A shuffle in your shoes

Gotta love what you do, babe
For that jingle jangle
Cause we only get a few days
Nobody makes it outta here anyway
What puts a shuffle in your shoes, babe?
That’s the thing worth chasing
Gotta love what you do, babe
So not a day goes wasted…

William Prince

A few weeks ago I went with friends to the William Prince concert at Massey Hall.

It was beautiful – dynamic and heartfelt and vulnerable. He told us much about himself – was it 26 days sober that he announced? Such a tender tentative declaration… but in and amidst all of it was a pronounced preoccupation with mortality.

You get a hint of it there in the lyrics: “cause we only get a few days…”

Pretty much since then my dad has been in hospital.

It started in the hallway of the emergency room after a few falls. My brother the fireman had brought him in, and at the time I think we all thought it would get sorted quickly and he’d be back home soon enough, and there’s that trip they have booked in April…

But it has not been an easy ride. And he will not be going anywhere in April.

This morning we were officially 2 weeks into my dad’s stay in hospital.

The Physio gals came by as they do every weekday morning. At one point we had been considering walks around the hallways, but after downgrading expectations, now they are focused on sitting and standing and the corresponding blood pressure readings. So they talk as they go, they ask questions.

“So, have you always lived in Toronto?” they ask, keeping the conversation happening while they verify sitting position blood pressure.

Dad scoffs, a moment where he is distinctly in character, which he hasn’t always been over these two weeks. “I was raised in Philadelphia” he scolds them, as if they should know. “I didn’t come here {to Canada} until I was an adult”.

“Oh, okay”, they respond, indifferent and unoffended, moving him to a standing position to verify how the blood pressure holds up once they have him standing. They just started the new blood pressure meds yesterday, so standing may not last long, we all know.

“What brought you up here?’ is the next question – keeping him going, keeping him engaged. Standing, dad is starting to get a bit fuzzy, blood pressure dropping. He tries to answer. “Education…” he mutters vaguely. They pick it up with enthusiasm, “Oh, did you come up here to go to the University of Toronto?”

Distinctly dizzy now, pressing his weight into the walker, he gives them what they want: “Yes?”, he floats the quasi-question. But I shake my head.

“He was a Prof at U of T”, I clarify. “He came up from the States to teach at U of T”.

Now for a flashback moment in the narrative – there’s, my dad, graduating with a PhD from Brown University, Rhode Island, with my mom and me. How young we all were.

One interesting thing that emerged – after both mom and dad had been offered jobs at Canadian universities as fancy-pants Brown graduates, and I grew up and went off to university in Montreal – I had a delightful roommate, Sabrina Mathews. And one Christmas when I went home to Toronto, I asked my dad if he knew Sabrina’s dad, Robin Mathews? From what I understood he was a bit of a nationalist and had something of an opinion about American graduates getting jobs that maybe could have been given to Canadians….?

“Robin Mathews?!?!!???!”, my dad exclaimed. “I almost lost my JOB because of Robin Mathews!!!” Apparently Robin was quite vocal and activist in his opinions.

Well whaddyaknow. And yet, in spite of all that paternal animosity, Sabrina and I became lifelong friends – friends who always and still share all the things.

Sadly, Sabrina lost her remarkable dad not long ago.

His passing was acknowledged across Canada.

Last time Sabrina was here for a visit, and knowing she was more experienced in the difficult things of aging parents than I, I told her about where we were at with all things regarding my dad.

“It’s a process”, she advised me.

Fair enough. A process without clear indicators.

After the Physio gals left today, the head nurse came in and went through a series of localized and cognitive tests. Dad, bored, answered the questions about dates and symptoms with a pronounced sigh of tedium. At a certain point, regarding heart condition, readings, medications, etc, the nurse said, “given your age, sir, with all respect…”

There was a bit of a pause, a blank. Dad looked at me.

Looking for levity, I said, “getting old ain’t for sissies”.

It’s a line we have toyed with before. Bette Davis and all. But today there was no mischief in dad’s eyes as he held my gaze, level and serious. “NO”, he answered.

Coming home from the hospital, I figured I’d crash in front of the television.

I decided to watch La La Land, which I hadn’t caught when it came out years ago. And gosh, it is one charming movie!

But there is a scene in it where the two leads do a bit of a Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers moment. Of course I thought of my dad. I thought of my dad who had introduced me to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly… the dad with whom I’d watched so many old movies on the tiny little television out on the sunporch… For hours we’d hunched in the creaky wicker chairs and stared at that little television…

And there I had been taught the Sacred Love of Movies.