They Left Us Everything (18 page)

Dad developed forgetfulness fourteen years before he died. His short-term memory wasn’t good at the best of times (he could never get our names straight), but the first hint that it might be more serious was when he began insisting on driving on the “British” side of the road and mistaking red lights for stop signs. He kept passing the driver’s test, but it was a written test; they never took him out on the road. We children went to great lengths to have his driving licence revoked, and it infuriated him. When we sold his car and asked for his powers of attorney, he went ballistic.

Victor said to him, “But Dad—what if you go completely gaga?”

“Then that, sir,” roared Dad in his clipped British accent, “is a pleasure we shall have to enjoy when the time comes!”

Those “pleasures” came soon enough. At our next Sibling Supper, we put Dad’s banking on our agenda. Dad—who had always run a tight ship and kept meticulous financial records—was going on spending sprees with his debit card.
He was walking two blocks to the bank every day just to have twenty dollars on hand when one of his favourite charities came knocking on the door. They were knocking with alarming frequency, as if his door had become their new ATM. It was also noted that Dad was going to the town hall and paying his annual land taxes—in full—every month. Unusual packages from the Publishers Clearing House started avalanching through the mail slot. Along with magazines, Dad was receiving clock radios and gold lockets—prizes proving he could still paste the right sticker on the right square when ordered to. Eventually his bank account ran dry.

Victor and I went to Dad’s bank and asked them to create an “Alzheimer’s debit card,” something the bank—we found out—had never considered.

“We want an Alzheimer’s account,” said Victor to the teller. “You know … like a fake account … with only a little in it … maybe two hundred dollars.”

“A fake account?” repeated the teller, blanching. “I’m sorry, sir, but the bank doesn’t offer such a thing.”

“Look,” said Victor, “our father can’t manage his finances … I have his power of attorney.”

“Oh, well then,” she smiled, “we’ll just give him a joint account with you … but he can’t have a debit card. He’ll need your signature whenever he withdraws funds.”

“No, no, we don’t want that!” I said. “We don’t want Dad to feel like he has to come to us for permission every time he wants spending money. A debit card is his favourite thing! We just want to safeguard his money—don’t you understand?”

But the teller’s eyes had glazed over. “You’ll have to speak to head office,” she said.

And so it went—for weeks—until we finally found a friendly
bank manager who was willing to bend the rules. Victor and I filled out reams of paperwork. We got Dad a lovely new debit card that he put in his wallet. We had all the household bills redirected to Victor’s address and told charities that we’d send them Dad’s annual contribution, but to please stop knocking on a weekly basis. So then Dad began redirecting his charitable giving to me.

I reported at our next Sibling Supper that Dad had gotten it into his head—about fifty years too late, in my opinion— that I could use some extra cash. Every time he saw me he’d put his arms around me and whisper in my ear, “You look like you could use some extra money, First Daughter—am I right?”

Initially I demurred, but he looked so hurt when I turned him down that I realized he still needed to feel like a provider, so I began accepting his generosity.

“Thanks, Dad! That would help a lot!”

He’d smile with pride, immediately walk up to the bank, hand his debit card to the teller, and walk home with a twentydollar bill. It gave him such pleasure that I took it gratefully. Then I returned it to Victor, who re-deposited it in Dad’s account. Our fake Alzheimer’s account was working like a dream—until the bank hired a new teller.

When Dad next walked in, she looked at her computer screen and said brightly, “Sir, my records show you have two accounts—this one, which doesn’t have much money in it … and … wait a minute … yes—this second account, which has much more! It’s costing you extra to maintain the two. Wouldn’t you rather consolidate them?”

“Oh, yes!” said Dad. “Thank you very much indeed!”

About this time, Dad took me aside privately to extract a promise. I was standing by my car getting ready to drive back
to Toronto when he asked me to come into the garage. After fidgeting a bit, he said quietly, “I’m going gaga, you know.”

“Yes, Dad, I know.”

He looked down at his feet. “I’ve been to visit people in those places where they put people like me,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re horrible places!”

“It’s okay, Dad, you don’t need to worry.”

“Oh, but I think I do, First Daughter … I don’t want to go into one of those.”

“You won’t, Dad. I promise you. We won’t send you anywhere.”

I reminded Dad that we were well practised in home care because of Sandy. Dad’s head jerked up and his nostrils flared—a look I knew so well—and then the subtle sucking in of breath, the sound of his pulling himself together when emotion threatened to overwhelm him.

“I promise you, Dad,” I repeated, “I promise you. You’re going to stay right here until the day you die.”

He grabbed me and hugged me for a long while and then thumped me hard on the back. “Thank you,” he whispered into my ear.

I’d always hoped that, if there were any justice in the world, Dad’s life would end in a more kindly fashion than it had begun; that instead of deprivation he’d have plenty, instead of grief and loneliness he’d be surrounded by love. I felt he had earned this. In fact, I felt he was still owed some—in God’s books—on the plus side of the ledger.

Dad was only fifteen years old when the boarding school headmaster called him into his office. “I regret to inform you that your father has died,” the headmaster said offhandedly. “To whom shall we send your bills?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What about your mother?”

“My mother is dead, sir.”

“Blast!” said the headmaster.

Dad had been born into the British ex-pat community of Oporto, Portugal, where his father was a partner in a shipping firm that exported wine to Canada. They lived in a grand villa overlooking the port on the River Douro, but when Dad was an infant his mother died and his father remarried. According to Dad, the new wife rejected the role of stepmother and issued an ultimatum—“It’s me or the children”—so Grandfather sent Dad and his older siblings to England to live in a rented house with a hired governess, Miss Penfold. Dad saw his father only twice after that, and never saw his stepmother again. Ten years later, a tsunami off the coast of Newfoundland wiped out the uninsured shipping fleet and the family was plunged into bankruptcy. The stepmother had run off with the manager and Dad’s father died of a heart attack.

