The Stone in Stone Soup

As the story goes, some travelers come to a village carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food with the hungry travelers. The travelers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with just a little bit of carrot to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup, which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.

Like all fables and children’s stories, this one has a lesson; cooperation. The point of this particular story for our purposes, however, is that the stone is a lifeless, unpleasant thing to have in a pot surrounded by fantastic and delicious ingredients and flavors. Eleanor is the stone in Stone Soup.

Eleanor has so many wonderful people in her life, right down to the visiting nurses that come to the house to give provide her with the proper medical care she needs in order to continue sitting around being a stone. She often gets phone calls from very pleasant sounding people, some with Canadian accents, others with jolly Irish accents; she very rarely actually wants to talk to these people. She doesn’t mind visitors, but for no longer than half an hour. Anything over an hour she considers to be “rude.”

A couple of weeks ago, Janie, Eleanor’s niece, came by for a visit bringing her young daughter, age 6, with her. Eleanor had been looking forward to a visit from Janie for weeks since she had returned home from the hospital. During these weeks she would quietly build a small pile of things on the dining room table; a table that she uses for anything but dining. Melanie and I would sometimes use it to play Magic: The Gathering, a card game she has addicted me to, or to eat our own meals once in a while. Whenever we would eat on the dining room table, Auntie Eleanor would exhibit behavior that was a combination of both anger and confusion; she didn’t know why we would ever eat on the dining room table, and she was angry that we would even consider it. Usually we have to move a pile of envelopes, home shopping catalogues and a pile of notepads and post-its. These envelopes and post-its were very important as she uses an entire page to write down a single number that she needs, which she gets from her handwritten phone book, because simply dialing the number from the phonebook itself is just… well it just isn’t done.

During one of these table clearings, we had moved two stuffed animals that she had sitting on one of the chairs. When she walked by the chair and seen it empty, she immediately started to get nervous and accused us of throwing them away. I calmly pointed to their new spot on the couch, which rather than apologize for the accusation, she turned her anger to wanting them on the chair, uncaring of our needs for the chair. So the usual cycle of her impractical wants and our logical contradictions to those wants ensued and ended with us just giving in and putting the damn stuffed rabbits back on the chair. (NOTE: It’s important to remember that she accused us of throwing them out here.)

When Janie finally came to visit, Auntie gave her young daughter the two stuffed rabbits and a pile of other things she just didn’t want anymore, but she also gave Janie pictures of herself and her daughter that Janie had once given her. Sue informed me that, despite the absolute rudeness of this gesture, she does it a lot. In some way, it makes sense; rather than throw these sentiments out, passing them on would be the kindest thing you could do with them, rather than the social contract’s well established rule that we throw these things out without anyone knowing. However, Auntie has been doing this since she’s turned 75.

“What am I going to do with these things?” She rhetorically asks me when I point out how what she’s doing could be perceived as rude. “There’s no point in keeping them.” She adds as she then puts up pictures of people she prefers to look at, most commonly her beloved handyman, who will soon have his own chapter in our story. So when she gives pictures back, what she’s actually saying is “I’m tired of looking at you and I have pictures of other people I’d prefer to see that I need to put up. I need the space.”

Janie stayed for almost 2 hours, well over Auntie Visiting Capacity. AVC, as it’s known. Eleanor never once considered asking her to leave. She could have simply said, “I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well, I need to lay down.” (On second thought, that’s not possible as it contains the phrase “I’m sorry.”) And I’m sure Janie would have ended her visit. During Janie’s visit, Eleanor’s cousin came for an unexpected visit and brought Eleanor a cooked chicken because, well, why not? Who doesn’t want a random cooked chicken? Jerks, that’s who. Half an hour later both Janie and Eleanor’s cousin left. As soon as they drove off, Eleanor turned to look at us with the speed of a scared chinchilla and quipped, “she stayed too long!” She said it in the same way a diver would gasp for air after going for a world record in deep water swimming. She had clearly wanted to say that for a while. “And thank God she took those animals. I was going to throw them out if she didn’t,” as if she was saving the stuffed animals from a horrible fate, like the manager of a pound. “Well it’s a good thing someone adopted those animals before their 10^th day here because if they didn’t I was going to put them down.” Bare in mind that this is the same woman who actually enjoys killing chipmunks. We had told her that we would have given the toys away but she kept insisting that they could only be thrown away if Janie’s daughter didn’t want them. (Remember the note I asked you to keep in mind earlier about her accusing us of throwing them out?) This is not the first time her plan to throw something out had interfered with her naturally cultivated desire to keep and horde things.

Auntie wasn’t looking forward to having Janie visit to spend time with her; she was looking forward to a visit from Janie because it meant she could unload some of her crap onto her, pictures included. Eleanor Brophy may not want a lot of things she has, but she’s hardwired not to throw anything out, I know this because I once found a chocolate bar from 1978 in her cabinet and she told me it might still be good when I tried to throw it out. This mentality, it seems, only applies to things that she acquires herself. When she was discharged from the hospital after her stroke, she returned home to a few baskets of flowers and a potted plant; one from her lawyer, one from her nephew Kevin, and a few from other relatives- 5 in total. Two days later she told me to throw them out, as she has no “need” for them and she didn’t like them. She vocally spewed out an acid filled rant about how she doesn’t understand why people give flowers to other people when they’re sick or in recovery; I didn’t dare ask about romantic interests. She also wondered why people would give her flowers; she only has the biggest flower garden in the town and it’s shaped around her house like a protective moat, why would anyone think she might like flowers? There’s simply nothing to base that opinion on, it’s just insane.

