Dusk settling
Sunday evening. Bing – bang – bong sounded the G minor triad of the doorbell. We looked at each other with some anxiety, my wife and I. What are we going to be up against, our eyes asked. Neither of us could come up with a comfortable answer.
The door slowly swung open and revealed George, hand resting on the doorknob, trim and dapper, as always. He looked at least twenty years younger than his nineties. There was a quizzical expression on his face as he said “Well, what a surprise! What are you doing here?”
“We just had to come and see you!” I replied. “Aren’t you going to ask us in?”
“Of course, of course, come, come! Have a drink!” With that he pulled the door wider and stepped aside flashing a friendly smile. We filed in, pulling our bags.
“Don’t worry George, we are staying in a hotel, we just haven’t checked in yet. Just wanted to say hello first of all.”
“You can stay here, if you like, you know that. Let me get you something. What will you have? I know Juthica wants a whiskey sour. How about you?”
“A Gibson? Like you? Can I help?”
The first time I had ever tasted gin was at George’s soon after I arrived in the US as a young refugee, forty years before. I was twenty then and I had never met my uncle before. He introduced me to cocktails, to cigarettes, to driving, among many other things and served as my home base in New York while I was in college in New Haven.
I stepped into the kitchenette behind him as Juthica stashed our bags in to a corner get them out of the way. George got bottles out of the cabinet and handed them to me, saying, “You fix the drinks. You know where things are.” With that he went to join Juthica, clearly more inclined to be with her.
I reached for a glass, but it was covered with opaque film. I started sorting through the rest of them, finding that they were all the same. So I got three to wash in the sink. The dish rack had plates and cups drying. George’s Wedgewood china’s original bone color was but a memory – everything was coated with an ominous, gray patina. The sink itself had not been white for decades, it seemed.
No detergent anywhere in sight, just an old, greasy, raggedy string mop, sagging in the corner of the sink. I looked behind the trashcan, under the sink, expecting to find cleaning supplies. Digging through a mountain of paper bags, voilà, a used brillo pad, at last. The only thing with anything related to soap in the whole kitchen…
I quickly washed and dried everything (with a rather dirty dish cloth), and fixed the drinks. Balancing the three glasses in a cluster with two hands I stepped into the living room and stopped to look around.
Hardly anything had changed over the decades. The room felt like a museum installation. French period furniture, mostly Louis XVI and Empire, bronze figurines, a huge, gold plated pendulum clock on the marble sideboard, rock crystal obelisks, and dark oil paintings on the wall. But a dust ball was visible behind the clock. A unique, cast iron framed daybed serving as a couch, the frame painted pale aqua with gold highlights and upholstered in heavy, gold and white striped silk. And under it I could see a matchbook and other small items I would never had seen at George’s some years before. Two very beautiful armchairs with matching fabric, but with dirty grey finger marks on the painted wood armrests…
I carefully maneuvered the glasses on the table. George leaned back and said: “So now tell me seriously – what brings you here?” And turning to me: “Go get some coasters.”
I did, exhaling a sigh of resignation. Then, perching on the edge of the chair, I asked George “Well, did you get yourself organized?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, with eyebrows pinched. And to Juthica, with a conspiratorial air, “What is this guy talking about?” Head tilted in my direction and looking at her sideways.
She came to my rescue. “About the trip, George, about moving. Did you get ready?”
“What trip? What are you talking about? I am not going anywhere.” Actually, it sounded more like “Vot treep? Vot are yew towkeeng about? I am not goeeng enyvehre.”
George had lived in the U.S. for some sixty years. He spoke English fluently, but unless you paid close attention it sounded more like Hungarian. Juthica collapsed back into her chair, frowning, obviously searching for the right thing to say. Our eyes met, attempting wordless communication. We knew exactly what was going through each other’s minds… I signaled her to go ahead.
Taking a deep breath she started “We came to take you to California with us. We talked about it on the phone a few days ago. Remember? You said it was a great idea! So here we are!”
He looked completely puzzled. But in a moment he smiled and said “Yes, yes, but so soon?...”
George was gay, a bachelor all his life, and lived alone. Years earlier he had packed up and decided to move to Athens where he had a lot of friends. He was happy and content for a few months, but then New York was calling him again and he moved back. A couple of years later he moved to Paris -- same results. He was back again in short order. Each time he declared that there was only one place in this world where he could live – New York.
Over the last couple of years we had regularly called George on the phone weekly, just to check in and see how he was doing. After all, even though he seemed generally OK, he was over ninety years old. I was the only family he had in the country. One of us would ask him each time to think about moving to the West Coast, somewhere near us, so we could more easily provide support, should he need it. He would interrupt each time, saying he would think about it and let us know, obviously just to get us off his back.
Then over recent weeks I got several phone calls from friends of his who were concerned about George’s ability to take care of himself alone, on his own. I heard stories of his leaving his wallet in the post office, of mailing his income tax check without an address on the envelope (but thankfully a return address), of walking out of a restaurant without paying, and so on. The clincher was a story of his art objects.
He had made a career of jewelry design. He started with a custom jewelry company when he first arrived in the country, then eventually he established his own fine jewelry workshop with a partner on 47th street and Fifth Avenue. The firm, Cellino’s, was quite successful. Tiffany’s, Van Cleef, Bonwit Teller, Bergdorf’s were all regular customers. Then he sold his share of the company to his partner and retired to start a new career. He designed art objects and sculptures out of semi precious materials, rock crystal, jade, jasper, malachite and so on. He produced spectacular pieces, decorated with stones, gold, or silver. There were several articles about him in popular magazines and his work was exhibited in galleries and a few museums, both here and abroad. It had meant everything to him to have become an artist from a craftsman or artisan.
One of his close friends had recently arranged a meeting between George and a curator of the Headley-Whitney Museum in Lexington, KY to discuss a forthcoming exhibition of several of his larger pieces. The meeting took place at the friend’s office. George had brought two cases packed with his objets. The curator liked them all, but before making a final commitment said he needed an OK from the Museum Director. So he proposed to take the objets with him to Houston and call George to discuss further details. George was happy to immediately agree and got up to leave for home. He had not asked for a receipt or anything in writing. Knowing George, and knowing how important these objets were to him, his friend was totally knocked for a loop. It was clear to him that George was not playing with a full deck at this time. So he intervened and made sure the curator wrote a list of the objects on Museum letter head with a statement vowing full responsibility for loss or damages before letting the carrying cases depart with the curator.
He then called me to relate the story. He was very worried about George, convinced that living independently and managing his own affairs was asking for a major disaster in the near future. After just a brief discussion with Juthica we started looking around in the vicinity for retirement facilities where we could suggest that George relocate. We found one in Redwood City. It seemed clean and well run, with friendly staff and impressive facilities, and reasonably priced. So I called George, and this time I did not just posed the cursory question about moving West, but launched into a detailed discussion of the compelling reasons why this was not only a good idea but a necessity. I described retirement house to him and said we would see him regularly several times a week. To my amazement, after just a few minutes George said OK, that this sounded like a good idea. So in parting I told him that I would look into details of moving his things and that we’d be coming next week to help him pack and get going. He had not put up a fight at all…
So here we were, and George had apparently forgotten all about that phone call and the arrangements. So I made an attempt to put things back into order.
“Well, George, there is no point in just talking and making plans without actually doing something. You too, you have always been a man of action, haven’t you? We found a terrific place for you in Redwood City, so we booked it before someone else would, and decided to come and get you moved. How about that?” I finished the speech with what I hoped was a big and encouraging smile.
George looked forlorn, sunken into his chair, frowning a little, trying to make sense, trying to understand all this. After a long pause he said “So where do you want to go?”
“To California. Redwood City, only 10 minutes or so from where we live at Stanford. You know our house. The place we found for you is even prettier with a lovely garden.”
“But how do we get there? Do you have a car?”
“No, not here. It would be far too long a drive. We are flying out, all three of us, on Wednesday.”
“Wednesday! Are you crazy? How could we go so soon? What about all the furniture, my clothes, my things?”
“No problem, George. I have already taken care of everything. The movers are coming Wednesday morning and they will load everything into a truck. We have until then to pack things into boxes. And a supply of boxes are being delivered downstairs as we speak.
The doorbell rang. I went to open it. The doorman was bringing several bundles of folded boxes. I said to George “See, we are ready to pack!”
He just sighed deeply and shook his head, looking totally confused.
Finishing our drinks we left him for the evening and went to our hotel. The next morning, first thing, we were back at George’s. This time he remembered why we were there. He greeted us with saying “Before anything else, we have to find my money. It’s missing.”
He looked very worried, but he spoke lucidly. He said, “I always have some cash on hand, just in case. After you left yesterday I was going to get it to see if I had enough for this trip you are planning, but I cannot find it.”
“Well, George, where do you keep it usually?”
“In the desk drawer, under the file box.”
“Let’s see there,” I said, heading for the desk.
“Don’t be silly, I already looked.”
“It doesn’t hurt to double check.” With that I pulled the drawer all the way out and emptied it on the table. Not a penny there.
“How much did you have, George?”
“Five or six thousand dollars, maybe. I got more money from the bank just the other day.”
