Perhaps a Word Of Explanation

I want to go on record as I begin this blog that everything that is being written here is, more or less, going to be used to provide the basis for a novel (currently #1 on the ole bucket list) tenetatively titled, Waking Up Among the Eaters or just Among the Eaters.  So, if you are inclined to 'borrow', don't.  And if you respond to anything I write, let me know if I may use it or you would like to restrict its use for further publication also.
And thank you for reading.

First, how did we get here?  I suppose I need to confess.  All right, here goes:  I'm not a geek.  Actually, those who know me, know me as the guy that gets shoved aside, falls on the floor while the shover geek, sneers down at me, "Get up and let ME show you how to do it!" 

Now that I've written that paragraph, it looks a bit lame what with all the ordinary folks blogging these days, but still, if my friend Lou in San Francisco had not shown me how to set this baby up, I would not now be eager to powder and diaper the little sucker, to use a particularly bad metaphor.  So here goes, with many thanks to Louie.

I think to start with I should explain the title.  I have borrowed it from my father, who passed away at a nursing home in Springfield, Pa. last year at the ripe old age of 94.  Dad was always colorful, a frustrated journalist who never actually answered the call of the fifth estate, and, as a result kept writing colorfully frustrating invective to the op-ed pages of the Philadelphia Enquirrer for 30-some odd years.  He was a tile man, who wore out his knees in the service to thousands of businesses and homes in the greater Philly environs.  But the quote, his quote.

Not to get into any serious family dirt, but Ed (dad) had been placed in a home by my one remaining sister. He had generally been disgustingly healthy most of his life, but in the final 3 or 4 years his health had rapidly deteriorated to the point that he couldn't really walk without help anymore.  Heartbreaking for me because as a young boy I had seen him walk up a flight of stairs on his hands.  In the end, after one troubling and exhausting visit watching him hobble back from his bathroom, dragging his walker for the umpteenth time, he turned to me and said, "Gee, Ed (me), remember when I used to be strong?"

  My dad, garrulous talker that he was, had learned to be succinct. Strange.  I knew that we, the remaining family needed to address the issue of his care, but it was complicated.  For one thing, no one in the family, least of all my "I used to be strong' father wanted to address the 600 pound gorilla.  Dad had made sister his one and only legal guardian and that one remaining sister had, had her daughter, the husband, two children and two dogs living in dad's house rent free for the better part of 8 years.  What to do?  What for me to do living almost 600 miles away in Michigan?  This gets complicated so I'm going to 'cut to it' so to speak.  I decided not to acquiesce and sign the house over to my neice (my sister's grand design), and dad winds up in a nursing home very soon thereafter.  Now, this is not to imply that dad winding up in that home was the most objectionable thing that could have happened to him.  He actually got better care there than he would have received at home--my neice can't boil water without burning it.  But that is a whole nother kettle of fish.

After one aborted visit in which I was stopped in the hallway of the nursing home with a bag full of my dad's favorite cookies (my sister had asked the home to block any visits by me to my father), I finally was able to get into a rhythm of a visit every so often.  On one of the later visits I asked dad about his illness--he had Parkinson's the doctors opined.  He told me that when the spells came on it felt as if he were going cold inside and then he'd get very agitated, nervous for a time and then the feeling would pass.  We talked openly after the initial surprize and dislocation of his new surroundings had worn off, but we never discussed anything about the family.  He even took me off the proverbial hook for how he wound up in the home by telling me as candidly as he could manage that, "Yeah, Ed, I kept falling down so they had to put me here."
Thanks, dad, you knew instinctively what had happened,  and I hope that you also knew and respected the fact that I never spoke of my anger about the chicanery that surrounded your final days.

But the quote.  Almost forgot. Yes, the title of this blog and of a possible book.  On my unplanned, final visit to my dad we had been talking about whether he needed anything more from me.  A bigger tv in the room?  Some more delli food from Zingerman's?  Clothing, bathroom stuff?  "Nope, he said, nothing like that.  Everytyhing is ok here" and, after a significant pause, "but, you know, I don't know where they could have wound up. Do you remember those Belle Barth records (BBarth a Jewish nightclub performer who he had listened to for years)?"  Indeed, I remembered, having listened to them myself, memorizing jokes to take to school.  I told him that I would see what I could do after I got home to Michigan.  (With the aforementioned Lou's kind help, I did send them along.)

And then he said it, jokester/philosopher that he was.  If 'brevity is the soul of wit' then dad had finally assumed the role of Polonious: "You know, I never worry about nothing, as long as I wake up among the eaters."  I mumbled something about how I hoped he never thought we'd let that happen, but everything past his line was superfluous.  Remember the actor's rules, Edward: listen to your audience and exit on the tag line.  And what a remarkable tag line it was.  Bye pop.  Hope they've got knishes wherever you are.

So there you go, mates.  That's the long way around to the title and the quote from whence it came.  Stay turned, if you made it through this one, for the next installment, wherein we shall attempt to peruse the social landscape in areas in which I am known to be dangerous.