If one were to look at this previous example, one would find a very fundamental insight into the way Eleanor Brophy’s mind works. She likes flowers, but has no “need” of them within her own house, only on the outside. And those flowers outside surround the house. So what does this say? She surrounds herself with pleasant things but only wants to look at them from the outside looking in rather than the inside looking out? Are these flowers only superficial? We can’t say she doesn’t care about them because we’re reminded every day how they’re not as good as they could be because she can’t work on the garden herself. Flowers in the house bring joy, they’re something nice to look at and just something nice. I love bringing Melanie flowers and she loves having them around. Auntie, it seems, does not.

But the aesthetic theory isn’t exactly it, as the massive garden is potentially a grand contradiction. Perhaps there is another explanation though; the theory that she’ll only hang on to something based on how much she likes you. Cards and flowers are usually thrown out after a week, although flowers are lucky to make it five days. For her birthday Melanie and I gave her flowers, because she didn’t want anything, but we felt we had to get her something. We spent a good quid on those flowers. Her handyman came by the house sometime later in the day and brought her a smaller, more modest, if not cheaply made, bouquet. A dozen Roses vs. six Carnations. Both were placed on the kitchen table. Every time she would sit at the table she would pull the Handyman’s flowers forward and push ours back. Two days later, she wanted to throw ours out and keep his, even though most of his had died and ours were still flourishing. She really does like her Handyman.

During another visit from Rosemary, her wonderfully fun niece on her late husband Jim’s side, Eleanor had told us that she doesn’t want two small, ceramic flower pots that had been sitting on her front porch.

“I have no use for them.” She said. (Which is incorrect, because she has MANY flowers that could use a home.)

“Do you want me to put them in the attic?” I asked her.

“Well I don’t know.” She said.

“Do you want me to throw them out?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Auntie, you either want these or you don’t. You’re always complaining about how you think we put stuff somewhere and you don’t know where it is, if you don’t decide where you want them, we’re going to put them somewhere, or you can decide to throw them out, which is it?” asked Melanie.

She wasn’t able to make a decision and was seemingly upset when we continued to pressure her into making one. She knew for a fact she didn’t want them, but she didn’t know if she wanted to throw them out or keep them in the attic. If they were in the attic, she’d still have them, a matter of fact that she didn’t agree with. Out of sight, out of mind (sometimes). Eventually I just said, “I’ll just throw them out.” And left the room with both of them. They were nice flowerpots, and good sized ones for most common plants, so rather than toss them in the trash, I put them into her garage. She has had this same internal conflict over more than a dozen things; platters, bowls, vases, plates, etc. and each time she’ll want them gone, then the next day ask where they are.

Rosemary usually visits on Saturdays, a day that Melanie has off, so sometimes we’ll go grocery shopping together while she sits with Auntie. Point in fact, that woman is an absolute joy. Even we look forward to visits from her. Auntie has yet to say that Rosemary has stayed too long at any point, but I know it’s floating around up there in her ancient skull.

I often find myself wondering how someone surrounded by such wonderful people and the means to live life any way she wants to could be so outstandingly miserable. How is it that she continues to have all of these great people visit time and time again, even after she’s rude to them? 

Her view of visitors isn’t just limited to just her visitors, it also encompasses ours. Months before we moved in with her, we had made plans with our friend, Josh, to come visit us for the 4^th of July (During which time we would make a short video series called “Sad Tranny.” – YouTube it. Seriously. Do it.) Josh stayed for 3 days. In those 3 days Auntie began to treat him as anything but a guest and not only asked him to do several things for her when we weren’t around but also frequently asked when he planned on leaving.

Last Saturday I went to back to Rhode Island to help a friend shoot a video. During the time I was gone Mel had arranged for her friend Sarah to come by and keep her company. I like to think of this as a preventative measure, as I believe if Mel were to ever spend more than three hours alone with Auntie, one of them would murder the other. Sarah, being as pleasant as sunshine, entered the house, immediately introduced herself to Eleanor and showered her with genuine compliments about the house and the garden. Auntie, who is as susceptible to flattery as Superman is to Kryptonite, couldn’t help but like her. Sarah and Mel spent about 3 hours in our room watching a film and eating lunch. Auntie did not encounter them once and maintained her perch on the porch, keeping an eye out for any trouble or undesirables, at least that’s what I keep telling myself about her interest in sitting on the porch in a manner that deliberately keeps her hidden from those looking in when in actuality she’s an amazingly nosey busybody that would make Gladys Kravitz, and even my mother, turn red.

This attitude of disdain also extends to phone calls. Auntie never picks up the phone. Ever. We have to do it for her. Even before we moved in she barely picked it up. She could never be called upon, but she could call upon you. Melanie has four pets at her parents’ home in North Smithfield, each of whom she had given a personality to. The only female is a feisty Bichon that Mel has personified as an exiled princess who never got the memo of her own banishment. In actuality, I believe that Eleanor fits that description a bit more.