“Wow, this is serious. Any ideas of what might have happened? Does anyone know that you keep all that money here? Does anyone know where you keep it?”
He did not think so. So I said we would look for it while packing everything up, and if it is somewhere in the apartment we would surely find it. We spent the rest of the day and most of the next packing everything but his furniture and large decorative items into the boxes. I kept an eye out for boxes and containers that looked like they might have the money in them. Eventually I started to believe that George had just imagined the money.
Juthica and I worked together, going through closets and drawers systematically and packing everything into boxes, taking special care to bubble wrap his art objects. George was right there with us, picking up things, looking at them, then putting them back. He was busy, without making any progress whatever. Every so often we had to ask him what something was, and whether he needed it. There was never a direct answer to the questions. He either said he didn’t know what it was, or implied that it was stupid question. Whether he needed or wanted it was also unclear. More often than not he would say he didn’t care, we should take it or throw it, as we wished…
By afternoon the place looked pretty barren. Boxes stacked along the walls, several suitcases full of his clothes, bags of trash ready to discard. George was looking more and more forlorn. I said to him “Come George, give me a hand. The movers will be here first thing in the morning, let’s strip the bed and get it ready for them.”
With that we stepped to his bed and pulled off the sheets. As I was stripping the mattress pad, the mattress shifted a bit and I noticed what looked like the corner of an envelope sticking out. I pulled it out – a fat and bulky envelope, unsealed. Lifting the flap revealed a solid pack of banknotes.
George had his back to me, he was folding the sheets. I held up the stack of money and said to him “George, look at this!”
He must have sensed something special in my voice and whipped around to look at me. As he saw the money and his eyes bulged out a bit and with a serious frown asked, “Where did you get this?”
“It was under your mattress. I just saw it sticking out.”
“Did you put it there? You must have!”
“Come on George? I had no idea of any of this!”
“Let me have that,” in a quiet, but commanding tone. He sounded just like the old George he used to be years before. He slipped his glasses into place from his forehead and held the bundle of hundred dollar bills as though he was trying to estimate its weight. “Are you sure you did not put it there?”
“George, the first I heard about any money was when you told us this morning that it was missing. I had no idea you had this kind of money lying around here.”
He did not look like he quite believed me, but he let it go. I asked him “Can I see?”
He handed the bundle to me. There was an unbroken band around it, it was a cool ten thousand dollars, as packaged by the bank. “Let’s keep it with the airline tickets, OK?” I said. “It will be safer that way.” With that I put the bundle back in the envelope and took it to my little carry on bag. “I will give it to you as soon as we get to California, OK?”
George did not answer, just looked at me dubiously. We all cleaned up a bit and went out for a bite at the little restaurant around the block. George was quiet. I could not tell whether he was just tired or shaken up by the money episode. He did not want desert, only an espresso. While waiting for it to arrive I noticed that his eyes were slowly closing. He was exhausted, but fighting to stay awake. When the coffee arrived he finished it in two gulps. But with eyes at half-mast he continued to carefully raise the empty cup to his lips and taking sips.
It was quite a spectacle the next morning to watch the movers load everything into a truck on a very narrow street, after magically maneuvering large pieces into an elevator for a vertical trip of a dozen floors. When it was finally done, it was time for us to go to the airport. Providentially, George’s persisted in a childlike docile, compliant state. There were no challenges or issues at all. He followed us through security, check-in, and promptly went to sleep for practically the whole transcontinental flight.
The moving van was going to take about a week to get to the West coast, so we took George home with us to stay till we could move him to his new abode at Woodside Terrace. Our house had been designed by a bachelor and had an unconventional layout. There were two bedrooms and a big family room on the ground floor with the living room and master bedroom upstairs. We had outfitted one of the downstairs bedrooms for George, the bathroom directly across a tiny hall. We still had the wireless baby listening device we relied on when the kids were little, so I fired it up and put it on top of the armoire so we could hear if there were ominous or suspicious noises…
I was anticipating that he would feel out of place and anxious away from New York, but it seemed like he hardly remembered his old life at all. We called a few of his friends to report on our arrival and to reassure them that George was doing fine.
A few days later we organized a barbecue so we could introduce George. He was in his element. People asked the usual questions like where he lived before, what his business was, and so on. He impressed everyone by telling a coherent and entertaining story about his life in New York, his sculpture studio in Paris and in Athens, and all the prominent galleries where he had exhibited and the famous people who had bought his art. I was listening in amazement. I had never heard some of these stories. When people asked if they could see some of the art was the first time he seemed a little confused. So I helped out by saying that they will come with the moving van in a few days, and that they can see things the next time around.
After the guests left it was early evening. George asked when we were going to eat, that he was hungry. We all had had hamburgers and barbecued chicken, potato salad, beer and dessert. George had two helpings of everything. But he remembered none of this and said he was hungry. So I grilled some more burgers for him and he had a second hearty dinner…
We had decided not to take George to Woodside Terrace before his apartment was ready, so he stayed with us for about a week. Then the call came that the van was on its way. We met it at Woodside Terrace and had all his pieces arranged as close to his layout in New York as possible. The apartment turned out to be quite attractive. We got some flowers and went home to get George.
He seemed a bit lost when we got home. “Where have you been?” he asked accusingly.
Juthica replied with her best smile. “All your furniture arrived today and we went to Woodside Terrace to set up your place! It turned out to be beautiful! Are you ready to take a look?”
“I guess so”, he said, but it seemed like he did not quite understand what was happening. By now we had learned not to challenge him in these situations. It was best to just wait and see if things fall into place on their own. We loaded his suitcases into the car and got in. I drove on Alameda, rather than the Freeway, so George could get a feel for the ambience of the California suburb. He did seem to enjoy the short trip, making comments on beautiful gardens and trees we passed. But at what point he said “You brought me to some sort of village here. Where is the city?”
“San Francisco is a perfect city, George”, I replied. “It is only a half hour away. Any time you want to go there, we will be happy to take you. But here we live in gardens, surrounded by flowers, and we think it’s much prettier this way. Don’t you think?”
“We’ll see”, he said, somewhat ominously…
I had called ahead to tell the desk that we would be checking George in. The woman at the desk was expecting us with a friendly smile. She said “Ms. Linden will be with you in just a moment.”
And Ms. Linden did appear. She was an imposing, attractive woman, fashionably dressed, slim and tall. She came with her arm extended for a handshake directly to George. “You are Mr. Stangl, I assume. Welcome to Woodside Terrace!”
As always in the company of good-looking people, George was delighted. Ms. Linden continued, “We are so happy to have you here! I assume this is your son? And daughter, or daughter-in-law?”
George would have preferred to introduce me as his friend or his brother, but he managed to be a sport, and smiled in agreement. Ms. Linden then led us to the elevator and up to the third floor to George’s new abode. Juthica and I were both thoroughly gratified seeing his reaction as Ms. Linden opened the door and handed George his key. He stepped in and stopped dead, looking toward the sliding glass door, with eyes wide open and mouth agape. An enormous magnolia tree, in full bloom, was a little distance away, its leaves shining in the brilliant sunshine. And one of the garden walks, lined with rows of rose bushes of different colors was also visible. What a difference from the gray façade of the apartment building facing George’s Manhattan place!
George turned and said, more to Ms. Linden than to us, “Well, this is really beautiful. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Wonderful.” He then looked around and had a hard time hiding his delight, finding all his furniture in place. I almost expected him to say thank you, but that would have been overdoing it, I suppose. Instead he said “So you organized all this to get rid of me, hm?” But at least he said it with a smile.
“Not completely. We’ll come to see how you are doing, from time to time”, I replied.
Ms. Linden then said “Let me take you, Mr. Stangl, and introduce you to some residents. Your neighbors are waiting for you in the lounge.”
We went back downstairs, to an alcove off the lobby, where a few elderly ladies were sitting and talking. Ms. Linden made the introductions. The women were all smiles, gazing intently at George. One of them invited George to sit, while we discretely stood a little distance away, watching. The lady said to George “We have been so anxious to meet our new co-resident and are so glad to see you! Please tell us about yourself. Where do you come from? What sort of things are you interested in?”
George adopted a casual, urbane attitude and said smoothly “Well, I am a little from everywhere – from Paris, from Athens, from New York, and I do a little sculpting.”
“How fascinating! An artist! And where do you do your sculpture?”
“Well, I actually just closed my Paris studio last year – it was too much trouble, you know? Traveling back and forth all the time, much too tiring.” He said this with his with an expression of distress, and waving his hand as though pushing the memory away. “So now I only have the New York studio.”
This was news to me. George had never had a studio in New York. He had done the design work for his sculpture pieces and had the stone cutting done by various artisans instead of doing it himself.
“And what kind of sculptures or statues have you been making?”
“Mostly renaissance style decorative objects made of semi precious materials. I mostly worked on commission, you know, for some museums and some private clients.”
“Fascinating! You must show us some of your work! And we will have to have you give us a talk one evening soon, about all your work! We have residents tell us formally about themselves on Sundays. Yours has got to be the most interesting Sunday talk in a long time!”
