By Bob Chrisman
My mother met me in the lobby of the nursing home quite accidentally. She had taken her afternoon stroll pushing her walker up one hall and down another, visiting other residents she knew from the dining room. She arrived at the front desk as I walked in the front door.
She looked up and smiled. “Never thought I would see you again. It’s been awhile.”
“Mom, I was here last week. Remember? I took you to out to have that roast beef sandwich you wanted.” I waited for her to acknowledge that she had forgotten.
She ignored the question, instead she looked away and down at her walker. “Well, it’s good to see you anyway. Has a week passed already?” She started down the hall in the direction of her room. I knew I was to follow.
I asked, “How are things going here? Did you go to church services this morning?”
“No, the minister is nice enough, but he’s a little too serious for my taste. Too much death and sin to interest me at my age.” She nodded to the women who sat in wheelchairs in the wide hall. Some stared into space unaware of the greeting. Other responded with a soft “Hello.”
“A new woman moved in just two doors down. She’s married to Herbie. You remember Mildred’s husband? You always liked Mimi. Well, the poor thing is two doors down from me. Herbie came to visit a few days ago and stopped by to see me. Shame about his second wife and her poor health. I think she’s mental because all she does is beg people to find her some underwear.”
We passed by a room and she jerked her head toward the open door. “That’s where she stays.”
As we walked into her room I noticed her telephone is on the floor at the foot of her bed. “Mom, what happened to the phone? Is it broken?”
“You might as well get rid of that darn thing. No one calls, except people who want to sell me something. It rings at all times of the day and night and I’m afraid it will disturb my roommate.”
“I thought you wanted a phone. Don’t you call people from church?”
“No, take it out. Might as well not waste your money to pay the bill when I don’t use it. Besides, no one is ever home when I call.”
She sat in her chair. I took my place on the bed.
She had told me not to put a phone in her room at the nursing home. She hadn’t wanted to learn a new number. I insisted that she keep it. I even worked with the phone company to transfer her old number to the new phone. I held onto the idea that she wouldn’t die if she kept in contact with her friends.
She had kept the same phone number for fifty years. When she left her house for the senior citizens center, she left behind the heavy black phone with the battered receiver from countless drops on the floor, and the tattered cloth cable that connected it to the outlet. She kept the old phone number.
I bought her a new phone. She hated it. She wanted her old phone, her old house, her old life but she couldn’t have them anymore.
She shook her head. “I’ve tried calling Vera and Anna Lee for the last few days and no one answers their phones. What could my sisters be doing at all hours of the day and night? It’s beyond me. They even turned off those dang machines that take messages. I hate those things, but I would leave a message if I could. I wonder what they’ve been up to.”
I didn’t know what to say so I opted for the truth. “Mom, it’s a good thing your sisters didn’t answer the phone because they’ve been dead for years. I would be very concerned if you talked to them.” I watched her face to see what effect my words had on her.
She looked at the backs of her hands, covered with age spots and bruises, as though too preoccupied to reply right away. “Guess it is a good thing they didn’t answer. I thought they had died, but I wasn’t sure. Sometimes things aren’t so clear in my head anymore. Funny, how I can remember their phone numbers, but forget that they died.” She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “Just take the phone out of my room. I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore.”
When I left that day, I took the phone and made a mental note to terminate her service. The phone number I had learned as a preschooler some fifty years ago would cease to belong to the Chrisman family, yet another sign that my mother was dying.
About Bob: Bob Chrisman is a Kansas City, Missouri writer who frequently writes memoir about his family. For Memorial Day 2010, we published Desecration Day, Bob’s humorous yet moving piece about a grave decoration day that got a bit out of hand, followed in June by Uncle Howard At The Cemetery.
You can see these other pieces of Bob’s in which he writes with humor and compassion about his family members: Aunt Annie’s Scalloped Oysters and The Law Of Threes. He also published these pieces about the life and death of his mother: Hands and In Memoriam. And he produced a trilogy about his father: My Father’s Witness, Bearing Witness, and My Life With Dad.
Bob’s other red Ravine posts include Growing Older, Goat Ranch, Stephenie Bit Me, Too, and PRACTICE — TREES — 15min, a Writing Practice on the Topic of Trees.
This seems very early in your mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s, Bob, and I’m curious if it is an early dawning of, Oh my gosh, this is it.
