But I would know

I came to visit my father. I stayed for everyone else.

Leaving the nursing home today, I spotted Dave’s jigsaw puzzle in the lounge, about a third finished.

It was a 500-piece puzzle dedicated to classic junk food. There was a box of macaroni and cheese, various soda pops and, my favorite, a box of Cap’n Crunch cereal.

Dave wasn’t in his usual place at the table. So I decided to leave him a message embedded in the puzzle.

He’d know it was me, too. Because whenever I visited, I always jammed the wrong piece in the wrong place.

“It doesn’t go there,” he’d tell me, swatting my hand away as I tried to squeeze it in.

“It’s blue,” I’d protest.

But he’d have nothing of it. Every piece had to be in its right place.

“People may not notice it,” he’d say. “But I would know.”

Honestly, I just liked the way he smiled. It came easy to him. “You’ve got to be positive.”

And boy did he have stories. Like how he built his collection of 15,000 records.

“My mom started buying them for me from the bargain bin at the old Zellers. Thirty cents a pop!” There was no feeling quite like placing his prize on the record player when he got home.

He was a bright-eyed, solitary boy. Later, he’d get a job repairing radios at a downtown shop. Then he’d get married.

“She died of lung cancer,” he said, matter-of-factly. “She smoked a lot.”

The death of his second wife, though, would still give him pause.

“Dementia,” he explained. “I’ve never seen anything like that. For two weeks, she just stopped speaking. I would visit her and hold her hand and tell her I loved her. But not a word. Until she was gone.”

Then he’d gently pinch my hand as I tried to sneak in a blue piece in the water section of the puzzle.

“That’s for the sky,” he’d gently chide, beaming again.

Today, in his absence, I was going to do something spectacular. I’d squash a piece from the Cracker Jack section dead in the middle of the popcorn section. Maybe even two pieces!

Where was Dave, anyway?

He was probably my favorite resident at the home. Though he had stiff competition. So many people here. So many stories.

The nursing home has become my favourite thrift store. I never know what treasure I'll uncover whenever I visit.

If I’m ranking favourite residents, Dad probably comes somewhere in the middle. Mostly by default. He spends his days in bed, staring at the TV and asking, “How did I end up here?”

Once, I confessed to a woman in the dementia ward that I’d hit pause on my life and gone back to school.

“Oh,” she smiled. “I understand that completely.”

She talked about going back to school — Brock University — and being the oldest student in her class.

“And I had four kids at home!”

Should I tell her how I really spent much of my adult life? Why not? She’d forget anyway. But another woman interrupted.

“You have beautiful teeth!” she sang from her wheelchair.

“Why, thank you,” I answered. “Let’s see what you’ve got! Smile!”

Big mistake.

“Healthy gums!” I declared, moving along.

But before I could leave, a spritely old gal asked me for a dance.

“A dance? Okay… but I only know the mashed potat—-”

Too late. She had locked arms with me and we twirled to Perry Como on TV.

Papa loves mambo…

She kicked up her legs, one at a time.

Having their fling again

Younger than spring again

She turned around. Time for our posteriors to bump up against each other.

She was nimble, and very forgiving. My mom was with me at the time. She wanted to take pictures. But this stuff isn’t for Instagram. It’s for us, right here in this moment.

Mama loves mambo…

When Perry Como finally faded, I slumped into a chair, exhausted. I wondered whether Dave had finished another corner of his puzzle while I was gone.

Suddenly, towering above me, stood the same woman.

“Would you like to dance?”

Imagine the partners she ran ragged in the course of her life.

My father would have liked her. If he wasn’t so vacant. And there was that other woman he met at the retirement home: Eunice.

“We’re moving in together!” he declared practically the moment they met. And my first thought was gold digger. No, wait. My first thought was, Dad, you’re an idiot.

They never fully moved in together. But Eunice grew on me. She was born in England. She had lost two husbands. Painfully. Her room was like an antique shop, bristling with heavy wooden furniture, porcelain figurines and framed black and whites from her past.

She hated that my dad watched CNN all the time. She missed Coronation Street. But they really did care about each other. They were always holding hands and kissing in a way that makes some people uncomfortable. They were separated when my dad was moved into a more intensive care wing of the residence. She pines for him. Mostly, my dad can’t remember her.

“Eunice?” he asked me once. “Who’s that?”

“Remember?” I insisted. “Your girlfriend. You’ve got her picture on the mantle.”

Eunice has an even bigger portrait of him, taped to her wall like a heartthrob in a teen magazine. “I kiss it every day,” she says, holding back tears.

My dad remembered her eventually.

“I’m working on allowing her to visit,” I tell him.

My dad got silent for a minute: “That would mean a lot to me.”

When I tell Eunice that she’ll see him again — and that the whole staff at the home thinks it’s cruel that they’ve been separated, she breaks into tears and hugs and hugs and hugs.

I hope they find each other again before the end.

But what about Dave? His chair sat empty, and somehow the whole room looked wrong. I’d become so used to finding him bent over that puzzle. The whole picture suddenly made less sense.

He’d never abandon his post. Not for this long.

Unless…

I held a mismatched piece over the puzzle.

Maybe Dave was never coming back.

The pieces in this place are always disappearing.

That wouldn’t be fair. His puzzle wasn’t finished.

A gentle hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up to see Dave’s wide grin. His perfectly coiffed white hair.

“That piece doesn’t go there.”