OhBoy & Mrs

McKenzie and I meet OhBoy's wife the first week our mother is a permanent resident of the Memory Unit. The building’s air conditioner tries to keep up with the above-average June heat, and Mrs. OhBoy sits next to her husband in the living room, trying to convince him to take the ice-cold “beer” she brought him for Father’s Day. As OhBoy stares at the nearby muted television, Mrs pokes the neck of the glass root beer bottle in his direction, then turns to us and winks. OhBoy glances at her, sighs “oh, boy,” and focuses his attention back on the television. After fifteen minutes of this routine, Mrs finally convinces him to play a game of checkers with her, and the pair of octogenarians scuttle to the dining room. 

We see Mrs OhBoy on Thanksgiving and again at Christmas.  She directs the turkey carver and scoots around the kitchen wearing a red Santa hat.  Each plate is piled high with vegetable greens, turkey, dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and whatever else will fit.  As Mrs deposits the mini-mountains in front of residents, she places a soft hand on their shoulders and whispers, “May God bless you.”  

During the next year Mrs visits the Unit often enough to know who we are, and she asks about Mother.  She chastises Nurse for not keeping an eye on OhBoy's blood sugar levels, and Nurse makes additional notes in the charts about the candy Mrs continues to bring for her husband.  One weekend, Mother and I join the couple in the living room to watch television.  We exchange the usual hellos, and after a few minutes watching Gilligan’s Island, Mrs. OhBoy leans off the edge of the love seat and tells me that our government is led by the devil.  This random claim unhinges my jaw, and a several seconds pass in silence.  When she explains that she got this information from the History Channel, I finally respond with “I think you should stop watching cable news.”  She doesn't say anything else, and we all continue to watch the 1960s tropical hijinks play out on the television. 

OhBoy shows very little change during the time my family knows him at the facility.  He wanders into the living room before supper and announces in a gruff tone, “I'm HUNGRY.”  Nurse tells him supper is almost ready, and he repeats, “I'm HUNGRY” every few minutes until his plate arrives.  To spice up the dialogue, he also comments on the weather

                 “Up, it's getting' cloudy... gonna rain”

 and sometimes sings a until Nurse brings him a plate

“Little boy blue won't you blow your horn.  Little boy blue won't you blow your horn... cows in the pasture, sheep in the barn; cows in the pasture, sheep in the barn.”

When he feels particularly rambunctious, his full, 1970s-style mustache twitches. 

  “I want some milk,” he announces to no one in particular. 

         “I want a glass of milk,” he says again as soon as he downs a full glass. 

Hot dog dinners bring new amusements.  From his spot at the dinner table, his voice booms, “I want a wiener.”  He sits up a little straighter in his chair and scans the room through half-squinted eyes.  If no one responds, he repeats, louder, “I want a wiener.”  Again the scan around the room, over the white-haired ladies at the next table who are ignoring him.  If he sees me watching, he smiles wryly and repeats his request. 

After dinner, he saunters into the living room or stands by the table and asks, to no one in particular, “Where do I go now?” 

Nurse points down one hallway and tells him his room is the third door on the left.  “Oh boy,” he grumbles as he shuffles past.  Inevitably, he will wind up in the room across the hall, which is the one shared by SweetRoll and my mother.  At least half a dozen times I enter the room and find him in my mother's bed, his size 12 sneakers arranged neatly at the end of the bed. 

“OhBoy, you are in the wrong room,” I practically shout.  He jumps up, wearing just his white undershirt, socks, and underwear, and scoots out.  “Take your shoes,” I order, pointing at them with shaking hands.  He backtracks, grabs them, and moves toward the door while mumbling, “oh boy.”  On a few occasions, SweetRoll complains Nurse that a strange man is sleeping in her bed and she wants to go home.  A few minutes after Nurse leaves to investigate, OhBoy darts across the hall to the safety of his room.

These patterns play out through the next holiday season, which brings more festivities and food, but fewer and fewer visits from Mrs.  The rumor around the facility is that she is having health problems. 

In the fall, my father and I participate in the community Alzheimer Walk. As we circle the indoor track at the local college, a gray-haired woman struggles with a walker in front of us.  We wait for a group of students to pass so we can get in the “fast” lane, and I notice that the woman looks familiar.  “Mrs OhBoy-- hello,” I say.  She frowns as she looks me over, her shoulders sagging forward and the wrinkles in her cheeks growing downward.

         “My mother is at the Memory Unit,” I explain. “Carol.” 

Instantly, she becomes taller.  She steers the walker toward the inside of the track without the slightest concern for the stream of people she cuts off to get there.  When we are both safely in the middle, she lets go of the apparatus and hugs me, hard.  Only when she pulls away do I notice that she is crying.

As winter snow clouds begin transforming into those bringing spring showers, OhBoy falls and breaks his hip.  After four days at the hospital, his heart gives out.  His funeral is on a Monday and his room at the facility is cleaned out less than two weeks later.  The residents do not seem to notice his absence, and now there is hardly, if any, evidence that he even lived there.  But he was there.  At times, when Mother is chewing her vegetables at a snail's pace, I half expect OhBoy to appear from the hallway and request a glass of milk or comment on the weather. 

Recently, Nurse tries to explain OhBoy to the newest staff member.  Nurse asked if I was there the night she had to tell OhBoy to stop singing because one of his songs was really offensive. “I can't believe he would say that,” she admitted.  “I thought I had heard it wrong at first, but he didn't even care.”  I shook my head, remembering the incident and how OhBoy thought it was funny to get a rise out of people.  We both launch into lighter stories of OhBoy for the new nurse. 

“My favorite was when he would talk about the clouds, and then one of the other ladies would comment about the wind and he wouldn't even notice,” she laughs.  

“And when he watched tv. Did you ever watch the Super Bowl with him?  That was the best.  He would narrate everything --Up, they are all standing up.  Up, they all fell down,” I add in my best OhBoy impersonation. 

We laugh at the memories.  Though he was a caricature of his pre-dementia self, OhBoy still made an impression, and he is missed by more people than he remembers.