The only phone calls Eleanor looks forward are those from her friends back on Prince Edward Island in Canada, but even those hallowed communications have restrictions; never during Wheel of Fortune (Auntie’s dementia allows for her to refer to this show as “Dateline”). Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, people will call during Wheel of Fortune and Auntie will reluctantly take the call. Keep in mind that she could simply not accept the phone call or call them back, which I do remind her of whenever it happens, but she accepts anyway, only to complain later, which reinforces my belief that she loves complaining; the feeling that she knows better than you. I believe this to be the closest the woman has ever come to actual pleasure as I can sometimes see her eyes glaze over with delight when it happens, no matter how hard she tries to hide her enjoyment in ridicule.

“Why do people always call when I’m watching Dateline? Don’t they know any better?” she’ll ask.

One day, being sick of hearing that question and never answering, I broke the cycle of selective silence and answered back, “No, Auntie, I don’t think they do. Have you ever told them not to call you during Wheel of Fortune?”

“Well no.” She replied.

“Then how the Hell do you expect them to know?”

There’s no way she could have an actual answer to that question, I thought. There’s just no way.

“… they just should.” Well, there you have it. There’s your answer Raz… they just should. Just like we should just know things about her house and her routine and likes and needs without her telling us and understand why she’s upset with us when we don’t follow her unspoken plans. People should just know things, like what happens when you combine Mercury and Chlorine, or what time the Winnipeg Local makes it’s last stop, or how far up your ass is too far to shove that stick.

As for Melanie’s friend Sarah, when she left, she said her goodbyes to Eleanor and Eleanor returned the gesture with a smile, telling her to “comeback anytime.” I later returned home to Mel after a long day of filming in small spaces filled with July heat and asked her how her day was; everything was fine. I then asked Auntie how her day was.

“Oh just fine, I suppose. Melanie had a friend come by… she stayed too long.” She said. This phrase now haunts my dreams, but who knows, maybe that’s how Earth feels about Eleanor. Then again, stones do have their place in the Earth, usually best kept under 6 feet of dirt.

Bi-Polar Deception Fish

Eleanor Brophy has turned me into a liar. About once a week, during a very specific meal request, Eleanor will sometimes say “I don’t mean to be so fussy.”

Usually I ignore it, but one particular day, oh, I don’t know, let’s say… today, I replied back with “Yes you do.”

I was expecting her to be insulted, as my intent at this point was to actually insult, as she often, unknowingly, insults myself and Melanie. She’ll make a comment about breakfast or lunch not being made fast enough and tell us to do something we’ve already done or something that we are currently doing in front of her while uttering something negative under her breath. Rather than be insulted, however, she laughed, as if I was making a joke. My intended effect having been negated, I just left it alone.

But she does mean to be so fussy. As we’ve pointed out before, she’s very particular in everything she does and as her dementia and senility sets in, she’s losing more of her memory and control over her temper. Eleanor hates something at first and then likes it later. Or she likes it at first and then hates it later. There is no way to know if this is senility or dementia for sure, but again, the family informs me that she has always been this way. Recently, we went to Trader Joe’s, at her request, and purchased low-sodium premade meals for her; salmon, sole and cod each with delicious sides of rice and beans.

We had made fish for her before, which we purchased from the monger at Stop and Shop, then froze it in the freezer and thawed it as we needed it, you know, like most people. She really enjoyed the Salmon we made for her last month. The Trader Joe’s Salmon meal, however, she said she did not. I believe the reason she did not is because she watched me put it into the microwave in it’s cardboard packaging to heat up. When the meal was heated, I gave it to her with her 5 P.M. meds and tea, and left the room. When I re-entered, she told me she “hated, hated it” never wanting it again. For some reason, I simply didn’t believe her.

Eleanor only trusts two people, and I’m not one of them. One is her “handyman,” and the other person Eleanor trusts is Eleanor. A few weeks ago, we had run low on, not out of, toilet paper in the bathroom. She made sure to tell this to me in the most urgent of manners. Upon inspection, the roll was exactly half gone. We usually keep a spare roll in the bathroom cabinet, but that would soon become the primary roll we would be using. She wanted me to go to the store and get some, but I had reminded her that we went shopping the day before and during that trip we had purchased a lot of toilet paper. She asked if I was sure, and I replied that I was. She asked me three or four more times before she had me go into the basement to bring up the package of toilet paper for her to see with her own eyes.

I looked straight into those old eyes, one working, one not, and asked, “Are you calling me a liar? Because what you’re saying right now means you don’t believe me, which means that you’re calling me a liar.”

“I’m not saying you’re a liar, I just want to see it for myself.”

“Auntie, I’m going to go into that basement because I can’t stand being called a liar, and when I come up, I’m going to come up carrying a big pack of toilet paper. So, I’m going to ask you again, do you believe me when I say that we have toilet paper downstairs?”

“…No. Yes. No… I want to see it.” She said, confused and concerned that she might, possibly, in some horrible way, be wrong about something so infinitesimally small.

“All right.” I said, and went into the basement to get the toilet paper.

“Shit.” I said to myself. I couldn’t find it. “Did we get toilet paper? I swear we did. I know we did… didn’t we? No, it has to be here.”

Looking around the storage room, I still couldn’t find it. “Now she’s never going to believe anything I tell her, not that she does anyway, but this is evidence she’ll use against me in the future. I know it.” I kept thinking.

Ready to admit defeat and tell her I was wrong, I shut off the light in the storage room by pulling the string and saw myself from outside of my body; a sad clown standing under a street light that no one comes to see anymore because he simply isn’t quite what he used to be. The bulb above beams on me, illuminating my big red clown nose and my big red face, making one last flicker before I blend into the darkness.