A poignant piece, Bob. Exit the Telephone. I don’t always consider titles, but this one hooked me. Any insights as to how you came up with that way of saying it versus any other?
LikeLike
Bob, whenever you write a piece about your mom in the nursing home I can hardly bear reading it. Your writing is so vivid, so present. It takes me right back to my own mother’s years in the nursing home. My mother’s irritant wasn’t her phone but rather the remote for her TV. She could rarely punch the numbers correctly to get the TV to behave as she wanted.
She put the blame on the remote. “Stupid thing, never did work right,” or “Those damn aides have been messing with it again.” Eventually she settled for watching whatever the remote chose to call up. Often I’d walk into her room and she’d be watching static on the TV.
lines that stand out for me:
-She wanted her old phone, her old house, her old life but she couldn’t have them anymore.
-all she does is beg people to find her some underwear
-The phone number I had learned as a preschooler some fifty years ago would cease to belong to the Chrisman family
“Mom, I was here last week. Remember?”
so sad
LikeLike
Oh, Bob, this piece is so powerful and poignant. These lines especially tore my heart open:
“I bought her a new phone. She hated it. She wanted her old phone, her old house, her old life but she couldn’t have them anymore.”
“Just take the phone out of my room. I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore.”
Your depiction of loss is so deep and detailed, both yours and most especially her accumulated losses. You have captured it beautifully, but without being overly sentimental, which is difficult to do.
My mother moved from her house against her will when my father was dying. I remember thinking that she might die first from the painful transition. She used anger to push aside her grief. I’ve never written about it, because it was such a difficult and horrible time. I made many mistakes in trying to console my mother. I’m in awe of how you gracefully, gently and truthfully interacted with your mother. Your example is an inspiration to me, Bob. Thanks for this beautiful piece.
LikeLike
yb, this was early in her stay at the nursing home. I wondered at the time if it was the lack of stimulation at the nursing home. They had plenty of things for the residents to do, but none of them required much intelligence…stringing beads, listening to music, playing bingo. And, I knew that she didn’t want to be there even though both my sister and I had offered to take her to live with us. She had refused.
My concern arose out of her cutting off ties to her long-time friends who could only talk to her by phone. They couldn’t come to see her very often, if at all. They had their own limits. I thought, At least she can stay in phone contact with them. I did not, at the time, think this was the end. That would not come for some time yet.
The title? I picked it because the taking of the telephone was another step in the process of my mother’s decline. She gave up contact with the outside world to a small degree and her withdrawal would accelerate her decline.
LikeLike
Forgot to mention how much I like the title. Perfect- with all it implies about your mom’s slow exit and the way that saying no to the phone closed a door on part of your mom’s world.
LikeLike
jude, thanks for reading what may be unbearable. I had so few opportunities to talk to other people about what happened to my mother during her final years. How does one communicate what it’s like to experience the slow disintegration of someone who had been a force in my life ALL of my life? Now I write about it as a way of “talking” about the process.
While it happened, I put on my adult face to deal with the suffering I felt and what I saw her going through. I felt so alone. I felt that no one wanted to hear about what was happening. I don’t think I burdened anyone with it. It was too sad, but it was something with which I had to deal. I dealt.
breathepeace, thanks for stopping by, my friend. Our mothers had similar reactions to selling their homes. My mother never had a home after she sold the house and she told me about it quite often. The only time during the last five years of her life that I saw her explode in anger concerned her command to me that I take her home to the house on South Third Street.
At that point, she could not have lived alone. She couldn’t have made it up all those stairs in the wheelchair to which she was confined. None of that made any difference to her during her fit. She pounded on the arms of the chair and yelled, “I take them by the scruffs of their necks [the people who bought the house] and throw them in the Missouri River.”
That incident, so incredibly sad at the time and so out of character for my mother, made me feel more helpless. Only now can I see the dark, dark humor of it and the weight that presses on my heart remembering it.
LikeLike
Wow. I haven’t read any of your work yet, but this first introduction is a strong one. I often think about how all these forms of communication we now have (all of them except face to face contact) can also have the opposite effect, making us feel more lonely, alienated and/or reminded of the absences.
That movie, Avalon, immediately came to my mind. Have you seen that? It’s about a Jewish American family who came to the U.S. to follow their dreams of living in the promised land. It also shows the impact of the television on social life, especially on the life of the elderly.