I was blown away listening to George. There was not the faintest sign of any loss of mental capacity showing. He was fluent, quick, impressive. But after a few minutes of this exchange he grew silent, and while the lady went on chattering, he leaned back in his chair and just listened politely. Juthica interceded, telling the lady that we had had a long day, and that perhaps George can tell them more about his work another day. With that we took him back up to the apartment. He assured us that he was going to be fine and was anxious to be rid of us. Ms. Linden was going to be back to take him down to dinner, so we went back home.
Over the next few days there were a lot of small details to take care of. We set George up with the Palo Alto Clinic and took him to see doctor, picked up his meds from the pharmacy, and I filled one of those pill dispenser thingies that has four compartments for every day of the week. We bought him a clock that showed the day of the week, which was something he really wanted. And we took him for walks around Woodside Terrace to explore the neighborhood – the grocery store, a couple of restaurants, the dry cleaning place, a little park. I programmed his phone so he could call us by pushing a single button. I went over all the appliances with him, the range and oven, the microwave, the TV, the VCR, etc. He just waved me off impatiently saying that he was not a child, he can figure out these things.
No sooner did I get home after one of these sessions when he called that the TV won’t work. I said I would be there again the next day and would check it out. He then asked me what day it was. I told him to just look at his wall clock, that it showed the day. “Oh, yes. I did not know that”, he replied. I then asked him if he took his pills. “Of course. After lunch.”
“What about after dinner?”
“Again?” he asked.
“Well, you have pills for morning, noon, evening and before going to bed. That is why the pills are in that little dispenser.”
“OK, OK, I get it. Don’t worry about it”, he said.
The next day I went to see him after work to have dinner with him in the dining room. I knocked on his door, but there was no answer. So I went back down to the desk and asked the receptionist if she knew where George might be. She seemed amused. She said he was probably surfing the elevators, looking for his apartment. It did not appear to worry her a bit. She said he would find it eventually…
So I waited a while, and the receptionist turned out to be right. George emerged from the wrong elevator, from the other side of the building. I asked him what had happened. He said nothing; he just had to see someone, in a tone that made it clear that it was none of my business. At the apartment he offered me a drink, then proceeded to open every cabinet in the kitchen, looking for glasses, looking for his bottle of gin, and not finding them. So I made the drinks. On the counter, in the corner, was George’s pill dispenser. I thought it might be a good idea to see if he was up to date on the pills, so I popped open Tuesday noon, to see if he had taken his lunchtime pills that day. There were four yellow pills in the little compartment. So I started opening all the other compartments and the sight made my jaw drop. The open dispenser looked a little like a medieval mosaic of a flower. Very pretty. All the compartments on the left and right were empty, and the middle ones were arranged by color in the pattern of a flower.
“George, what did you do with your pills? What happened to this noon’s medications? Will you tell me what’s going on here?”
“Don’t you like it? Isn’t it much better this way? I just couldn’t stand the way it looked, boring, the way you put it together. This way it is nice to look at it.”
There was no point in arguing. It was clear we would just have to monitor his pills several times a day.
We re-organized our lives a little so either Juthica or I would stop in to see George every day. Juthica usually at lunchtime, and I at dinner. It really amused Juthica that George would offer his arm each time to walk her into the dining room. And when one of the ladies said hello to him, he introduced Juthica as his girlfriend, keeping a completely straight face. He caused quite a bit of consternation and gossip…
During the first two-three weeks George was frequently out in the garden, or in one of the common areas, chatting with someone or other. As time passed, however, we found him more and more frequently in his apartment, just sitting in a chair, or taking a nap. It was looking like he was getting lonely, isolated. So we talked to the Activities Director about it and she said she would make a special point of including him in the activities, that she would get someone to bring him around if he did not come by himself.
A few days later I got there early, before dinnertime. George was not in, so I asked at the desk, and was told that he is probably in the Activities room. So I went to check and looked in through the little glass window on the door. The activity was “music”. There was tape recorder playing something, and a dozen or so residents were sitting in a circle, each with a frying pan and a spoon in their hands, banging away, keeping time with the song. I had never before seen a more thoroughly, profoundly miserable, unhappy expression on George’s face as he was meekly clanging away. It looked like he was in physical agony. I could not stand it. I stepped in and went to George, and while saying “Excuse us!” to no one in particular, helped him up and guided him out of the room.
He did not speak on the way up. We went and sat on his terrace, and I asked him how he was doing, how he liked the music group. He looked at me accusingly and said, “Tell those people to leave me alone. I want to have nothing to do with what is going on here, what they make me do. It’s stupid.”
“So what would you like to do instead?”
“You figure it out. You are supposed to be the smart one. University and all.”
“I am sorry you are unhappy here, George. It was beginning to be too difficult for you alone in New York. We wanted to bring you here so we could be around to help when you needed it!”
“A big help you are. I should have known it meant trouble when you were going to take care of everything…”
“OK, so if there is a problem, what we need to do is fix it. So tell me what exactly bothers you so much here?”
“Everyone is so old! What am I doing with all these ancient wrecks? And there is nothing to do. Just sleep and eat, that’s all. Deadly. Boring.”
“Let me talk to Juthica and we’ll try to figure out what to do, OK?”
I had no idea how to even begin tackling this issue. It happened that George was actually the oldest resident at Woodside Terrace at age 95. But he felt he belonged with people in their twenties and thirties. How do you deal with this? I headed home at a complete loss.
Juthica is a trained psychiatric social worker and a whole lot better at empathy, as well as analyzing, and solving emotional issues, than I was. But this was not easy for her either. We sat by the pool with gin and tonics for a long time, hashing various ideas but not making much headway. Juthica summarized the problem perfectly, saying “You know, we are actually too old for him ourselves. If we were to have him move in here with us, he would be just as unhappy within a few days. We have to think about this very carefully.”
As it turned out, the luxury of trying to find a solution in a leisurely fashion was taken away by the turn of events. I got a phone call in my office from Woodside Terrace the next day. Administration said that George either had to move into nursing care or move out. Apparently he had set off the smoke alarm that morning for the third time. They had not told us about it before, as it might have been isolated incidents. But three strikes and you are out, I suppose. He was heating a piece of sausage in a frying pan and fell asleep. The screaming smoke alarm mobilized Maintenance. The frying pan was aflame like a torch and George was still peacefully dreaming through the pandemonium.
I called home to tell Juthica. I wanted her to be available for an in depth conference when I got home to see what our options were. The conference was very brief. Juthica had thought everything through. She said there were no options at all – we had to have George move in with us. Nursing care was out: if he is unhappy with fit old folk, how would he be with those in nursing care? And moving him to another retirement facility would result in the same situation in no time. And we have only a couple of days to come up with a solution, so our house has to be it.
I could not find fault with her logic. She was right. But how are we going to cope with George 24/7? I said “Are you sure we are up to this? He is not the easiest person under any circumstances. And you are the one at home during the day – are you prepared for dealing with George day in and day out?”
“Well, do you have a better idea? You want to send him back to New York?”
A few moments passed while we concentrated on the implications. And then it hit me:
“What about the Greek trip? We can’t just leave him alone in the house!”
We had reserved a Mediterranean cruise through the Aegean islands months before, including a stop in Paris to visit Stephanie, George’s older sister, who at age 100 was still living in her apartment by herself. This was a non-cancellable trip not only financially, but also emotionally. At this point Stephanie was largely hanging on to life by focusing on our next visit to see her.
Leave it to Juthica to come up with a sensible, practical idea. “We have to hire someone to move in and take care of everything. We’ll find someone. I’ll start looking tomorrow.”
So I called Woodside Terrace to arrange moving George out. Of course, there were a lot of details. Papers to sign, bills to pay, movers scheduled, storage space reserved for his furniture, and so on. It took a few days before we actually picked up George to bring him home.
It did not seem like he really understood what was happening. He seemed content to leave Woodside Terrace behind, but appeared unsure, or perhaps a bit suspicious about where we were taking him. When we got to the house on the Stanford Campus he thought he had never been there before and asked us who lived here. We told him we did, and that he was going to stay with us. He seemed to accept this without too much trouble. We installed him in the same downstairs bedroom that he had stayed in for a few days on arrival from New York, but he had no recollection of that. We had to show him where the bathroom was, directly across the hall from his room.
So far Juthica had not been able to find a good lead for someone to move in and take care of George, so she was in charge of him all day while I was in the office. The very next day I got a frantic call from her.
“Can you come home? Right away?”
“Well, I have a meeting about to start. What happened?”
“After breakfast George went out in the garden. I was in the kitchen, then doing a wash, but after a while I thought I should look out there to check on him. He is sitting on his butt in the middle of the lawn, wearing slacks and a sport jacket. I went out and asked him if he was OK. He had obviously fallen, but he would not admit that. I tried to help him get up, but he almost hit me, yelling at me to leave him alone, that he could sit there if he wanted. I argued with him for a while, but there is no use. Can you come?”
“Well, maybe later. I am to see the Dean in five minutes. Let me see. It’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Isn’t this the day the gardeners are at the neighbors? You might go over there and ask one of them to come and help him up. What do you think?”
“OK, it’s worth a try…”
She did, and one of the guys came with her, walked up behind George and without saying a word hefted him up by lifting him under the shoulders and stood him up. Easy as pie – handled him like a rag doll. George’s eyes were bulging out in surprise or shock, it wasn’t clear. The gardener just turned and left, it took him no longer than 90 seconds to come and go.
