And, without notice ("Next Week", I was told) he's moved.
I don't know what I expected. "Extended Care", I imagined a room of his own, communal facilities, a nurse or helper to ensure he was getting his laundry washed, the care he needed.
Wow.
This was not it. Similar to the hospital, a room, shared with 3 others, curtains for privacy, elevated hospital beds, a locker for his possessions.
If you've never been to one, go. Now. This is what it's like to be old and poor. And the people there - any of them - all of them - they need company. Anyone. Everyone. This isolate the elderly, remove them from the community - it's a dystopian nightmare framed as socialism - it's fucking hell.
Fucking bloody hell.
It was good I had my son along, because it was a pretty quick agreement that if things get to this point - and - never say never, life has that sense of irony, and - I bear witness, I'm a smoker - and hard-living alcoholic - and - if you knew me before I became one you knew how unlikely it was - so - grim, but possible - take me up the mountain, let me out with a backpack, a few packs of cigarettes and a bottle of Vodka, and don't organize a search party for a few weeks.
'cause I can take care of myself.
And taking care of myself would be better than this.
I think Stormy agrees as well, only he doesn't have the nerve. I get that. It's not an easy decision. Never an easy decision, and - framing it with the right presence of mind - this - well, Buddhists spend their whole life preparing. It's not an easy thing.
The home, grimly connected to the hospital, we're arriving close to lunch, 11:00 AM, there's a couple of dozen people in their wheelchairs in front of the TV. The big communal TV.
This is grim.
None of them alive, even vaguely, merely old with the blood pumping through them via hidden mechanics under their wheelchairs, gaping, dead smiles and grimaces, it's a fucking horror show. You could easily imagine them being kept alive solely to give their pensions to the home. And his room - like at the hospital - shared with 3 others. It's what I imagine a hospice to be like, only I have no word that he's dying, only - well, this is no place for the living so I have to presume the worst. And the literature I read - well, dire, true, but not so dire as this.
Halloween should be celebrated here. They would like that. The ghouls of old age and infirmity.
And to think I had hopes he would lead their art classes.
I tell my son afterwards, he gets it, he's in agreement, it's a living will of sorts, dad's last big prospecting trip, he can drive me up the mountain and pick me up in a week.
***
Today day, grey and dismal, raining, the clouds are smudging into the trees a few hundred feet above Nelson. Read the paper, missing people, always, it's seasonal, you know, intuitively, instinctively - why and how - and this grim settling of spiritual beliefs, this reconciling of good Karma, bad Karma, lives well and poorly lived, people victims of the pandemic, economies well out of their control - and feeling the pain of everyone that lives here - and dies here - it is legion - it's the pain of affordable housing, jobs, decent pay, security, friendship, it's the loss of the old world, in with the new, it's the same pain felt the world over, only here - it's under a magnifying glass, everything is - well, more than ordinary. More than it should be.
Today, again, this time via the bus, almost four hours on the bus for a 40 minute visit.
(Refinery/Smelter above Trail. No matter where you look...)
The trees, the white birch and evergreen and the others, fruit and nut trees with overgrown moss hanging from every limb, against the immediate closing in of the fog, white, grey, claustrophobic, I imagine, riding, a corpse hanging from every tree, for this - lush as it is, it marks the end of days.
But today he's lucid, I find him - not in his room, or in the communal area watching TV, not at the art table doing art with the rest of them, but off on his own at the end of a long corridor in his wheelchair looking out the window. He's glad to see me - it's been 3 weeks since he had a cigarette. Actually, it was last Sunday, and I correct him gently, but I know, I know, it doesn't matter.
I wheel him outside - he wants a cigarette. They took his cigarettes from him when he first arrived - and - really - why? I understand, not indoors, but here - at the end of his life - to deny him what he regards as a luxury - is wrong.
That's it.
We go outside and make it off to the edge of the parking lot. He's got a plan. A SCHEME. Stormy's scheme. That I'm going to bust him out of there, we have to leave his wheelchair - he can walk fine - don't you know - he's been keeping it secret - THEY don't know- and -
We're gonna take all of his money out of the bank and drive to Campbell River and live with my son....
Hmmmm.
I'm not so sure about this. It would make a great movie - for sure - or biography - or documentary - but - bloody hell -
Maybe not. Maybe not now. But I get it - we gotta bust you outta here!!! (And - spoiler - they have a passcode at the elevator - so that residents don't escape!!!!"