Teresa
LikeLike
oh my goodness. You could be writing about my own mother’s tantrum about her house having been sold and the fact that she couldn’t return (wheelchair etc). I remember sitting with her in the vending area of the nursing home – “I’m going home next week,” she told me. “That will be very interesting for the people who live there now,” I said. She blew up. “Don’t you ever say that to me!! It’s my house and they can just leave!”
I so get it, Bob, about the brave face.
LikeLike
the adult face – a better term for it than brave face. It wasn’t about courage – at least for me – it was about enduring. Bearing up. Being there.
Which you did steadfastly for so long.
LikeLike
teresa, thanks for the comments. I wonder how much we actually communicate with people these days as “communicate at” them? I agree that they can make us feel more lonely and alienated.
My mother was the last of her family alive. She expected that her children and the cousins would all congregate around her. They didn’t to the degree that she expected because the world had changed and everyone had their own lives. We no longer took care of our aging parents, uncles or aunts like my mother and her sisters had done.
I’ll put the movie, Avalon, on my NetFlix queue. I haven’t seen it, but it sounds interesting.
jude, I think we may share many of the same story lines. My mother packed her bags every week for months because “I’m going home.” More brave face occasions.
LikeLike
jude, “brave face” reminds me of when I was a child and I was told to put on my “brave face” when I had to do something that scared me and I wanted to run away. That’s what I put on every time I walked into that nursing home. I wore my adult face over the “brave face”…two layers to protect me from the reality of what was happening before my eyes.
LikeLike
This is powerful stuff. I can hear your mom’s walker scuffing against the floor as she scoots along, and see the vapid gazes of the residents you pass.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a parent ask you to take them home again. I hope, when that happens to me, I’ll be able to assume my ‘adult face’. Right now it just makes me want to cry.
As you hit the exit door, Bob, you must have started sucking the fresh air into your lungs and shook your head to clear your brain.
Fine, gutsy writing. Intended or not, your title sets the hook immediately.
LikeLike
Carolyn, I felt so helpless from the time she fell down the stairs at the house, all the time she was in the senior citizens apartment center, and then in the nursing home. Five years of feeling helpless and I knew she felt even more so.
I only lost my composure twice: when she told me she had to go to a nursing home on Christmas eve and when I saw her the Sunday before she died. I have never felt so powerless.
And, you are right about sucking fresh air as I hit the exit door. That happened every time I left the nursing home for what seems like a very long time.
I hope it is different for your parents.
LikeLike
Well, this knocked me on my ass.
Bob had sent me the title yesterday and I assumed it was about what a pain telephones are. I thought, “You go, Bob! Rant on about cell phones! Talking on them in public! The inappropriateness of saying out loud stuff one would barely record in a personal journal! Yes, you go, Bob!”
Then I read this. Exit the telephone. Except it’s not exit the telephone. It’s exit mother. It’s exit childhood. It’s exit life.
It’s so sad.
Previous commenters have picked up on lines that soared for me:
— “it’s good to see you, anyway.” The “anyway” got to me.
— “beg people to find her some underwear”
— “I held onto the idea that she wouldn’t die if she kept in contact with her friends.”
— “same phone number for 50 years”
— “She wanted her old phone, her old house, her old life”
— “Funny how I can remember their phone numbers, but forget that they died.”
Even the first line tugged at me — “accidentally” meeting your mother, like she really wasn’t looking for you.
This brought up a lot of stuff about my own mother and the telephone, but that’s for me to sort out. Right now I can’t stop thinking about the ragged cloth cord on the old phone — how much it symbolized the deteriorating health of your mother, her memory and your relationship with her.
I’m so sorry that you had to bear so much sadness with her, but am very grateful that you have the skill to transform that sadness into this heartbreakingly poignant piece. Thank you.
LikeLike
Flann, I have written a rant on cell phones, but this wasn’t it as you discovered.
My mother wasn’t looking for me. For most of her time in the nursing home my appearance was a surprise for her even though I visited almost every weekend. My visits stopped being a surprise when she forgot who I was.
We had the same heavy, black, rotary-dial telephone in the house for all the time she lived there which was over 50 years. The color had faded in places. The receiver had nicks in it from being dropped over the years and the cord had worn spots in places. The phone represents my mother who kept going in spite of everything for all those years and would have continued in her ways, except she fell and couldn’t live the remainder of her life in her home.