That evening I asked George about his day. He either did not want to talk about the garden episode or did not remember. He was in a pleasant mood, chatting about this and that throughout dinner. After we were done eating he looked at Juthica and asked quietly, gesturing toward me, “Who is this guy? Does he live here?”
“He is Peter, George, your nephew! And my husband! We brought you from New York a few weeks ago, don’t you remember? And we both live here together.”
George chuckled, as though he had only been making a joke. Then he continued “But where could you be living? The room next to me is empty. No one there.”
“Our bedroom is upstairs, George. We are staying upstairs.”
“I didn’t know there was an upstairs. I was not informed,” he said with an eyebrow raised. The first thing you see on entering the house, of course, is the stairway leading upstairs…
A couple of days later Juthica was running to meet me in the hall as he heard the front door. “Guess what!” she exclaimed, bursting with excitement. “I think I found the perfect care taker for George! A medical student who is taking a year off! And he is Hungarian!!”
“Wow! Tell me. How did you find him?” This really sounded excellent.
“He is a Hungarian from Slovakia, here for a year with his aunt, in order to learn English. They were advertising in the Stanford Daily for exactly what we have, to take care of an old person! I called right away. He is coming later this evening for an interview.”
There was nothing to do but to give her a huge hug. Good work!
The young man arrived after dinner. Tall, good looking, confident – or rather a touch cocky (not a surprise for a Hungarian). His name was Tibor. He greeted us with a wide grin revealing perfect teeth. George was sitting at the dining table. His expression suddenly became alert and animated seeing Tibor.
It was a brief interview. Tibor had finished three years of medical school. He had some clinical experience already. He said he knew all about dementia, having had experience in his family. We offered him room and board and the bedroom next to George’s, and a modest little salary. Everything was perfectly acceptable to Tibor and we agreed that he would move right in.
Tibor got up and stepped up to George, extending his hand and saying, in Hungarian, with a charming accent, “We will be the good friends George, yes?”
George grabbed his hand and said “We shall see…” but he looked very happy.
Tibor turned out to be perfect. He was a fun young fellow with a good sense of humor and a great deal of patience and tolerance toward George’s requirements. And of those there were many. Tibor was ready to help with everything, like peeling an apple, picking him up if he fell (not infrequently), cleaning up after his various little accidents, having him take his pills, and so on. He was a light sleeper and was up in a flash if he heard George during the night. In a word, Tibor lightened our load by a huge factor.
And more importantly, George took to him instantly. His general demeanor improved significantly. His default expression turned from a scowl into a pleasant smile any time Tibor was in sight. He would sit on the couch, look at Tibor, pat the seat next to him and call him to sit there. If Tibor did, he would put his hand on Tibor’s knee and lean toward him a bit. Tibor had no trouble handling this. He would gently grab George’s hand and move it over, while saying with a smile “George, if yoo vas a voman, I vould take you to bed. But…” and both of them would burst out laughing.
Our worry about the forthcoming Greek trip was much reduced. In fact, instead of worrying about it, we started looking forward to it, thinking that we had earned a little R&R, and with Tibor we did not need to feel guilty about leaving George behind.
Both Juthica and I planned on having repeated conversations with George about the trip, trying to make sure that he understood the situation. A couple of days before we were scheduled to take off I got both of us a drink and stepped into George’s room as I got home from work, preparing to discuss the trip with him. George looked preoccupied and tired. I asked him what was bothering him. He said he was exhausted, had not slept at all. When I asked him why, he answered, “Very hard night. Long, long night. I was out and didn’t get back till morning.”
“Is that so? Where did you go, George?”
“I was out with the boys. You know, restaurants, bars, dancing, the usual. It was great.”
“Oh.” I had no sensible repartee to this. I suppose a downside of having Tibor around turned out to be an over-stimulation of George’s fantasies…
“Actually, George, I wanted to talk to you about something important. We talked about it before, but I just want to be sure that everything is clear. Juthica and I are about to go on a trip for a couple of weeks. Tibor will be here, so there is nothing to worry about.”
“I am not worried. Why would I worry?”
“Well, we will not be here, that is the only concern, I suppose.”
“Well, don’t suppose. You always “suppose”. Your not being here is not a problem for me. I am looking forward to it!”
“OK, Geroge, I am delighted to hear it. Let me talk to you about something else then. We will be going to the Greek islands. You know them well, you love them, and if you have any advice about what to see, what to do, please tell me.”
“I don’t think there is a point. You won’t appreciate what I tell you. What do you know about art? Or architecture? Why should I bother?”
For a moment I felt like hitting him. It was an effort to remind myself that these nuggets he likes to drop are best ignored. He has always been unbearably cruel to everyone he cared about, and he surely will not start to change now, at age 95. So I took a deep breath and tried to ignore it. But I heard myself say “George, what have I done to be treated like a worthless idiot by you?” I knew there was no point in launching into this even as I was saying it, but it just came out. I nearly started crying.
He hesitated for a moment, looking at me with a mixture of pity and contempt. He might have had symptoms of dementia, but underneath it all he was one tough dude… And he said nothing.
“OK, never mind Greece. We will be gone close to three weeks. First a cruise of the Greek islands for a week, then we stop in Slovakia to visit Tibor’s parents and we will go to Horna Suča, and then we stop in Paris for a few days.”
Horna Suča was the village where George (and my father) were born, near Tibor’s family’s home. We were planning to go there and try to find the grave of my grandfather.
When he heard “Horna Suča” George’s expression changed. Suddenly he was interested in discussing the trip.
“Have you ever been there? A beautiful village!”
“I was there only as a very small child, visiting grand father with my parents. I remember very little.”
“So why are you going?”
“Tibor invited us on behalf of his parents. His family is anxious to meet us and hear about Tibor’s life here. They live only some 30 miles from Horna Suča.”
“Be sure to give them my best. Tell them that they have a good boy for a son.”
Wow. George actually uttered a friendly phrase. Who would have guessed?
”We will. And we are planning to look up the grave of your father and do whatever you suggest while we are there.”
George frowned and paused for quite a long time. His eyes’ focus faded away as he
seemed to zero in on something in the very distant past. Finally he said ”See if you can find the Karlovitz family. Their son, Pista, was my good friend as a kid. We played together all the time, we even ran away from home together when we were about 11 or 12...”
„I didn’t know you were such a hell raiser, George!” I exclaimed.
„There is a lot of things you don’t know.”
„OK, we will look for the Karlovitz’ and the family graves too. And then, after Horna Suča we will stop in Paris for a couple of days before returning home. We will be visiting Stephanie.”
Stephanie was George’s older sister, his partner in an intense love-hate relationship. I had moved Stephanie the year before, at age 100, from her apartment to a nursing care facility.
“You don’t have to visit her, she is fine.”
“Why do you say that? We have not been to see her in over six months! She expects to be visited again by now, I am sure.”
“I just talked to her on the phone before you started jabbering at me. She is fine. She doesn’t need anything.”
At this moment it was approximately midnight in Paris. There was no telephone in Stephanie’s room. And George did not have her number. But this time I managed to stop myself before starting to argue about this.
“OK, really glad to hear that. But as the tickets are already arranged, I guess we will stop briefly to see her.”
The conversation continued for a while, I don’t remember all the details. Besides George’s request to look for his little friend’s family there wasn’t anything substantive.
We covered every predictable detail that we could dream up with Tibor before we took off for the trip. I took my laptop and Tibor promised to send me e-mail regularly, and I vowed to check at cyber cafes every chance I got. Well, no cyber cafes during the cruise, on the Costa line. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip and tried to disconnect from California. The high point was a brief stop at Santorini, where we had tried to visit twice before, only to be frustrated by adverse weather. This time, despite a prediction by the captain that once again the seas were too high to enter the harbor, he sent us ashore by tenders for a really quick visit. We decided that we had to come back here again – too much to see for the small window of opportunity.
Our first chance to check e-mail was in Slovakia. Tibor’s parents were clearly happy to see us, and it was equally clear that, besides talking about Tibor, the visit was going to have its awkward aspects. We had very little in common and the conversation was not flowing smoothly. While Tibor’s father was a pharmacist and his mother a pediatrician, they were not generally well educated. He was mainly interested in hunting deer and drinking heavily. And she said very little. He had a difficult time processing that I did not want to have several whiskeys before lunch, and kept pushing it on me. But they did give us royal treatment. The best bedroom in the house, fantastic meals, lots of little presents. We were able to make them feel good with stories about Tibor’s glory.
There were a couple of messages from Tibor for his parents that I let them see, and a couple for us about George. One said everything was fine, for us not to worry. The other related the tale of the previous night when Tibor heard some noise and breaking glass. He went to check and found George on his knees, face down, wedged between his bed and the night table and unable to extract himself. He was trying to go to the bathroom, but lost his balance and fell. The lamp on the table was now history, but besides a deep abrasion on his arm, no great damage was done. Tibor took care of it and he said George was as good as new…
Tibor’s parents gave us directions and instructions on where to go and what to ask for in our search for the gravesites and the old family house of grandfather Stangl. We went to the City Hall of Trenĉin, the nearest city, where my grandfather moved when he retired from farming in Horna Suča. I was able to talk to the clerk in German, but alas, no luck. The house must have been sold, or taken over somehow after the old man died, and there were no records they could find.