I took my time walking out of the storage room and back into the main section of the basement where the stairs are. Then, like some kind of dawnbringer angel cutting through the darkness with a knife of sunlight, there it was, the package of toilet paper sitting next to the stairs. It had been out of my view as I first walked down them, but now, able to see on both sides of them, it called to me. I heard a victory song in my head. Trumpets, drums, high toned bells, I think I even jumped a bit, actually jumped with joy. “Ha Ha!” I shouted. “Fuck you, Universe!” I thought to myself. What a stupendous victory this was… for something so small… for an accusation of no importance that would be forgotten about by the accuser by sunrise.

Taking the package, I ran upstairs so fast that I tripped but managed to pick myself up before I fell and just kept right on going, running up those steps like I was an escaped slave heading for the freedom and warm, glowing light of the promised land. I walked right up to her, put the package right in front of her and asked her what she saw.

“Toilet paper.” She said. And I turned right around with the package to put it back in the basement. I had absolutely no interest in relishing in this victory in mediocrity. I didn’t even think about the phrase “I told you so” until the following morning, I just wanted it to be over and done with as I realized I put too much care into something that really didn’t matter and something that any member of her family would have told her to “shut up” about.

I had proven to Eleanor Brophy that I was not a liar. She has since proven me wrong, but thankfully, she doesn’t know it. She may still suspect it, but she doesn’t know it.

When she complained to me that she didn’t like the Trader Joe’s premade meal, which she had specifically asked for, I knew it had to be related to her mood. She was in her normal, infantile “blah blah blah everything sucks but me” mood before she sat down to dinner. It must have carried over. It must have.

“Okay,” I told her, “you don’t have to eat it again.”

“Don’t make it again.”

“I won’t.” I replied.

But I would make it again, I just wouldn’t tell her. I had decided that she needed to be proven wrong. That she needed to know that she was wrong about something she was so adamant about. She and Melanie recently had an argument, which was the first time I had ever seen Mel yell. It was over batteries. When we had moved in, we needed room in the refrigerator so we took out all of the batteries on the bottom shelf. Weeks later she wanted two AA Batteries for her 50 year old calculator, and yes, it’s broken (the 2 key is stuck, so 2 becomes 22), and no, she doesn’t want another one. She had started to yell at me that we didn’t have any right to move anything and she wanted them in the refrigerator. As usual, I calmly replied that what she was talking about was an old wives tale and she came back with a comment about how when people come over they’ll need to know where the batteries are and they’ll look in the fridge for them. I simply had to reply to that; “Why would someone come here and look for batteries? You barely even have any visitors” I calmly pointed out, not wanting to raise her blood pressure.

Really, who was she expecting? Apocalypse survivors? Tin soldiers? Walking Flashlights coming by for their weekly spot of tea? Who?

“I want them there.” She screamed at me.

Mel had heard this from the bedroom and flew out of there like a bat out of Hell. “What is your problem?!” She yelled at Auntie, and preceded to list every insanity she had asked of us since we’ve been here with such speed and precision that it was all a blur because I was in shock seeing Mel yell like that; yell at all really. They yelled at each other and had their first, and to date, only argument. Mel had stormed out and Auntie couldn’t understand how she could be the cause of such stress. She really couldn’t, it was just beyond her realm of comprehension.

When I prepared the Trader Joe’s Salmon meal again, I made sure that when she asked what was for dinner, that I answered “Salmon, but not from Trader Joe’s.”

“Good.” She said with both joy and contempt. (It really is a complex, Oscar worthy emotional response.)

I made sure Eleanor could see me “cooking” the fish from her chair in the living room. I had taken the premade Salmon meal earlier in the day and put it in the refrigerator to thaw. When it came time to heat it up, I put it in the pan and asked her how she wanted it cooked. “I want it done.” She said.

I nodded and then turned my body to block her view of the action in the kitchen. “How deliciously devious” I thought; pun intended. I took the fish and rice from the cold pan, put it on a plate and put the plate into the microwave. When it was done, I called Eleanor for her meal and 5 P.M. meds. She eagerly sat at the table and reached for her tea before the fish. I stood at the kitchen sink, washing dishes and the pan, to drive the deception home just a little bit more, but I watched her eat it out of the corner of my eye. When I was finished I turned to her and asked, “How is it?”

“Wonderful.” She said. “A lovely dinner.”

“I knew it.” I thought, but what actually left my mouth was “Good, glad you like it.” …and that was it. No gloating. No “I told you so.” Not even a subtle “Surprise, you wrinkly old tyrant! It’s the same exact meal you hated last week!” Nothing. After she told me how much she liked it, I realized that any attempt to prove her wrong would only be forgotten. Any evidence lost. Victory was futile. Even the Borg would be proud of her hubris.

I was right, she didn’t know what she liked or hated anymore. I was right and it felt good. But what was the cost? I’m a liar now. I’m not some high moral crusader like Batman or Superman- I would have to kill to stop the same criminals from killing over and over; I would have to lie to live in this house, I would have to lie to keep my sanity and to keep Eleanor’s growing insanity at bay. I was given some perspective though, when Mel and I told her mother, Sue, about our “plan.” “So? Who cares?” She said. “Give her whatever she wants.

