
Our age, too, I guess.
It was interesting, but bittersweet.
What it comes down to is this: I want to remember my old girlfriends the way they were in high school, not the way they are now. Young. Innocent. Not so innocent. Sadly, however, while I'm only interested in seeing sexy pictures of their younger selves, they're only interested in posting pictures of their grandkids.
Raising My Father
RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com
jimduchene.BlogSpot.com American Chimpanzee
@JimDuchene
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