From Missing Dad ~ Found, Tuesday June 15th

Tags

bloodhound, caregiving, detectives, doggedness, elderly parents, family, friends, gifts, health, home, love, missing persons, police, responsibility, scent article, stubbornness, trees, trust

My plan for Tuesday was to talk to the detectives in the morning and get them to set the bloodhounds looking for my father. We were in Day 5; Dad had been missing for ninety-six hours (I had decided that, when we got to one hundred hours, I would switch to counting days). Frank and I awoke to the alarm, took our showers, ate our breakfast, drank our coffee, shared the New York Times, watched Weather Channel, just like we do every day. It was all so nice and normal.

I turned on my computer to check email. I had messages from my store’s district manager and regional manager, sending prayers and good wishes, telling me my flyers were posted in our New Jersey and New York store windows; from my friend Janice asking if there’d been any word (no); from my friend Peg, who pointed out how easily the elderly become invisible to the rest of us, allowing as how if Dad had gone out in his pajamas, someone might remember having seen him (he had done that already, the week before); from Nancy, letting us know that she, Chris and Grant would be in New Jersey by around 2 that afternoon. She added that Chris suggested that one way to get Dad back would be to buy and install an air conditioner in his dining room (Dad was legendarily spartan about heating and cooling).

The detectives called me while I was still at my computer, sometime after 9AM. Detectives George Moutis and Ken Elliot were assigned to our case, Missing Person: Karabaic, Anton — Case #10-3121, Event #10-54696.
Det. Moutis confirmed to me that today was the day that the bloodhounds would search the woods while the helicopters flew over.

Today was the day that Dad would be found, but I didn’t know that yet.

The search had become its own creature, apart from Dad; Dad and the search for Dad were two separate beings. There had been moments when I felt we were searching just for the sake of doing something. It wasn’t that I thought our efforts were useless or hopeless; there was a small (and shrinking) part of me that thought we might yet find him, and find him alive. Surely there was a reasonable explanation for him being missing; the Laws of the Conservation of Matter decreed that he was still somewhere in the known universe.
What I would say, or do, if I saw my father sitting on a park bench, or walking down a side street? Would I run up to him, hug him and kiss him and ask him if he was hungry, thirsty, tired?  Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Would I just stand there, mouth agape, unable to speak? Would I even believe my own eyes? Would I yell at him for putting us through this living hell for almost five days? Or would the stress of all of it, combined with the shock of seeing him again, cause my body to crumble into a pile of dust and blow away on the wind?

I do not know how to do this.

Since Friday, I had been dealing with the unknowingness of my situation by trying to control those things I could. To be effective, to move forward, I had to be dispassionate about the alternatives that lay before us. I had to be on task, I had to manage time well, I had to ruthlessly prioritize. It was like managing the store (people/product/operations), except this really was life and death. I wasn’t alone; I had lots of help, all the help I could ask for; my husband, my siblings and sibs-in-law, their children, our friends were living through this with me; but I felt so terribly alone.

These were the things I could control at this moment: I could check email and respond; I could talk to people on the phone; I was home this day, so I could do research online to find something, anything; there had to be something, and I was just missing it.

I had promised Frank I would try to rest, just this one day; I planned to take a nap at some point, lie on the couch with the windows open (the weather had been so gorgeous since Friday) and let myself drift…

We had arranged for Glenn to be at the house to meet the detectives and the canine unit, so that the dogs could start the search and (we hoped) find Dad. I texted Glenn to let me know when the police arrived.

Done with email, done with the phone, I turned up the ringer on the answering machine in the studio, left my computer, turned on the television to a channel that only played New Age relaxation music, and I lay down on the couch.
Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
I drifted in and out, aware of the music and the traffic noise from Northern Boulevard, coming and going.

The phone rang: it was Glenn.
The detectives had arrived, with the bloodhound and his handler from the Essex County Canine Unit. It was mid-day. They’d had to wait for the bloodhound to come from the next county, because Union County didn’t have one of their own.