Tea O'Clock

“I want a cupcake, but I don’t want any frosting on it, scrape it off with a knife.” – Eleanor Brophy

No other quote sums up what Eleanor Brophy seems to be; an enemy of happiness. What better symbol of happiness and joy is there than the frosting on a cupcake? Sure, she doesn’t like things that are too sweet, but the way in which she said it made it seems as if the frosting were somehow “beneath” her. And with a knife, no less, like a cold, surgical extraction; the way a neurosurgeon would remove a tumor.

This quote, however, also reveals just how particular Eleanor truly is. Whether this specificity is her original personality or a result of the damage caused by the stroke (we believe it to be both) is unknown.

Last week, during a visit from the Occupational Therapist, Eleanor had mentioned that she would like to be able to make her own tea again sometime soon and was looking for some instruction and guidance on how to go about doing that, stating that while using her walker she was unable to carry the hot water from the stove to the table in any form, be it tea pot or tea cup. She mentioned that she once made her tea in the mornings and stored it in a thermos for the day. All that tea, made with a single tea bag? And it would stay hot all day long? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The Occupational Therapist told her that it would be some time before she could do that, but, as if placating her for no apparent reason, asked Eleanor if it would be alright for me to do it for her. Eleanor’s eyes lit up like she just got two social security checks in the mail, her excitement almost palpable, but in her calm, farm raised Canadian accent, simply said; “Yes, that would be fine.”

I didn’t mind this change of pace in the Tea Making Routine, as it would actually be far easier to make tea once a day than three times.  Not that making tea is difficult, but under Eleanor’s watchful eye, one would find her comments about the size of the flame from the gas stove or criticism on how long to let the water boil to be distracting at best and due to her apparently new inability to gauge time, the latter is an interesting conversation.

The following day, I rose at 7 A.M. to find Eleanor getting ready for the day. As I passed by her bedroom door on my way to the kitchen, I could see her sitting on the edge of her bed changing her pants. The ever present walker stood in front of her, the two tennis balls on two of it’s legs acted as a visual signal; despite their low eye-line, you simply can’t not notice them. They’re still far too new and bright for any form of ignorance.

There are times when Melanie and I often see this site as we wake up and fantasize about the walker becoming some kind of Hannibal Lecter type cage, restraining her to the bed until we are able to get her morning meal ready rather than have her shuffle about with it, uttering small complaints about the weather or how many times someone called her on the phone the night before with a tone that’s more commonly used by Anti-Semites.

On this particular morning though, she made eye contact with me as I passed by the door. “Going to fix my breakfast?” she asked.

“Yup.” I replied.

“Wait, I’m not ready yet.”

“Well Auntie, it’s going to take about 10 minutes to set it out.”

“I’m not ready yet.” She shot back at me, the tone in her voice getting angrier.

“I know that, but by the time you finish getting dressed, it will be done.”

“Well I don’t want to eat it cold.”

“It won’t be cold, Auntie. By the time you finished getting dressed it will be ready and warm for you.”

“Fine! Fine! Fine!” she yelled back at me before I entered the kitchen.

The anger she shouted my way was not new, but it was not common (yet), so there was some sense of surprise in my mind before I quickly brushed it aside and continued into the kitchen to start the process of making her breakfast, which consists, every day, of 1 cup of tea with lactaid milk, buttered white toast, homemade strawberry rhubarb and a little less than 1 third of a banana (mashed so 4 out of her 9 morning pills can be crushed and mixed in). The rest of the banana is to be left on the table next to her for her morning snack sometime between 9 and 10:30. Her breakfast is to be served to her with each item on its own plate and two spoons, one for the remaining pills to rest on and one for the strawberry rhubarb to be spooned in with the mashed banana and pills. Any attempt to do this part myself would result in what she would consider a scolding.

The first thing I do when I reach the kitchen is turn on the teapot, which I usually fill with water the night before. I set the thermos next to the stove so when the water is hot enough, I can poor it in with the tea bag and milk. After I put the teapot over a flame, I move to put the toast into the toaster before mashing less than one third of a banana when I hear the sound of walker shuffling along the rug towards the kitchen.

“There’s no way she put her pants, shirt, shoes and socks on that fast.” I thought to myself. And sure enough, she didn’t. She rounds the corner into the kitchen with the speed and agility of a Penguin wearing her bathrobe, or as she calls it, her housecoat, her pants for the day and her slippers; half in her pajamas, half in her clothes for the day. We lock eyes as she slowly makes her way to the table; the shuffling of her walker and slippers making what can only be described as a soft-shoe rhythm plotted out a 4 year-old. She says nothing to me as she sits down at the table to wait for her breakfast.

“I’m not done yet, you still have plenty of time.” I tell her.

“I don’t want to eat my breakfast cold! And you’re not going to wait so I may as well eat it now.” She says back to me. Rather than argue with her over the matter, I let her sit there and watch me finish making her breakfast. Originally, I thought she would realize by watching me that she did actually have plenty of time to finish dressing for the day. However, this process would require self-reflection and contemplating the fact that she might be wrong, two facets of reason that she simply does not possess any longer, and after talking to her family, I don’t know if she ever did.