So on we went to the Jewish cemetery in Horna Suča. The drive was spectacularly pretty. Green country with very steep mountains on both sides of the road, with herds of cattle and sheep dotting the meadows. Idyllic.
The cemetery was easy to find, but its gate was locked. We knocked on the front door of a tiny house immediately next to the gate and a young woman answered. Alas, she did not speak English, or Hungarian, and only a very few words of German. After a lengthy exchange of isolated words and gestures I think I understood that she was a kind of custodian of the cemetery, but that she had no records of the graves or the names of the buried. She opened the gate for us and let us explore on our own.
At first it was not even evident that we were in a cemetery. The terrain was very steep and uneven, covered with waist high shrubs, thistle, and weeds of all kinds. As we started climbing up I tripped on something. Recovering my balance I pushed the undergrowth aside and saw a corner of a stone slab. A grave stone, completely hidden and overgrown. It took minutes to pull away enough shoots and twigs to see the faded and eroded inscription. This w as pretty discouraging. Considering the size of the place it would take many days for us to be able to examine all the hidden, covered up graves.
So we separated and started slowly climbing up on opposite sides of the slope, scanning the terrain for graves that were partially exposed. There were a few of these here and there, and we checked the inscriptions. Pretty soon we found one marked Karlovitz, but as we did not know the first names besides Pista, we could not tell whether it was the right family. After several hours of climbing, poking around, excavating, and getting more and more discouraged, we gave up and quit. In order to do a proper job we would have to come back here again, prepared to stay for days at least. But now it was time to go to Paris.
The account of the Paris visit is actually an altogether different story. My aunt Stephanie is a veritable legend. No one she had ever met was immune from being profoundly influenced by her – either in a positive or a negative fashion. One thing is sure, there was no escaping and no ignoring Stephanie.
She was the only girl in a cohort of four siblings. And she was brought up as the princess of Horna Suča, wearing white gloves, being driven around in an elegant carriage with four stallions, with the local peasants giving way with hats off. I am not sure this was the reason, but she always carried herself with a regal air. When she walked into a room it seemed like she expected the men to kiss her hand and the women to curtsy.
After such an auspicious beginning she ended up having a very difficult life. At first all went well. She married a successful and brilliant lawyer and they had a son who turned out to be an extremely handsome and talented young man. He was on the top of his class in high school and was junior foil fencing champion of Hungary. They lived just around the corner from us and I remember him, Tomi, my only cousin, as the great, fun hero of my early years. Then Stephanie found out that her husband had an affair. On the face of it this was a problem that could perhaps be solved, after all, things happen. But his partner in sin was the maid, and this, Stephanie could not tolerate.
In an emotional tornado she packed up and went back to her parents in Horna Suča. She started divorce proceedings and tried hatching plans to live an independent life. She agreed to leave custody to her husband, thinking that it would be unfair to bring her son with her into very uncertain economic conditions. Once the emotional tornado quieted down she was able to maintain a friendly and civil relationship with her ex husband, without being able to conceive of living with him again. He was a good father and was going to take good care of Tomi. That was the most important consideration for her.
Once the divorce was settled she went to London, worked for a family taking care of children. She learned English, and was also learning French at L’Alliance Française. After about a year she moved to Paris. She took a qualifying exam and started tutoring English, eking out a modest existence.
At this point George had just moved to the Cote d’Azur from Italy, and with a partner he opened a pension (a kind of B&B). I think this was in 1937 or 38. Stephanie approached George with a proposal. She would get Tomi to come to France, and the two of them would move down South to the pension. Stephanie would work for George, Tomi would go to school and help with work after classes. This sounded like a good plan to all concerned, and it was put into effect for the next summer.
I have no hard evidence on how this adventure turned out, only passionately recounted versions of the story from both George and Stephanie. The only thing these versions had in common was that the experiment was a disaster.
Stephanie told of the horrors of working for George. No matter how she worked her fingers to the bone, nothing was good enough for him. He routinely called her stupid, incompetent, a sponge, a gold digger, and an idiot in general. And he kept yelling at Tomi, calling him a lazy laggard or a girl chaser. Meanwhile poor Stephanie spent her days on her knees scrubbing floors, washing dishes, cooking, making beds and doing all kinds of menial, back-breaking jobs. And Tomi had no time to do his home work from French classes and had zero opportunity to have any fun like a teenager should have.
George had a different take. He told me about the business he lost because rooms were not made up in time, the food was inedible, the hallways were dirty, and so on. He said Stephanie was lazy and instead of working would only complain. And Tomi was never to be found on the premises. Once finished with his classes he was on the beach chasing girls. He could not wait to get rid of them both and hire some real help.
Well, Stephanie did conclude that her plan with George was a failure, that neither she nor Tomi could sustain this existence. So Tomi went back to Budapest to his dad, and she back to Paris to her tutoring. Over the next couple of years her life started seriously deteriorating. Tomi was drafted into the Hungarian army on the Axis side, and was taken to the Russian front. After a few months of receiving newsy letters from him, trying to reassure his parents that he was OK, the letters stopped and he was never heard from again. Stephanie blamed herself for the loss of her son for the rest of her life. Had she just gotten over that affair, the whole family could have emigrated from Hungary to some safe place, she was sure.
Meanwhile France was invaded by Germany and she had to go into hiding in the country for several years with the help of some very fine and humane French friends. She did survive the war, moved back to Paris, and eventually opened a small fashion design business with one of George’s friends as a partner. (George had emigrated to the U.S. when the German invasion was about to happen.) With a lot of hard work she built a comfortable existence for herself.
Her ex husband was deported to an army work camp and never returned, just as Tomi. As soon as the war was over Stephanie tried every conceivable way to find out what might have happened to her son, to no avail at all. I have bundles of correspondence with the Red Cross, with the Soviet consulate, with document archives and every conceivable source, all amounting to nothing concrete. There are a couple of post cards from people who report having seen someone who they assume might have been her son, but nothing certain.
During the ten or so years between the end of the war and the Hungarian uprising of 1956 Stephanie came to Budapest to visit two or three times. The visits were short, so I never had a chance to really get to know her, but it was clear, and to me a little confusing and mysterious, that she showered most of her attention on me, to the exclusion of everyone else. It was only later that I understood that she was trying to refocus her love of Tomi on me, that she was looking for a surrogate son in me.
Her visits were extreme high-impact happenings in the family. She was a distinguished, sophisticated visitor to all our acquaintances, and even to ourselves, with star quality. All my parents’ friends wanted to be invited to meet her, to hear stories of Paris, to see her elegant clothes, to admire her chic style. And Stephanie rose to the occasion, holding court and telling stories, surrounded by an over-awed circle of admirers. To most, she was like nobility. She was holding audiences and people sat around her in rapture.
For myself, I developed a certain respect for her that set her apart from everyone else, both within an outside the family. I sensed that to her I was special, but I did not realize that she was seeking intimacy with me. She was too intimidating, so superior to the rest of us, that I didn’t think she could possibly be interested in listening to my thoughts and concerns.
This was still the state of affairs when my high school friend and I arrived in Vienna early November in 1956, after an improbably adventurous border crossing into Austria. We had no money, no luggage, and the clothes on our back were beyond redemption. We managed to connect with a student volunteer in the refugee camp who was delighted when he found that my German was reasonably good. He invited us to his home the next day, and from there the first thing I did was to call Stephanie in Paris. She was ecstatic. She had been hoping that I, and perhaps the whole family, would grab the unexpected opportunity to escape from communist Hungary, but there were no communication channels open for her to contact us. She announced that she was flying to Vienna the next morning.
She was wonderful. She took me out of the refugee camp and checked me into her hotel, took me to buy clothes, fed me, and generally spoiled me in every conceivable way. In a matter of a few days our relationship changed in a fundamental way. I realized that she was going to be an unconditional source of support for me, and that her interest was in helping me accomplish whatever I set my mind to do. And she also became my constant critic and motivational guide in a dominant and sometimes intimidating fashion… For the next forty years she was a powerful influence on everything I did and thought. I felt I needed to please her and I dreaded disappointing her.
During my college years I was less than a dedicated and committed student. I had a difficult time settling into a regular discipline and was easily distracted by less than scholarly temptations. George, while generous and a reliable source of practical support, was never a resource for help with non-material issues. And Stephanie was too far away to rely on a daily basis, as were my parents, so I meandered around somewhat lost along the intersections of duty and temptation. In my sophomore year I got myself into a very troublesome relationship that led to my taking a year off from school and I came close to committing myself to a direction which, despite my enthusiastic determination at the time, would surely have turned out to be a disaster in the long run. I had written Stephanie, proudly telling her about my plans. She immediately recognized the problems I was about to get myself into and she flew to New York right away to rescue me.
I was less than grateful and welcoming. As far as I was concerned she was simply meddling, interfering, where she had no business whatever. She was not put off by my resistance. She kept asking me, listening to me, thinking about what I said and reacting. She eventually convinced me that while I was embarking on a journey to an unknown destination, it was clearly in a troublesome direction. I gradually started to trust her judgment, increasingly understanding that she had no hidden agenda in this case, and that she was just looking out for me. Ultimately I ended up extricating myself from my predicament, going back to school, and settling into a more balanced existence on a somewhat more even keel.