This is what Glenn told me:
The handler needed a scent article for the dog. They used the pajamas that Dad had left on the dining room chairs.
The handler, wearing latex gloves, took my father’s old worn pajamas outside, and spread the top and bottom out on the lawn in front of Dad’s house. (The image I conjured for myself of my father’s nightclothes spread out on the lush grass is indelibly imprinted on my mind’s eye.) The handler wears gloves so that he doesn’t transfer his own scent particles to the scent article.
The dog sniffs and paws at my father’s garments on the grass not too far from the huge oak tree; the dog gets Dad’s scent.
After a minute or two, the leashed bloodhound pulls back from the pajamas, excited, hyper, panting, wanting to go. His handler settles him, looks the dog square in the eyes.
“Do you wanna go find him, do you wanna go find him?”
The bloodhound—his nose to the ground—and his handler quickly turn and head down Huntington to the corner of Livingston; they turn left, and go down the incline (it is not quite a hill).

(Glenn didn’t see this next part. He will recount this to me in our next conversation, after he speaks with the detective by the park:
The dog and handler crossed Forest Drive, and approached the shortcut path that cuts through the woods to Salem Road.
The dog veered left at the head of the path, into the woods, without hesitation. )

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From Missing Dad ~ The Last Walk

Tags

aging in place, caregiving, dying, elderly parents, family, forest, self-determination, suburban forest, thirst, trees, trust, Universe, walking

Today is two years since my father took his last walk.
This is my imagining of that last day.

The brightening sky is clear; the birds sing. It’s too early. He doesn’t sleep the way he used to. Slowly, carefully, in the dark, he feels his way down the stairs. He shuffles through the living room, the dining room, into the kitchen; he turns on the light, the radio. He gets his plastic glass, his cereal bowl, a spoon, his box of Cheerios. He looks at the empty fruit bowl. Bananas. He ate the last mushy brown one yesterday. That’s the problem with bananas; you buy a bunch and they’re green, and you have to wait a few days until you can eat them. Then, they all turn ripe at once. At least one will be almost black by the time you eat it.

Bananas. It’s not too early for the 7-11 at Salem and Chestnut. They’re always open.

He turns off the radio and goes into the dining room. He takes off his pajamas and drapes them over a chair. His clothes from yesterday, and from the day before, are on the other chairs. He picks up the clothes he wore the day before yesterday. He already has on a short-sleeve undershirt, boxers, socks.  He puts on a long-sleeve thermal undershirt that is yellow with age. On top of that, his lined flannel shirt. He puts on his pants­­ and his belt (to which he’s added a few holes), and buckles it in the last hole. He puts on his new windbreaker, a gift from one of his granddaughter’s friends. He puts on his shoes, his watch, takes his wallet and a handkerchief. He puts on his old tan hat. He takes his keys, locks both doors, walks down the steps and down the driveway, past his car. It hasn’t worked for months. The battery is dead. His kids won’t let him replace it. His kids won’t let him drive any more.

Yesterday had been so strange—people in and out of his house all day. His youngest daughter had come in the morning and brought her friend, that nice lady, the nurse—what was her name? The nurse helped him with his physical therapy exercises, made sure he took his pills. She said she was coming again today.
As the girls were going, his son-in-law’s best friend stopped by. They talked for hours about things he forgot he remembered, about the old country, about his job in the shipyard during the war.
Later, the doorbell rang—it was the Meals-on-Wheels girl. His visitor tried to get him to eat the food she had brought while it was hot, but the food from the day before was still in the refrigerator. He ate that instead. It’s a sin to waste food.

Then, his visitor left. Alone in his home for the first time all day, he stretched out in his recliner and fell asleep. When he woke up, it was time for bed. He undressed, put on his pajamas, went upstairs.
Strange day.

Oh.
Bananas.
He walks down his street to the corner, turns left, and goes down to the shortcut path through the woods to Salem Road, where the 7-11 is. He will get the bananas, go back home, eat his breakfast.

He hears something: a woman? Is she calling him? He follows her voice, veers off the path into the woods. He used to walk here with his granddaughter, when she was little. Now, there are brambles, branches, tangles of vines and weeds. The more he walks, the more mixed up he gets.

He hears her again:  “Tony…Tony?”