Whenever you have a disagreement with Eleanor, it doesn’t matter how you handle the discussion, the result will always be the same; she’s right, you’re wrong, and she’ll forget what it is you were disagreeing about the next day. When Eleanor IS wrong, the discussion ends with a two-pronged reaction. The first; the internal prong, is her solidifying her wrong opinion or statement as true fact in her own mind followed what I can only assume to be a few explicit words aimed in my direction but never uttered allowed, because direct confrontation or simply stating a problem she has with you directly to your face isn’t her way, it must be told to you by one of the five other people she tells, whether asked about it or not. The second prong of the reaction is external, and is akin to something along the lines of an involuntary defense wild animals have developed over generations of evolution; the needles of a porcupine or smell of a skunk to keep predators at bay. While Eleanor’s external reactionary defense to ending a disagreement on the losing end isn’t as cool, it is just as much cause for study; her posture changes to an even more Quasimodo-esque position and her face turns into a pout that a child would make, something one might call a “puppy-face”. However, the features of her elderly face beguile any actual chance at the trickery of cuteness and the effect is negated. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this reactionary defense is that I honestly don’t believe she’s aware that she does it.

After I had set the table with everything that wasn’t the tea, I moved to the teapot and lifted it to pour into the thermos. “What are you doing?” she asked in an accusatory tone.

“Making your thermos of tea for the day.”

“No. No. No. It’s too late for that.” She tells me.

“What do you mean too late?”

“You have to get up at 5 o’clock otherwise the whole thing is ruined.” She said with a straight face. “Don’t bother now, it won’t be right.” She added. “Just give it to me in a tea cup.”

For one of the few times in my life, my brain couldn’t process what I had just heard. I simply froze in a state of contemplation and shock. After allowing my brain a few micro-seconds to reboot, I looked her right in the eye; the teapot and thermos still in my hands as I stood in the middle of the kitchen. I made sure to speak in a voice that was loud enough for Melanie to hear down the hall if she was still lying awake in bed but tepid enough not to come across as yelling.

“Let me see if I understand this, what you just said. You’re telling me that if I don’t make tea for the thermos at 5 O’Clock in the morning, it will not come out right? And that despite it being in a thermos, it will lose its temperature at a much faster rate? If I make it at any other time it won’t even taste right. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Eleanor took two seconds for either reflection (doubtful) or to process what I had just asked her.

“Yes.” She said.

I suddenly found myself asking the question “how the Hell did we get to this point?” but stopped before I could even finish the thought because the only thing I could do to keep from explaining everything that was wrong with what she just said was simply to pour the tea into her cup, put the thermos away and rather than start my day, I just climbed back into bed.

A Stroke of Genius

On June 3rd, 2011, Eleanor Brophy had a stroke. On June 22nd, 2011, we moved in. And now, a month later, we start documenting our experiences of what it's like taking care of this Canadian Octogenarian living in Framingham, Massachusetts. Long story short, it's like taking care of a cranky baby who wishes for the sweet release of death, but upon his arrival, would complain that she doesn't very much care for the color of his robes or the manner in which he glided into the room.

It should be noted that Eleanor did not have a serious stroke, although the idea of any stroke not being serious is somewhat absurd, however, the doctors constantly used the term "minor." And, I suppose, it was minor. When Eleanor fell at 4.A.M. in the morning she was able to grip the white capsule of plastic around her neck and have a full conversation with the people on the other end of the lifeline; like the famous, if not laughable commercial, she had fallen and couldn't get up. She didn’t know she had a stroke, she just thought she fell. The rescue team was dispatched and she was taken to the nearest hospital where she was admitted and treated for a fall and then sent to a rehabilitation facility a few towns over the next day.

Eleanor has no children of her own, only nieces and nephews. When her family went to visit her, they noticed a slight slur in her usually cantankerous speech, and Susan Hardy, her nephew's wife, being a Psychological Nurse, immediately knew she had had suffered a stroke and arranged for the facility to send her off to a different hospital for an MRI, which, sure enough, detected "a very minor stroke." 

Eleanor, never Ellie, was returned to the rehabilitation center where her blood pressure was monitored closely, but continued treatment only for her initial fall. When strokes happen, they just happen and then they pass, sometimes taking the life of their victim with them. In Eleanor's case, as she's often whispered from the side of her dry, chapped lips, she wishes she had "been so lucky" as to have left with the stroke, and only now, after a month of living with her, do we have some fraction of understanding as to why. It isn't that Eleanor is in a lot of pain, she isn't, she's actually more comfortable than a fat, white Senator who sold the property the local orphanage was on to Wal-Mart. It's that she is, in fact, (and scientists would agree if they cared about such things) the most miserable person on the planet with absolutely no reason to be. She is so unpleasant that if misery were currency, she would be able to buy and sell Warren Buffett ten times over and still have enough left over to ruin Christmas just for kicks.

The trouble with Eleanor was apparent to everyone else but me, even when the idea of this situation was first introduced.

"I was thinking," Susan said to her daughter Melanie and I, "why don't you two move in with Auntie? She's going to need a caretaker and the services for that kind of thing are really, really expensive. Why not let her pay you guys. Move in and make some money." 

Mel had squinted her eyes and made a grumbling noise akin to what Marge Simpson would make when Homer had done something foolish, which, in Homer's case, is a daily thing. That low moan has haunted me every day since then, and after what I can only describe as "careful deliberation" Mel and I agreed to move into Auntie's house and take care of her, splitting up the responsibilities. Melanie would become her medical proxy and power of attorney, handling all medical and financial affairs, and I would handle mostly everything else; the day-to-day chores, meals, shopping, trips to the doctor, and, as an addendum grandfathered in later, listening to, and putting up with some of the most insufferable nonsense this side of the Lifetime Network's Movie of the Week. And I'm including the one where Brian Dennehy is supposed to be believable as some kind of action hero detective. 