This experience cemented a much closer liaison with Stephanie for me. On the one hand I knew I could utterly trust her to be my friend and source of support, but at the same time I realized that she would always be my fearful moral and ethical guide. No plan I ever hatched after this episode was exempt form going through the “Stephanie filter” administering the test: would Stephanie approve? She managed to override even the genuinely deep emotional relationship I had with my father, whom I had considered my very best friend. I did not abandon my preoccupation to do the right thing as judged by Dad, but that concern had no fear component in it, while Stephanie managed to permanently intimidate me…
So, of course, she again played a major role some years later, when I was getting ready to marry Juthica. In Stepahnie’s defense, this was after a brief and disastrously unsuccessful one-year wedlock to Emily, a beautiful but deeply flawed girl. I had been a walking testimonial to Karinthy, the Hungarian humorist, who had defined love as a serious illness with two principal symptoms: first, a complete loss of capacity for judgment, and second, an irresistible urge to make the most important decision of one’s life…
Juthica and I had met the previous year, when we were both married (and doomed shortly to be divorced). We briefly lost contact when my wife and I went to Europe for the summer where we separated. On my return, when I came back to New Haven trying to get into graduate school at Yale, we ran into each other one evening, and ended up catching up and crying on each other’s shoulders about our misfortunes, for most of the night at My Brother’s Place, the all-night diner on Chapel Street. In short order we got ourselves involved in an ever deepening relationship, both of us feeling that we had learned a lot from our first gigantic mistake and feeling that in each other we found our true mates. But how to communicate this to our families?
I worried mostly about Stephanie. But Juthica had plenty to worry about herself. In the India of the 60’s divorce was truly a dirty word. It was simply not something that ever happened in “nice families”. Juthica’s father had died the year before, and now her older brother became the head of the family, and thereby the designated authority on moral judgment about the comings and goings of all the siblings. And he was not the least bit vague about what he considered the right thing to do: as she clearly was incapable of behaving rationally, Juthica had to pack up and come home right away, so he could guide her into the proper direction.
Juthica’s brother was able to generate the same kind of fear and anxiety in Juthica as Stephanie could in me. Neither of us got any support from our families on our plans to build a life together. To my enormous surprise Stephanie came off as a racist in her first written reactions. I wrote to the family about this wonderful Indian woman that I wanted to marry in short order, expecting nothing less than resounding applause and the best wishes. Instead I got Stephanie’s letter asking if she wore those long sheets that sweep the streets as she walks, and asking whether it was wise to plan a marriage so soon after a miserable failure, especially to someone from a distant, remote, mysterious land who would come with who knows what kind of baggage…
Juthica’s brother had his own prejudices, even if they were not quite as racist. His concern was based on the general Indian perception, not altogether off the mark, that Westerners think there is nothing to getting a divorce. He was not so much worried about her tying a knot with a Hungarian as not trusting her judgment to land a reliable, decent partner.
In any case, we arranged a trip to visit both our families. First to Calcutta, then a stop in Paris where everyone in my family would be gathered – my parents, Stephanie and even George, temporarily.
Well, it all went perfectly. I had learned enough Bengali before the trip to carry on a conversation with Juthica’s mother, and I was well rehearsed in traditional Indian protocols of how to behave with elders and those deserving ex officio respect, like her brother. All reservations were promptly dissolved almost immediately after our arrival.
And very similar results in Paris. It took no more than three seconds for Stephanie to become totally charmed and seduced by Juthica’s beauty, elegance, and grace. Instead, her critical eye turned to focus on me and she was compelled to declare that I was unworthy of walking next to her with my drab clothes, my poor shave, and un-shined shoes. Instead, she pronounced that I should be walking behind her and carrying an umbrella to shield her from the harshness of the sun… The rest of my family were equally charmed, even if less dramatically.
Stephanie’s enchantment with Juthica did not diminish over the years. We visited her together every time we were in Europe, and we made sure to stop to see her on the way to or from India on our frequent trips. Even though she did not speak French, Stephanie tended to rely on her to solve any little problems she had, rather than me. Not that she rejected me, our bond was too strong. But she could not resist the urge to criticize me, particularly my appearance, of course, strictly in my interest. In Juthica she never found anything she could criticize.
Over the years Stephanie aged gradually, of course, but she remained completely independent and mentally competent. She listened to radio news every morning and was remarkably up to date on world affairs. She was interested in the arts, went to all the major museum and gallery exhibits, and enjoyed hosting small parties at home, especially with much younger people, where she kept up with intense political and intellectual discussions. Many of her regular visitors were in awe of her knowledge, curiosity, and general sophistication.
One episode from the early 90’s demonstrates the nature of Stephanie’s mind. She was about 95 years old and I was on one of my routine visits to her. One afternoon she asked me to sit so she could ask me something that had been on her mind for a long time. She said that she hears about computers all the time, and that she understands that computers are used for more and more things, for information processing, for manufacturing, for amazingly complicated computations and everything. And then she has also read that computers are really just stupid machines that can handle only 1’s and 0’s. So how could all this b e done with just ones and zeros?
I was surprised at the question. Scientific curiosity was not one of her traits I was aware of. And I tried to just brush it off, saying something like “well, it’s really complicated and difficult to explain”, hoping that she would drop it. But no, she wanted to understand. She kept insisting that I explain the ones and zeros at least, because that seemed impossible.
So I launched into a brief explanation of number systems first, which she grasped right away. Then I continued with the binary system, sketching out a conversion table of decimal numbers represented by binary figures:
Decimal Binary
1 1
2 10
3 11
4 100
5 101
After contemplating the table for a while she had more and more questions, and eventually she learned how to convert binary to decimal and back again. I was totally floored. I had trouble explaining this stuff to my children when they were in middle school. But my ancient aunt was joyful and excited having had this AHA experience.
On the other hand, her independence of spirit did not serve her equally well emotionally. She lost many friends over the years when she felt that she owed them necessary criticism about the way they dressed or comported themselves. She had very strong opinions about manners and appearances. Her frank advice on these matters frequently backfired and hurt her more than others. A good example is her experience with our daughter, Indrani.
Stephanie symbolically adopted me to become her surrogate son who might replace her lost Tomi. But when Indrani was born it became clear that what she had really hoped for in her younger days was a daughter. Every time she came to visit she wanted to baby sit her, she read to her, she fed her, she gave her baths, and so on. She also tried to make her walk before she was able and made her cry quite a lot.
Another episode illustrates well the two edges of the sword that was Stephanie’s controlling relationship with those she loved. Indrani, our daughter, was about 13 and we stopped in Paris for a few days en famille to visit her. We stayed in the little hotel across the street, as Stephanie did not have space for all of us. One afternoon she planned to take us all to the Rodin Museum, a favorite place of hers (and mine). Knowing very well by this time how particular Stephanie was about appearances, Indrani wore her newest little dress that she bought just before trip. I must admit that it was an awkward choice of hers – she looked like she was wearing the half of a knitted sock – but her friends all thought it was terrific. Stephanie was totally thrown for a loop as we filed in through the door. Once she caught her breath, she said to Indrani with a benign little smile, “We cannot go anywhere with you in that thing, my dear. It is simple dreadful. You must wear something decent. You will go back to the hotel and change. We will wait for you.”
Indrani said nothing, but tears started rolling down her face. The look she shot at Stephanie was nuclear. She turned on her heel and slammed the door. In ten minutes she was back wearing jeans and sneakers. Stephanie was no fan of the Yankee uniform either. She said “Well, this is not too flattering either, but at least it is not quite as ugly as that dreadful thing you had on before…”
On the way to the 7th Arondissement in a crowded bus, while we were a little separated from Stephanie, Indrani told us quietly that she never again wanted to come to Paris and she would be happy if she never saw Stephanie again. She added that she could not fathom how, ugly as the woman was, she could even imagine that she knew anything about looking well. I tried to calm her, to no avail.
We all lightened up during the museum visit. The visceral effect of the powerful beauty of the sculptures thankfully erased most of the stress generated before. After the Museum we stopped at one of the wonderful Art Deco cafes in the quartier and settled around a little table with espressos, teas, and ice creams. Stephanie, true to her spirit, glanced at Indrani and signaled to her to sit up straight, and whispered “Smile a little. That’s what a girl is expected to do.” Indrani shot her another nuclear glance and one, reflecting misery, to us. Stephanie took up her stock stance of the refined baroness, surveying the surroundings with just a ghost of an elegant smile.
As we were sipping our drinks and were conversing about the Rodin exhibit a young French couple settled at the next table. I noticed that the young woman kept stealing brief looks at Stephanie, trying not to appear like she is staring. Finally, when there was a break in our conversation, she turned and politely said to Stephanie, in French, “Pardon, Madame, sorry to bother you, but I just had to tell you that I think you are so very beautiful and elegant that it is a pleasure to find myself in your presence!.”