Everything after that fall came as cheap imitations of the life she had lived: the new places where she lived, the new phones, the new routines, the new circumstances. New, new, new when she wanted old, old, old.
LikeLike
“My visits stopped being a surprise when she forgot who I was.”
“New, new, new when she wanted old, old, old.”
Two more sad lines.
LikeLike
Flann, as you know, sometimes people see things in ways that you don’t or couldn’t. The comments here help me sort out my own feelings about what happened and how I felt because I felt so little consciously during my mother’s final years. It was a luxury I could not afford given my own life circumstances. Now I have the time. Thanks for commenting.
LikeLike
Flann thanked you for writing this poignant piece. I want to thank you, too. We do share some similar story lines, you and I, and sad as it is, it feels good to share them. I know lots of people have had mother-in-nursing-home experiences but mostly, I’ve not read about those experiences. I appreciate you putting yours into words, so vivid, so sad, and yet not overly dramatic.
Just saying how it was, so eloquently.
Thanks.
LikeLike
Jude said it so much better than I could have, Bob: “So vivid, so sad and yet not overly dramatic.”
The austerity of this piece magnifies its depth.
LikeLike
Bob, did you keep the original telephone? I know the type that you’re talking about….. I can picture it so well the way that you described. Just wondered what became of it.
LikeLike
Didn’t keep the original telephone because, when we had to sell most of her belongings and the house prior to her move, the least of my concerns was the phone. Now I’m sorry I didn’t take it. Oh, well, it’s gone somewhere.
LikeLike
Oh. This is just overwhelmingly, unbearably sad and so alive. Your writing is so vivid and true. I so appreciate you writing about these experiences even though they are so difficult to read.
LikeLike
Thanks, Neola. I take great comfort in knowing that I have communicated the sadness of the events without telling you exactly how I felt. Earlier jude and Flann commented on the austerity and lack of drama. I have received some criticisms from critique groups for not putting more of how I felt into the piece (i.e. making it plain how I felt). I have listened, but not taken those comments to heart. It’s nice to have the affirmation of you all that I don’t need to cut my wrist and bleed some more on the paper.
LikeLike
Really liked this story made me sad that she tried to call
Aunt V and Mom, I never thought about how hard that was for her, they all 3 talked all the time. When you talked about her looking at her hands the picture of her came into my mind she always looked at her hands and played with her ring. I love reading your stories I don’t need a video the way you write I can see it. I look forward to your stories can’t wait til the next one.
LikeLike
Karen, thanks for reading this piece. She must have longed for her sisters very much at times. When your mom died, she said to me, “I know how the last dodo bird felt.” I was offended and said, “But you still have us kids.” She said, “You won’t understand until your sister dies what it’s like to know you’re the last of your family.”
Another item: When she went through the phase of thinking they moved her everyday to a new place to live and she worried about whether or not I would find her when I came to visit, she also imagined times when Aunt Vera and Uncle Howard came to the nursing home and took her to Gower for a party and went off and left her. Those times I would receive a call from the nursing home so I could calm her down and “get her home.” I don’t know why it was always Aunt Vera and Uncle Howard who came by for her…of course, they had been dead for years at that point.
LikeLike
Wow! I’m so sorry you had to be so alone with your Mom. I know she really looked forward to you coming up to see her each week. I know it was hard for you to do, but you did it anyway as we all would do.
I know she must have missed talking with Aunt V and Mom because they did talk every day regardless of who was mad at whom. They had quite a relationship that I don’t think I’ve ever seen sense. They were quite the trio and I have such great memories of them.
I’m so glad you are able to write with such expression and color of word that you make it all so real.
Can’t wait for your next story.
I’m very proud of you cousin.
LikeLike
I didn’t have to be alone, but that’s the way we always did things. Mom never asked for help…much…not even from her own children. I wouldn’t ask for help either. It was my choice.
A dear friend advised to “do whatever you need to do so that when she dies you won’t hold any regrets about not doing something.” Sounded like good advice so I visited her almost every weekend.
When she no longer knew who I was, the visits became much more difficult, but as I told some people, “I don’t want her to wake up from the fog she’s in to find that no one visits her.” She never came out of the fog, but I was there.