A great deal of debate went on within Eleanor’s family about what to do with her. She didn’t want to go into a home… yet. Her husband Jim had passed several years earlier from Cancer. She had no children of her own and Sterling, one of her two brothers, was distant, both physically and emotionally. So distant, in fact, that rather than simply call his sister for a rare “How are you?”, he sends her hand written letters from Washington State that I have to read out loud to her because of her poor vision and blind right eye. They were so matter-of-fact informative that there should have been a footer at the bottom with the phrase “Dictated but not read.” Gordon, her other brother, and his wife Alice (Parents of Nelson and Kevin, grandparents to Melanie and Bailey) were making most of the decisions for her at the time and supported Sue’s plan to have Melanie and I live with Eleanor as caretakers under the guideline that at any point should we not be able to take it anymore, we leave while we can and put her into assisted living. Melanie and I were to be in charge of everything Eleanor did, and that meant being in charge of Eleanor, a concept that never quite got off the ground. The same can be said about the recovery process of the memory centers of her brain.

This plan would also work out well for Melanie as she worked in Framingham at the Public Access Television Station but lived in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. She spent an hour driving to work and an hour driving back, not to mention the 100 dollars a week on gas. In truth, I also needed the money. As a freelance filmmaker and production manager, work comes and goes, feast or famine, and the New England indie film scene had been dormant for some time. My other job prospects in the Non-Profit world were non-existent due to the shitty economy and my education certificate was only good in the state of New York and had since just expired. I had student loans to pay, expensive student loans that dominated every aspect of my life. The stress was crushing my soul. Our condition, to ourselves, was that we do it for no longer than a year. The money was simply too good for either Mel or myself to pass up and it would provide us the chance to spend more time together and work on ourselves as people, personally and professionally… or so we hoped.

Two days before Eleanor was to be discharged, Mel and I moved into her house. She was clearly a very particular woman. She had a garden that surrounded her entire house, it was apparently the envy of the neighbors; even the ones she had been feuding with over plants that had been spilling over into her yard. A garden like this required some serious upkeep, the kind that she wouldn’t be able to do anymore, and, as it turns out, hasn’t been able to do for sometime; she had been paying a person she called her “Handy Man” to do it for her.

During the move-in, Mel and I made room for a few of our things in a room her family referred to as “Pink Bedroom” as well as the kitchen, which was rugged, rather than tiled. We sorted a few things out but mostly ended up throwing food that had gone bad, and I don’t mean just bananas and spoiled milk. I mean jars of jam from 2002 and boxes of Jell-o from 1979. (I kept one to use as a prop.) At first I chalked this up to the stereotype of elderly people never throwing anything out, but after later spending time with Eleanor, the line between stereotype and batshit crazy began to blur.

And the Jams. Ohhhh the Jams. Eleanor had been making her own Jams and Jellies since the first Bell Jars rolled off the assembly line. Grape, Peach, Orange, Strawberry, Strawberry Rhubarb. There was a room in her basement DEDICATED to Jam. A shrine to the pagan fruit gods. When I first saw the room I already knew she had done the work herself but in my mind I imagined a gaggle of persnickety grandmothers churning out jams by the boxful every day. Little poor children with coal covered cheeks and plaid caps would press their faces against the cold glass windows of the factory in the dead of winter, hoping that one of the older women might have a heart kind enough to butter a slice of bread and spread even just a spoonful of jam on it, presenting it to them with open arms and a warm smile, and just when one of the braver, more modestly raised older women would get to the door with that sweet, buttery, strawberry coated, toasty warm bread, Eleanor, the manager, would march up to her, speeding out of the shadows like an Arabian Viper and smack it out of her hand so it lands buttered side down on the floor, after which she would immediately terminate the kinder old lady’s employment, sending her out into the snow and shoo the poor little children away, telling them they’ve dirtied her windows with their greasy fingerprints and slowly dying breathes.

And then there were the doilies. On every. Single. Surface in the house. She even had doilies lining the drawers, and even on the drawer where she stored the doilies themselves. “This whole house is one big, fucking doily!” Mel yelled; frustrated with seeing the lacy paper circles everywhere she turned. Rather than continue unpacking, Mel began what I can only describe as a Jihad against these pretty pieces of paper. I wasn’t a huge fan of them myself, but Mel developed and Ahab-like obsession with their destruction. If the walls of the house had been made of steel, she would have napalmed the whole damn place, burning everything else in the process. I didn’t know then what I know now; that Melanie’s family all had their fill of Auntie Eleanor’s misery and particulars and Mel was no exception. Auntie had been frustrating Mel and she wasn’t even home yet.

June 22^nd. Cold. Damp. Grey. What I imagine Hell might feel like. Or rather, Martha Stewart’s Hell. We arrived at the rehabilitation facility. There she was, like a decrepit, golden Pharoh, sitting in a wheel chair, clutching her purse, next to a pile of treasured files and boxes. Dragons hording gold could learn a thing or two from Eleanor Brophy. These files, mind you, were not life saving medical files; no, these were her taxes, which she requested be brought to her in the rehabilitation center two weeks earlier. "I'm ready to go." she said.

