I agonized over Mike’s driving. Not long after driving the rental car at night with no lights on, Mike made a trip to the library to return books, then came back, books in hand, saying the library wasn’t there anymore. The library was not far from home, and was a very familiar place to Mike.
Soon I was driving wherever we went that was unfamiliar, or more than a few miles, though Mike continued to drive to our local market, and to Camerata rehearsals, which were just a few miles from home. Friends and family now often asked, “Is Mike/Dad still driving?” I knew the implied question: “Why is Mike/Dad still driving?”
In my heart of hearts, I knew Mike shouldn’t be driving, but I dreaded the time when I would have to take him everywhere, and when I wouldn’t even have one of those brief respites to myself, when he was at the market, or at the local Starbucks. Finally, though, good sense won out. One morning, while he was showering, I called Dr. Carlson and asked that she notify the DMV that Mike suffered from dementia and should no longer be driving.
In February 2010, the “order of suspension/revocation” notice from the DMV showed up in our mailbox. Mike showed little response to the news. I assured him I would take him wherever he needed to go, and that was the end of it until a few mornings later when he wanted to drive to the market.
“I’ll take you,” I said.
“No! I’ll drive myself!”
I showed him the DMV notice that was still sitting on the table next to the telephone.
“You can’t drive now, hon. I’ll be your chauffeur,” I told him.
He went to the phone and called the doctor. Surprisingly, he got through to her. He asked that she call the DMV and tell them he could drive. She said that she couldn’t do that. He hung up and went upstairs to bed. When I went to check on him half an hour or so later, he turned to look at me. “I’ve always been able to drive,” he said.
I sat beside him on the bed, rubbing his back and shoulders.
“I’m sorry things are so hard for you these days. But I can help. I love you. I’ll help.”
He rolled to the other side of the bed, threw the covers back and got up.
“I’ve always been able to drive!”
Later the next week, Corry’s family and friends gathered in Berkeley to celebrate her completion of a master’s degree in history. She’d managed this after years of juggling classes and study time with a full-time workload, so it was definitely time to party. I drove us over in the Honda, telling Mike we were going to leave the car with Doug, who would take it to a place he knew to get it detailed. This much was true. What I didn’t say was that the same auto-detailing place, as prearranged with Doug, would be putting the car on their sales lot.
The party was great fun. Mike and I danced for a few songs, then he went on to dance with several of the other women, all longtime friends. It was if, for a few hours, the old Mike was back. While he was on the dance floor, I slipped the Honda keys and pink slip to Doug. We rode back to Sacramento with Dale and Marg.
In the morning Mike piled up the week’s newspapers and took them to the recycling container in the garage. He was back in an instant.
“Where’s my car??”
I reminded him that Doug was taking it in for detailing work. I confessed that we would be leaving it over there to be sold. Mike went upstairs to bed.
If I were to rank the decision to have Mike’s license revoked on a scale of one to 10, I’d think it was about a seven. The decision to move us to a retirement community: a 10. Squared. I was convinced of the need to be proactive, but maybe we could hang on in Gold River for a while longer? If Joanie’s estimate was correct, we had at least another eight months before the actual foreclosure.
Shortly after the Riverside visit, I was felled by a nasty cold/flu bug that had been making the rounds. Most of the day I’d been in our upstairs bedroom, bundled in throws and a comforter, stretched out on the chaise. So much to do and there I was, not making phone calls, or doing any of the much needed organizing of my office, the one place I could purge without much interference from Mike.
The good news about this very minor illness was that it removed any lurking doubts about the wisdom of the moving decision. That morning in bed, sore throat, fever, achy, I asked Mike if he would call our dentist’s office to cancel my 10 o’clock appointment. “Sure,” he said. “Is the number in my book?” I said it was. I also asked if he’d take Sunny out. “Sure,” he said, not moving. Sunny increased her whining, scratching, let-me-out behavior. “Could you take her out now?” I asked.“Sure,” he said, still lying there.
“When?”
“Right now!”
But he didn’t move. I got up and took care of the necessities. The shortest possible walk with Sunny had me shivering with chills on my return. I dragged myself back to the chaise. I couldn’t help thinking, though, about how that would have been had I really been sick.
I gave Mike his meds, which he could no longer manage on his own, and reminded him to eat a bite—he could fix a bowl of cereal with sliced banana, but he had to be reminded. I had to admit that it would be good to be at a place where meals were provided and, if needed, help would be available.
For the rest of the day I popped aspirin and dozed. At 6, Mike was downstairs watching CNN. He was scheduled to be picked up for a Camerata rehearsal in 15 minutes. I went downstairs and put the after-rehearsal wine it was his turn to take in a bag and reminded him to take it. I’d done nothing about dinner for us, but one missed dinner was no disaster.
Back to the chaise.
Afternoon two of the nasty bug had me searching through the refrigerator in hope that dinner would magically appear. I saw that between a chunk of leftover rice from Thai food takeout, and some hunks of beef in the freezer, I almost had the ingredients for a quick beef stroganoff dish.
“Would you mind picking up a few things at Bel Air?” I asked Mike.
“I can do that,” he said, turning away from the ever-looping “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
I made a list, knowing even in the cold/flu fog that five things were a lot, but forging ahead. I read the list to Mike: medium-sized sour cream, a head of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, orange juice, a package of mushrooms from the produce department.
“Do you have money?”
He took his wallet from his back pocket and counted out $26.
“Plenty,” I told him.
“Where are the keys?” he asked.
“No, hon, you’ll have to walk.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Your license isn’t valid. You’ll have to walk. Or maybe I should just drive you over later.”
“No, I can walk!” he said, irritated. “I know how to do that!”
Bel Air was five blocks away. The weather was nice. It was good for Mike to get out and about. These were all things I reminded myself of as he stomped out the door.
Twenty minutes later, Mike was back, happy, eating from a large Yogurt Monkey container.
“Mint,” he said, smiling. “I got everything.”
“Everything” consisted of a small container of strawberry flavored cream cheese, orange juice, lamb chops, a dozen eggs (we already had an untouched carton of eggs in the refrigerator), and bananas.
“No sour cream?”
“Oh. Didn’t I do the right thing?” he asked, the turned-up corners of his smile turning downward.
“No. It’s fine. We need sour cream for stroganoff, but we can have something else.”
“I can go back.”
“No, we’ll find plenty to eat.”
“No, I’ll go back.”
“Well … if you feel like it.”
“Sure. Where are the keys?”
“Well … you’ll need to walk.”
“Okay! Okay! I can do that!”
He was back soon, finishing another large Yogurt Monkey, unloading a quart container of chocolate chip ice cream, a large package of cream cheese, cherry tomatoes and Chinese cabbage.
“Okay?” he said.
“Great. Thank you for doing that,” I said, smiling. That should have been my response to his first return from the store, but it took me a while to figure that out.
He settled back to “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and I threw something together that I loosely called dinner. We finished it off with mounds of ice cream.
In the morning I called Riverside and arranged to put a $500 hold on the downstairs apartment with the little patio. I’d done the math. I figured I could keep us there for at least a year and a half, maybe two, before every retirement account was drained, and we’d reach rock bottom. It was a frightening situation. But, I reminded myself, it was nothing in comparison to what post-earthquake displaced Haitians were experiencing, or what any of the estimated 100,000 homeless Iraqis had to deal with, or, for that matter, what the growing number of homeless people here in Sacramento went through every day.