Stephanie smiled sweetly and modestly, thanked her for the compliment, conversed with her for a few seconds, then turned back to us. Indrani understood enough French to get the gist of what the woman had said. Her jaw dropped, her eyes bugged out, and she was speechless. Afterwards she told us that she was certain Stephanie had hired those people and paid them to go through this little charade… While this is an amusing episode, in reality it is quite tragic. In her attempt to heap her profound love on Indrani, all Stephanie accomplished was to totally alienate her.
On my last visit to her in her apartment in 1995, when she was exactly 100 years old, I had a major shock as I opened her door on arrival from the airport. She was on the top of a tall stepladder in the hallway, her head almost touching the 12 foot ceiling, pulling a blanket out of the built-in cabinet there. I had a difficult time keeping from yelling at her “What the hell are you doing up there???”
“Getting blankets for you”, she replied matter of factly.
“Can’t you wait till I get here? What if you fell off that ladder?”
“And what do you think I should do when you are not here? Waiting for your next visit???”
To this there was no adequate response. It was during this visit that she caught some nasty virus and became quite ill. Her doctor wanted her checked into a hospital, which I was able to organize before I had to come back to work. She was in the hospital for several weeks, and her doctor then suggested that she should not go back to living alone but be checked into some assisted care facility. Stephanie wanted to have none of this, and it was also difficult to find an opening in a facility. She was maneuvering to get out of this by asking to be discharged to her apartment only until a spot can be found at a retirement facility. I organized a team of her friends by phone to negotiate with hospital authorities and to find a place for her. The hospital agreed to keep her until a place can be found for her. In about a week a bed opened at a very fine facility and Stepahnie’s dedicated team of friends managed to secure it for her.
As we came to Paris from Slovakia with Juthica we went to see Stephanie at the retirement facility for the first time. We were in for a terrific shock. She had aged enormously. She was extremely frail and emaciated. Our first glimpse of her was during mealtime. We saw her through the glass in the door, before we entered. She was in a double room. A tray table was next to her bed and she was eating something with s poon. Her hand shook a bit as she was lifting the spoon, glacially slowly, and then she had trouble finding her open mouth. We stood by the window for several minutes, nearly paralyzed, not knowing what to do, or what to say.
When we finally did enter, she did not see us at first. I went up to her and held her hand. She looked up and a heavenly smile slowly lit up her face. For a moment she almost turned into the old Stephanie. All she could say that she has been waiting and waiting for our arrival and that she was so happy now.
We stayed in the apartment. The next morning there was a call from the hospital, Stephanie had died during the night. Peacefully, quietly, without suffering. She just never woke up.
In a sense this was a relief. Her condition, as we saw her the evening before, was dismal, making her life very difficult and painful. But hearing the news was a huge shock nevertheless. I could simply not imagine not having Stephanie there any more, as a rock-solid base of support, as a source of unquestioned love, as a guiding star of moral judgment and inspiration. I lamely continued holding the receiver for quite some time after the caller hung up, in a state of near paralysis.
After some time Juthica and I tried figuring out what we had to do. Neither of us had any experience with this type of situation. My French at the time was OK, but far from perfect, so the prospect of having to deal with authorities, offices, agencies, etc. was quite intimidating.
First thing was to call the hospital and learn what we could about the medical details, as I was too shaken to ask any questions when they had called us. I learned that the official cause of death was recorded as pneumonia. And the hospital administrator asked what our funeral plans were. I had to say I was going to call back.
Stephanie had been a realist and a planner. Over the years, during nearly every one of my visits, she would sit me down for a “serious discussion” to tell me about her will, to show me lists of things she wanted to go to various friends, and documents relating to bank accounts, various contracts and papers that had to be addressed in case of her death, and so on. Among these papers was her agreement with the medical school that she had willed her body to them for research or teaching purposes. And most importantly she then showed me her hiding place for all the papers. And each time it was a different place…
The last time we had our discussion everything was in a large envelope taped to the underside of the left-hand kitchen drawer holding the cutlery. Alas, checking the drawer yielded no results beyond a sliver of tape left behind where the envelope had been. So we had to launch a search. It took hours and a lot of creative imagination. Finally we found the big envelope in the book case, inside a large format art book whose pages had all been glued together and then carved out so that only the edges of the pages remained all around. This converted the book into a box camouflaged as a book. The only giveaway was that the book felt a bit lighter than it should have, compared to the other art books of similar size…
I called the medical school. They had the record of the body donation. The first question they asked was the cause of death. When the lady heard “pneumonia” she instantly answered “Desolée, Monsieur, ce n’est pas possible”, meaning essentially no soap. Pneumonia is classified as an infectious disease and they cannot accept bodies in that case. I tried arguing, but it was no use.
It was now clear that we had to change our reservations, as we were going to need a whole lot more time than the three days we had planned for Paris. This turned out to be the easiest obstacle to scale.
Knowing that Stephanie did not believe in burials I had to find out about cremation options. Or more precisely the single cremation option. France is a Catholic country and in all of Paris there is a single venue where cremations are performed, and it needs to be arranged with a funeral home. This put my rudimentary French of the time to a serious test. The salesman at the parlor tried to sell me the most spectacular casket with the most elaborate arrangements and I had to make sure I understood the fine details so I could whittle them down to a minimally respectable arrangement. I am still not sure how well I succeeded in that endeavor.
In any case, we organized the cremation for q couple of days later. It took place in Père Lachaise cemetery, arguably the most famous cemetery in the world. If not the most famous, certainly the most visited and most distinguished, considering the stature of the dead bodies residing there, among them French President Faure, Moliere, Chopin, Colette, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison. We invited a handful of Stephanie’s friends.
We got there there early. We were assigned to a small room in the intricate cluster of buildings near the entrance to the enormous cemetery. As people arrived in little clusters, no one said anything. There was a mournful pall over the gathering, suppressing any temptation to break the silence. Stephanie had not been universally loved, but she was universally held in awe, and her force was still in effect even from the beyond. Once we were all assembled, Bach’s Brandenburg concertos quietly came on in the background.
There were no ceremonies. One side of our room was a glass wall with a view of a large hall below, where Staphanie’s casket lay amidst flowers on a long, counter-like platform. One end of the counter ended at the wall, covered with elaborate, carved, baroque relief decorations. The ambience was peaceful.
The music switched to the Toccata and Fugue in D minor and the casket started slowly moving on the countertop toward the wall. It seemed like magic. It was not apparent that it was traveling on a conveyor belt. Just before it reached the wall, a well-concealed, rectangular gate opened and brilliant white light poured into the hall from the space beyond the wall. At the same time a wave of otherworldly hissing washed over the sound of Bach’s organ music. It took a moment to realize that we were staring at a roaring furnace through the opening in the wall. The casket was slowly traversing the opening. By the time its tail end was at the gate, its front end was ablaze in all consuming flames.
Stephanie went out not with a bang, but a resounding d minor chord…
The gate closed, the hall sank back to its muted darkness, and we stood dumbstruck and shaken, unable to process the finality of the moment. Some twenty minutes later a young man appeared with what looked like a rectangular watering can and handed it to me, signaling that we were to follow him. We filed out into the blinding sunshine and down a path to a lawn, the brightest green I had ever seen. Here the young man pointed to an engraved sign and politely turned and left. The sign said that we were at the “Jardin des Souvenirs”, or garden of memories, then instructed that one of us should step on the lawn and sprinkle the ashes of our loved one over the grass, by pumping the handle of the container while walking up and down, until the container is emptied.
It was a painful and difficult walk. I was trying to digest the reality that the fragile, thin, pathetic figure with the trembling hand whom we saw in the hospital just days before, and who had figured so much larger than life for me over the years, was simply gone now, never to be seen again. And how all of her had been so quickly reduced to a small bucket of ashes. And how insignificant the little clouds of dusty ashes, released from the container with each squeeze, seemed compared to my conception of her importance. And how a bit of each cloud was swept away with a small puff of the breeze to float off to who knows where. Will those bits of ash ever be even noticed again by anyone?...
Once the container was empty I returned it to the young man whom I found behind a desk back in the building. In return he handed me a small metal can, sealed with tape, and a label showing Stephanie’s name. I had asked him before to let us take a bit of the ashes with us. He had said that it was against the rules, but here he was handing it to me anyway. I wanted to bring something tangible back with us to the US even if we were breaking any number of international laws by doing that…
The next several days passed like a whirlwind. We had a small memorial gathering of Stephanie’s friends at the apartment where we offered everyone some object of their choice to remember her by. While calling everyone in her address book to announce her passing I found out that Chris, a good friend from New York, was actually in Paris at the time. Chris was an antiques dealer who regularly shipped containers full of furniture from France to New York. He turned out to be a great help in guiding me to a shipping agent who came to pack and pick up the furniture we wanted to import to California. This made things a lot simpler.
After about ten days of feverish activity, including meetings with lawyers, bankers, tax men and the like, we were finally ready to fly home.
The plane ride was a peculiar experience. This trip had turned out not to be a vacation once we were off the cruise ship. Slovakia was more frustrating than anything else, what with no real connection with Tibor’s family and not being able to accomplish anything with the Stangl family graves. Then Stephanie’s parting dominated the Paris stop, not exactly a barrel of fun either.
So we missed the pleasant afterglow of a well-earned vacation, as well as the usual sensation, just under the surface, of looking forward to being back home in familiar, accustomed, warm and fuzzy surroundings, because George was casting a shadow of apprehension on that anticipation.