"Yes, we can see that Auntie." Mel replied as the doctor and nurse entered with her discharge paperwork and to give us the 411 on what would become known as "Auntie's Pill Playbook". As we wheeled Auntie out of the room, she looked to us saying very loudly, "They took too long getting me out of here. I don’t think they did it right" well within earshot of the doctor and nurse. I couldn’t tell if she wanted them to hear her or if she just had no concept of how to control her voice, but clearly, either way, for lack of a better term, she did not give a fuck.

Mel, aware that Auntie had the general disposition of a Holocaust survivor who chose to stay in Germany after the war, brushed off the comment while I was initially shocked by her bluntness. As time passed, this behavior would continue to reveal itself to me as an uncaring rudeness that Eleanor simply wasn't aware she was doing, and if she was aware she was doing it, this woman had bigger balls than Teddy Roosevelt.

"I guess the stroke really affected her attitude." I said to Mel.

"HA!" she replied, and pushed Auntie onto the elevator, and only now do I look back on that moment and realize how much Mel wished she was pushing Auntie into an open elevator shaft instead.

The ride from the Rehabilitation Facility back to Eleanor’s house was perhaps the most pleasant time we’d had together. Eleanor was telling us how happy she was to be going home, and at one point I started to question whether or not they gave her anything to help her mood as I have not seen her smile as much since. She went on about the housework that needs to be done and, before she began to turn things around by complaining about everything she experienced over the last month, how much she was looking forward to moving into assisted living after she filed her income taxes in 2012. April 2012. She could do it earlier, but with her it MUST be April 2012. Any other time simply won’t do.

Eleanor’s goal was to be a resident at St. Patrick’s Manor, a very upper crust retirement home; the kind of place Dukes and Duchesses would be kept if the U.S. had them. Auntie had visited two of Jim’s Aunts who stayed there decades ago and her memories of it are very pleasant, but there-in lies the rub; Jim’s two Aunts were pleasant and treated everyone there with the same respect they would expect. Auntie Eleanor, on the other hand, is not pleasant. She believes this place to be her Shangri-La when in reality it’s more like the Catholic Purgatory; you’ll only be treated as kindly as you treat others. And, perhaps even more like the Catholic Heaven, as there is a waiting list to get in. Up to a year, and even then she’d need a recommendation from a doctor stating she was unable to live on her own, which isn’t entirely the case. She’ll have nothing to do, no one to tell what to do, and no one to talk to. As I write this, I realize only one of those things will actually upset her, the part about having no one to tell what to do. She’ll be the one who is being told what to do; a rude awakening for sure. As for the other two things I mentioned, she actually spends most of her time staring off into space (or complaining, she really does enjoy it, I can see it in her one good eye.) or silently knitting, and she both likes and loathes talking to people all at the same time. Rather, I should say, she likes talking and hates listening.

Despite her minor stroke, she’s remarkably mobile; like a mouse being chased into it’s hole by an old Italian woman with a broom. There are times when I turn corners in the house and expect her to jump out at me, asking for a snack while yelling like a Navajo Indian waving around a tomahawk. “Aye-Aye-Aye-Aye-Aye Give me crackers!” Most of the time, however, she often shambles and scuttles about with her walker; the quiet, almost whispered sound of tennis balls slowly shuffling along the rug; her unintended way of letting us know, almost ominously, that… she’s coming. The quiet sound has often caused Mel and I to stop our conversation and try and figure out which direction she’s moving in as we hope to avoid the cloud of misery she carries with her. Every now and then though, when she’s impatient, which is every moment she breathes, so I mean to say when she’s REALLY impatient, she’ll speed around the house with her walker faster than a bloated southern housewife does to turn the television on at 4pm in time for Dr. Phil… which Eleanor sometimes watches.

When Eleanor does finally go to a home, she’s going to be surprised. Despite being told by both myself and Melanie, by Sue, by Gordon and Alice, by Doctors and Nurses, Eleanor believes that Assisted Living at St. Patrick’s Manor will something akin to being waited on hand and foot. She never witnessed this ideal herself, but her memories of Jim’s pleasant Aunts being pleasant while they stayed there waiting for Death to sneak up on them like a creepy pedophile, in combination with the word Manor in the location’s letterhead, has lead Eleanor to believe that everyone is wrong about it but her, which is a common mentality she carries around with her, next to her social security card and GenTeal Brand Eye Drops. Due to a history of similar behavior in my own family, I am used to the “I’m right, you’re wrong, even with proof” brand of thinking that Eleanor has. Melanie, on the other hand, is not used to this, and I don’t know if she ever will be. But I do suppose that’s a good thing, as I like to think that means she hasn’t been tainted by the kind of extreme light and dark upbringing I’ve had.

While living with Eleanor over the past month, despite the ups and downs, I have come to understand the value of youth, luckily, while I’m still young. 27. That’s still a young age. Most people over 35 would say they’d “Kill” to be 27 again. I’m not in perfect shape, but neither is Eleanor, and it has given me the drive to reach 83 with strength and dignity; the motivation to value every step I can take at a regular pace and to live some kind of even slightly happy life so that when I do get to be her age, I don’t look back on my life and think “Well, what the Hell was that for?” I don’t know what makes Eleanor Brophy so unhappy, no one seems to, but I intend to find out so that I can avoid those mistakes and to live the rest of my life, starting at age 27.