Miss Penfold was the one who picked Dad up from boarding school. Creditors arrived at their rented house in England and stripped it of any furnishings worth selling. But Miss Penfold continued to make a home for Dad and his orphaned siblings, finding odd jobs to earn income. She remained a spinster and spent the rest of her life treating the children as her own. Dad carried her photograph with him everywhere.

Forced to leave school, Dad found work as an office boy in London. He bicycled to and from his rented room at a
boarding house, reading discarded newspapers from trash bins and studying for insurance exams at night. His one social activity—because it was free—was joining a rowing club on the Thames, although he denied himself the drink with his mates later at the pub: he couldn’t afford it. When he was twenty he won the top prize from the Institute of London Underwriters, leading to a job with the New Zealand Insurance Company. They sent him overseas, to their Singapore office. But he wasn’t there long before World War II broke out.

In 1939, at the age of twenty-four, Dad was mobilized into the Malay section of the Royal Navy Reserves. In 1942, when Singapore fell to the Japanese, he made a daring escape with fellow officers in a small native sailing vessel. From Malaya they crossed the Indian Ocean and were rescued off the coast of Ceylon. After eluding Japanese dive bombers, Dad would soon be introduced to Mum. They both believed their meeting was preordained; there were just too many coincidences.

They liked to tell the story of how, when Dad was rescued, the ship was prophetically called the
Anglo-Canadian,
piloted by a Captain Williams—no relation but with the same last name as Mum’s. Dad was then transferred to another ship called the
Duchess of Richmond
—the city where Mum was born. It was bound for New York City—where Mum was living. Dad was to have only a three-day layover before continuing to Europe, but his ship was unaccountably delayed. In a chance encounter, he met a fellow officer in an elevator who was on his way to Mum’s apartment for a date with her roommate. He invited Dad to come along. Mum didn’t want a date—she was in pyjamas and hair curlers—but when she learned that Dad had been born on her father’s birthday, she changed her mind.

Before Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he could remember all these events in great detail. Several books had been written about his famous escape across the Indian Ocean, and he took pride in correcting the authors’ accounts by making notes in the margins of his editions. But in his final years, he wasn’t sure who any of us were.

At the kitchen table, he would lean towards Mum, tap her on the elbow, and point across to Victor.

“Who is that young man?”

Irritated, she would say, “He’s my son!”

“Really? How fascinating!”

Then he’d turn to me and say, “Did you know your mother had given birth to a son? She never ceases to amaze me!”

Other times, Dad would make Mum blush. He’d lean back in his chair, point to Mum, and say to me, “Look at that woman over there … the way the light catches her hair … isn’t she beautiful?”

Then two seconds later, he’d turn to Mum and ask, “Have you seen my wife?”

As time passed, our Sibling Suppers grew more urgent. We still shared our personal concerns about Dad, and commiserated with each other about all the demanding, early-morning phone calls from Mum, but now we were entering a new phase. There were staffing requirements to consider and medical matters to understand. It wasn’t just the latest information on Alzheimer’s we had to learn and assess; now we had to worry about its effect on Mum. Living with Dad tested her patience to the limit. She craved intelligent conversation, but he was no longer capable of providing any. She worried about him all the time.

One weekend when I was staying with them, we were
awakened after midnight by a commotion on the lakefront. We could hear loud voices and beer bottles being smashed on the rocks. Dad got out of bed and marched out the front door, wearing nothing but his sarong and slippers.

“For God’s sake, stop him!” Mum said to me. “It’s not like the old days—those kids could have weapons!”

I ran to the window on the second-floor landing and peered out. The loud voices had died down and I could see shadowy figures in the moonlight. Dad was quietly talking to the teenagers and I heard him say things like “clean up” and “noise” and “respect for other people.” Then I heard him raise his voice.

“It’s not ‘Whatever’—it’s ‘Yes, sir!’”

“Yes, sir!” all the teenage voices repeated.

I turned to Mum and smiled. “We don’t need to worry about Dad!”

I frequently spent weekends with Dad so Mum could have a break, but by Sunday night I felt like I was losing my mind. Mum was living with this on a daily basis, so I was surprised she was still sane. Of course, this was in question.

Dad’s memory seemed to have completely lost its foothold. It slid all over the place. While he couldn’t recall an event of five minutes earlier, he could recall an event of seventy years ago, in great detail. At Sibling Suppers, I described for the boys the drives Dad and I took together. Dad told me tales of his youth as if it were yesterday, simultaneously sprinkling those memories with the slogans he was reading off billboards and storefronts as we drove by. Sometimes he’d just recite licence plate numbers. It was a curious habit. Was it his way of anchoring himself in the here and now? I didn’t know.

One Saturday, in early summer, I thought if I could engage
him in gardening it might help. He used to love it so much— especially his pumpkin patch. So I put him in the car and we drove to the gardening centre.

“So, you want to plant persimmons, I understand?” asked Dad.

“No, we’re going to plant pumpkins, Dad.”

“Ah,” he said, “I remember when I was eighteen … in digs in London. You know what ‘digs’ are?”

“Your old boarding house in 1932?”

“Exactly. There were ten of us. I was the only one who had a room to myself. Mrs. Goldsmith ran it. She had a daughter named Puck. It was in Streatham … and I had to walk about three miles to the tube to take me into the city.”

This was the longest-running sentence I’d heard Dad make in weeks, so I tried to probe for more. With a bit of luck, he’d be on a roll.

“What was Puck like?” I asked.

“She had dark hair and I had a bit of a crush on her. Do you know Plum?”