LikeLike
Excellent, Bob. It is rich with reference points that just suck you in and carry you along. The visual descriptions are great, right down to the frayed cloth phone cord. I really like how the piece pulls me from the wider world to a more and more narrow world until finally I am focused just on a phone on the floor while the conversation floats around me — something like dementia must feel like.
LikeLike
Thanks for commenting, Joyce.
My mother’s dementia made her live in a fog where she didn’t know what she knew. First, her short-term memory went and then her long-term memory. The saddest part was that she knew it as it happened.
Her world became a place where the dead weren’t always dead, where she knew familiar faces but not the names that those people went by, where she didn’t know her own life. It seemed to me to be like a world constantly shifting with facts changing all the time. Confusing.
LikeLike
Memory is what makes us who we are. Without it, we are just a body of sense impressions, nothing more than sand being constantly etched and erased. If we went immediately and wholly to that state of a complete blank slate, it would be one thing but to still have enough memory to know that we had known things before, is torturous and so sad. It must be terrifying on one level to be aware that your being is so corruptible and to see it happen before your own eyes.
If memory and our sense of self and history is so tied to the physical brain, who would we be in an afterlife? Wholly new creatures, unaware of the being that once lived here? Maybe so and maybe we are, now, that afterlife of some other being of whom we are completely unaware. I would believe in reincarnation if I could understand what would be left of us that is “us” when the body goes.
LikeLike
Joyce, I agree that it is tortuous to know you have forgotten things. My mother looked at me as if she knew me and then asked, “And who are you?” I will never forget the look on her face when I said, “I’m your son, Bob.” Her face glazed over and she didn’t look at me for awhile. Then said, “Oh, I remember.”
Good questions in the second part of your comment. Religion exists to answer those questions for people who must have answers. I don’t know the answers and I’m okay with that. I hope “I” cease to exist when I die and melt into the Universe.
LikeLike
Bob – not to put too fine a point on it, but I think the feedback you got in the past to be more specific about your feelings in this piece was totally wrong-headed. The impact would have been diminished considerably if you had followed that advice. Your instincts were right on and resulted in subtle but all the more powerful writing.
This is skillful, beautiful, artful writing.
LikeLike
We agree on that fine point, jude. Thanks again.
LikeLike
Bob, I agree with Jude. Leaving the piece more subtle is the way to write this story. I came back to read your piece again. When I was getting it ready to post, I had the thought — this could be Chapter One in Bob’s memoir. I had that same feeling again when I re-read the piece.
I remember sitting in Taos with you over the year Intensive and being glued to the Writing Practices you’d write about visiting your mother in the nursing home. Now, here you are, years later, slowly moving them into publishable stories. From the raw richness of Writing Practice to story form. For me, too, it works over years. The practices capture the details, the raw emotion. The stories make the experience palatable to a wider audience.
It reminds me, too, of what Natalie says about doing Writing Practice for at least 2 years before stopping. I remember when she first said that and I thought — Two years! That seems like forever. But it isn’t forever by any means. It’s only the tip of the iceberg. It creates a good structure from which to be able to pull memories, both painful and joyful.
I had one last thought — I wonder what your mother would think of your stories if she read them today.
LikeLike
Bob: Have you been going back to old pieces and working with them? This is a strong, strong piece of writing. By making the telephone the centerpiece, you come at the story from an unusual angle, one that steps away from what could have been a long-suffering son voice. Are you spending some time with old writing practices? When you were in the middle of this? Or are you writing this now?
LikeLike
QM, I think Chapter One will be something else like the morning I received the phone calls from the nursing home (which I ignored) and my sister (which I didn’t answer, but got out of bed on that cold, February morning with the knowledge that my mother had died.
Funny how the things Natalie taught us keep coming back to me as I write. I agree with the two years because it grounded me in my writing practice.
My mother has, according to a psychic, told me to write all of the stories. My father too. If she were alive, I think she would not want them written. Both of my parents were private people who didn’t talk to anyone that I know of about what happened in the household. If she did tell the psychic for me to write them, it is because she knows that no one who knows her will read them or she know that I must tell them to someone.
LikeLike
Franny, I am going through all of my notebooks that cover the period from my mother’s fall down the basement stairs to her death and funeral and the aftermath. I’m putting all of the writes about her or that contain references to her in one document on the PC. My plan is to read through it all when I am finished and form a plan in how to tell the story with all those bits and pieces and the stories I have already written about the experience.