He looks up, down, all around; no one is there. He walks some more. He’s deep in the woods now. He knows these woods end in a grassy half-circle on Galloping Hill Road, across from the hospital, a block away from the 7-11. There’s a playground, a small basketball court, a bench facing the brightly colored slide. He could sit there for a bit, then walk down to the 7-11. If he keeps going, he should come out on the other side.
Ahead, in the middle of a thicket of vines and brush, he sees a log, a fallen tree, lying on the ground. Hasn’t he seen that tree before? It’s all beginning to look the same. Maybe he should take a little rest.
He makes his way to it, sits, and thinks: Why is it so hard to get out of here? It’s not a big forest. There are streets and houses on all four sides, the playground at the end, the hospital across the street. He used to walk here all the time.
His head is swimming. His feet really hurt. He unties his shoes, takes them off, places them next to the log, in arm’s reach. He is breathing hard; he tries to catch his breath. God, his head hurts. His chest hurts. Everything hurts. He is so thirsty that if there was a puddle, he would drink from it. A little dirty water wouldn’t hurt him. You should have seen the stuff they had to eat back in Europe, back when times were bad.
He’s going to take a little rest now, then put his shoes back on, and he’ll find his way out. He shakes his head, tries to focus on the dial of his watch. It says 12:15 and 25 seconds, but the second hand isn’t moving any more.
It was so bright when he left the house, but it…it looks so dark now. How long has he been walking? He can’t tell if it’s still daylight. He is so tired. He takes off his hat and lies down.

Four days later, the bloodhound from the Essex County Police Department will find him by the fallen tree, fifty yards from the grassy half-circle edging the suburban forest, his untied shoes still in arm’s reach.

Missing Dad Flyer

~Happiness, in My Own Backyard~

Tags

Archives of the Home, blossoms, bowne park, Bradford Pears, flowers, Flushing, forsythia, geese, Murray Hill, pear blossoms, sketch, spring, trees, turtles, walk

The forsythia are marching though Flushing, their bright yellow flags just EVERYWHERE. The magnolias (pink and white both) are a bit past their prime, but the crape myrtle is taking up the slack. Already, the miniature weeping cherries are afloat with blossoms, pink and white. And the Bradford Pears! Huge, fluffy, cottony white blooms with the faintest tinge of yellow green line Northern Boulevard and the side streets. The crocuses are done, but the grape hyacinths, the daffodils (and their allies, the jonquils and the narcissi), have staked out their positions and are Occupying Flushing.

I walk down Bayside Avenue from 150th Street to the northwest corner of Bowne Park, where the weeping willows (so faintly green on Sunday) have turned an almost fluorescent shade. I am drawn to them; they are the color of life, and of Spring itself. I walk over to caress a drapey rope of brand new yellowy-green leaflets, and to greet my friends, the geese, in the pond beneath the trees.

There are empty swings! I knew that if I got here early enough in the day, I’d be able to indulge my inner child. I swing for a bit, next to a 4 year old who is being pushed higher, higher by her mom. I tell them both that you are NEVER too old to go on the swings.

I leave the park by the path that leads through the northeast corner to continue my walk up 29th Avenue. When Frank and I were here on Sunday, we windowshopped an adorable little store that I resolved to visit again. Archives of the Home is just the kind of pretty, eclectic shop you’d find on the side street of a resort town. Its nooks and crannies are filled with lovely objets d’art and antiques, big and little treasures from everywhere. I speak to the owner’s assistant (who has a little shop of her own within the larger shop, Pippy & Lily, Inc., with lovely jewelry and accessories). When I leave, I realize I’ve lost all track of time, and I don’t care. My heart is lifted by the beauty of the day, of the trees and flowers in bloom, of the lovely manmade objects I’ve just spent however much time poring over.

I walk back down 29th Avenue, back through the park, and settle on a bench under the willows. I pull out a tiny notebook I’d put in my purse, take out a pen, and sketch my friends, the geese. I look up and there– in the middle of the pond– is a cormorant, spreading his wings in the sun. I used to see cormorants all the time when I lived in College Point, and would spend my days down by the water. But this far inland? — Never! I sketch him, too.

I sit a bit longer, just enjoying the breezes, then rise to leave. I walk around the pond, see that the resident turtles are piled up on each other (five of them, on top of a jutting-out rock). I guess they are sunning themselves, even if the little guys on the bottom aren’t getting many rays at all.

I walk down 33rd Avenue, up 154th Street, to see my favorite view of Manhattan from the crest of Flushing’s Murray Hill before the leafing-out trees make that view impossible to see. Then, I wind my way home, having found happiness in my own backyard on a lovely Spring day.