And I’m writing some of the stories now with a different perspective than when I was in the midst of the 5-year process that eventually ended with her death in February, 2008.
LikeLike
Aw, how sad. Poor lady. Bob, Tony & I have lived that drama with his mom, both in nursing homes and at our place. There seems to be a tipping point, when they are young enough to recognize their frailties and know it’s time to sell the house; and when they just can’t bear to part with what they know. Fear seems to overwhelm everything else. At least, that seems to be the choice my MIL has made; despite the much better living conditions, attentive family and reduced responsibilities she could have with us; she wanted to go to her old home, with the constant reminders of all that has passed, all the maintenance that needs to be done that she can’t afford to do, the dirt she can’t clean…
It’s unfathomable to me, but there it is. Nursing Homes are so discombobulating, it can just break your heart to see your beloveds there. You’re in my heart…
LikeLike
Right now I would say to leave a person in their own home until they die. Nursing home, no matter how nice, are holding pens for people about to die. There is no escaping that fact from the time a person goes into such a place. It reminds me of a prison where you live in a little room with someone you don’t know, eat when they want you to eat, bathe when they want you to bathe, poop when they want you to poop and live your life as they want you to live it. There is no parole and no possibility of parole. You leave only one way: death.
My mother chose a nursing home because she didn’t want to burden her children or because she wanted us to beg her to come live with us. Neither of us begged. Her entire time in that place was hell for her despite the caring staff and the clean environment.
Someone told me that the average time for a person to survive in a nursing home is 2 1/2 years. I’m surprised that my mother lasted as long as she did.
LikeLike
Hello Bob, this piece made me cry. My mother is in a personal care, and i see the road ahead. I think it is hard to lose those whom we love.
In spite of all the sad, my family has found humor. my grandmother gave my mom and dad the painting that hung over her mantle. Grandmother “cece” didn’t want it in her nursing home room. so mom and dad trucked it home across several states. no sooner were they home, than she was on the phone demanding they bring it back. so the next weekend, another 10 hour drive to return it. Cece passed away a short time later, and the painting moved again to our home. This year the painting moved into my home. Mom hasn’t asked for it back. 😉
LikeLike
reccos62, my thoughts are with you as you journey down this particular road. During the journey funny things will happen as they did with my mother. Really dark things will happen too, but they come as part of the process. In the end I found that many more funny things happened along the way, but, at the time, I was too involved in the disintegration of my mother’s condition to see the humor.
Like your grandmother, my mother would change her mind about things. She wanted certain pictures on her wall and I put them up for her. Then she took them down to “move home.” Up and down went the pictures until I took them home one afternoon while she was sleeping. She never missed them because she had packed them in boxes to be moved back to her little house where she was sure she was going any day. She never did.
LikeLike
I don’t think these decisions are easy ones with aging parents. Even though she doesn’t want the phone (and sounds like she doesn’t use it), do you give her one, anyway? To keep normalcy and seem like a generous son?
Before my dad died in January he clung to the old things in his life, even though they were clearly obsolete. And the new things we tried to get him to embrace (like senior citizen activities) he’d have nothing to do with.
Thanks again for writing with bare honesty about your parents. I always feel less alone.
LikeLike
Teri, she didn’t want the phone when she went to the nursing home, but I insisted that she keep it and went through lots of stuff to keep the old number so she wouldn’t have to learn a new one. I wasn’t sure she could learn a new number at that point.
When she moved from the house to the senior citizen’s center we couldn’t take the old rotary dial phone because it was no longer modern enough to make the transition to a place where the phone plugged into the wall instead of being wired into the wall. My mother hated the new phone.
Same thing happened when she left the senior citizens center for the nursing home. I wanted her to have a phone number so she could keep in touch with people, but she didn’t want it.
I wasn’t about being a generous son. In looking back I wanted to think that things could continue as they always had and deny the seriousness of her decline.
LikeLike
I love that you tried to bring the rotary along. Just this week when I called an automated phone line it said, “If you have a rotary phone, please wait for a customer service representative.” Does anyone still have one? I hope so.
Since my dad died, I have very strong feelings when I see an elderly man struggling along with a walker. The decline is terrible for them and us.
LikeLike
[…] Missouri writer who frequently writes memoir about his family. His last pieces for red Ravine were Exit The Telephone, Desecration Day, and Uncle Howard At The […]
LikeLike