After a long and exhausting flight, and after waiting for what seemed like forever, we got into a blue SuperShuttle van and after several stops were finally dropped off in front of our house. By this time it was fairly late and there were no lights on. While anxious to see and find out about how everything had gone, I was actually relieved, wanting nothing more than falling into bed as soon as I could make it up the stairs. So we tried making as little noise as possible with the front door and with dragging in the suitcases.
Just as we were starting up the stairs, thinking that we had done very well, Tibor appeared in the hall in a dressing gown and a grin from ear to ear, arms spread, saying “Velcomb beck!!!”
I said “Hi, Tibor. We are dead. We are going to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“No, no, you cannot,” replied Tibor. “I have been vaiting for you. You must come and drink champagne!”
We looked at each other for several seconds. Then Juthica said, “That is so sweet of you, Tibor. OK, for just a few minutes.” And she went back down the stairs and together they were heading to the dining room. There was nothing for me to do but to follow them. The moment Tibor opened the door our two Labradors, Teera and Meesu, came bounding out and launching an all out jumping and licking attack on both of us. You could not blame them – they had not seen us in a long time…
Tibor flipped on the lights, and on the middle of the table was a nice looking chocolate cake, four place settings, candles and all. He whipped out matches, lit the candles, stepped to the fridge and produced a bottle of champagne – taraa! The boy had style!
The dogs were still bounding all over us, when Tibor said to us “Watch this!” and to the dogs: “Teera, Meesu, to your chair!” Both dogs stopped and looked at him pointing to the two old chairs in the corner. They trotted over to the chairs, hopped on, curled up and stayed there. We were amazed. Tibor the magician. Not just the perfect care giver for George, but a competent dog trainer!
So we had dessert and champagne while Tibor wanted to hear all about our visit to his family and the rest of the trip. While Juthica was giving him all the details I went to get our carry-on and dug into it to extract the smoked sausage for him. We had wrapped it into multiple layers of plastic and foil so we could safely smuggle it past Customs. Tibor was delighted. And what was most impressive, was that Teera and Meesu just sat up straighter, but remained in their chairs until Tibor called them to give them each a sliver.
Once we were done with our stories it was our turn to hear about how it had gone with George. There had been no serious problems. George fell a couple of times, but he managed not ever to hurt himself beyond a little cut or a bruise. On the other hand, Tibor said his general condition and strength had gone down quite a bit. He also said George did not have much of an appetite.
I had to go to work the next morning, so it was really time to go to bed. In the morning George was already at the table with Tibor when we came down. He looked up and said nothing when we came and joined him, both of us sounding cheerful with our big “hellos”. He did look thinner and seemed in a lackluster mood. We had decided to wait telling him about Stephanie, so we talked only about Horna Suča. George did react to the name of his village. His eyes came into focus and he seemed to understand, even though he did not engage in conversation. We told him about the cemetery, and about our failure to find the family house. After a while he sank back into his previous mood of indifference and did not respond to our questions of how he was feeling.
That evening he seemed a little better. When I got home, he asked whether I would make him a drink. He complained that the nice boy here would never make him one. He did not remember Tibor’s name. Tibor signaled at me that this was not so – he regularly had George drink a glass of wine with dinner.
A martini did seem to cheer him up some. He even seemed to recognize that we were family. To my amazement he asked how our visit had gone with his sister. He then added that he had just called her and that she is sending her love.
For reasons unknown I then tried telling him that she had passed away. He listened, seemed to hear, but did not respond in any visible or audible fashion. He just got very quiet. After a while he politely whispered “Excuse me”, got up and went out of the room, we thought to the bathroom. After a few moments we heard a little noise from the hall. Tibor jumped up and was through the door in a flash and we heard him saying “George! What are you doing? You think that is a tree? The bathroom is just here, come-on now…”. Then George: “I was looking for a bathroom. Didn’t know there was one here. I was not informed…”
George had become generally much quieter and subdued. He stayed in his room more, and much of the time we found him stretched out in his bed, fully clothed, sound asleep. Ha also ate much less, often refusing to eat at all. He would come to the table, but just push his plate away sitting there quietly. He did not react to Juthica’s gentle coaxing to have a little to eat, or at least to just try a spoonful. He was visibly losing weight. We decided that we needed to have a doctor looking at him. We didn’t really cared for the young doctor at the Clinic who normally saw him, so I called around the Stanford Hospital to get a referral to a really good gerontologist, and several people mentioned Dr. Peter Pompei. I made an appointment.
Pompei turned out to be wonderful. An incredibly sensitive, gentle man of around fifty, he immediately found a tone that got a response from George – something I was no longer able to accomplish. He spent a long time assessing George’s condition from every angle. Afterwards he asked me to call him so he could bring me up to date. I did so later in the day. Pompei said George was in an advanced stage of dementia and that while he had no sign of any immediately critical health problems, he was very weak and that he could easily slip into a dangerous condition any time. I asked him what he would recommend we do – check him into a nursing home, hospital, or what? He thought that as long as he was in a caring and stable environment, that was best, in other words, if we could, we should keep him at home. He then told me to call him any time we needed, even to just to ask questions. He also gave me his personal email and said that if necessary he would do house calls to see George.
Over the next few weeks George’s condition went up and down. He had good days when he was communicative, he even joked and kidded around with Tibor. Other days he was non-responsive, would not eat or talk. We saw Dr. Pompei several times, always without a conclusive diagnosis of what was amiss.
Meanwhile we had stored Stephanie’s ashes in the book case. One fine September weekend, when our daughter was also home, we thought we would take a drive to the beach, taking George, Tibor, the dogs, a picnic, and Stephanie’s ashes. We piled into the SUV and drove to Half Moon Bay. It was a pleasant sunny day, and miraculously, there was hardly anyone around. On the way, George was sitting in the front with me, and I spent the drive talking about Stephanie. George was not too energetic, but he seemed to hear what I was talking about. He did not reject my telling him about her passing away.
We parked and proceeded to the beach. We walked on the hard, wet sand in a line, with George and me in the front. I opened the can of ashes and with the help of a spoon sprinkled a little into the breeze. I was quietly telling George what was in the can. He did not respond at first, but after a minute he extended his hand and I gave him the can and the spoon. Without a word, he dipped the spoon and let the ashes drift away in the light breeze. I can only assume that he did understand what we were doing.
I then passed the can to Juthica, then to Indrani, and we let Staphanie’s spirit float away into the ether, so she could continue her mission of finding souls to save, teach, and influence, as was her calling.
After a quiet picnic we headed back, all of us in a somber mood. George never mentioned his sister after this episode. I don’t know if that was just how it turned out, or if spreading the ashes actually amounted to a kind of closure for him that he could process.
Soon after this episode Tibor’s year off was coming to an end and he needed to get back to school. He surprised us by arranging for a friend, another Hungarian young man, to take his place. He brought Henry to meet us. He seemed nice enough, although not nearly as personable as Tibor. George did not reveal how he took to Henry – he just looked at him without much of a reaction. Henry was in school during the day, but he would be around evenings and during the night, so we agreed to take him on at least on a trial basis.
Once Tibor left, George became much less communicative and his general condition started visibly deteriorating. This probably was just a coincidence. Tibor’s departure might have had something to do with this, although I am not convinced that it did. He ate less and less, and was staying in bed more. When we tried asking him if everything was OK, or if anything was bothering or hurting him, he would usually just look into space and not answer.
After spending most of his time in bed for several days, we noticed that he was quietly groaning much of the time. Still he would not respond when we tried asking exactly what he was feeling. Juthica brought him food, propped him up, and helped feeding him, a little like a small child. And this was becoming more and more of a challenge, as George often refused to eat at all.
I finally called Dr. Pompei, asking him what he advised. He came to the house that afternoon. This time even he failed to elicit a reaction from George. While being examined he just laid there unresponsive, continuing to groan quietly, rhythmically, slowly. Pompei thought that George was probably experiencing some pain, although he could not be sure exactly what that was. But he thought it would be best to use some palliative medication and he wrote out a prescription for pills.
Days, and then weeks rolled by. George seemed to hang on by a thread. We took turns with Juthica, and in the evenings with Henry, cajoling him to eat and to take his pills. He was more willing to accept a little soup, so it became the “plat-du-jour”. The pill was always a battle and half the time we were the losers. George was clearly in very poor shape, but his condition seemed to have become stable.
It was very, very hard to simply accept this state of affairs. George had been the personification of cocky gumption. To see him in a withered, shrunken state, just lying there passively, inactively, was extremely disturbing. We had interminable, repetitive discussions with Juthica about him and his discouraging, seemingly hopeless condition. More often than not these discussions were nothing more than sessions of commiseration, despairing about George’s suffering and about our own frustrations. Often one or the other of us would bring up memories of episodes with a healthy, unimpaired George, starting with “You remember when…?” These served to distract us from the very real problems of the present by transporting us back to the past.
But our real concern was one for the future. What was in store for George? How long was he going to continue hanging on to the bare shadow of a life? How much longer was he going to have to suffer without the chance of any relief? We were doing everything we could to keep him comfortable, but obviously not succeeding very well. But what if we succeed in just keeping him alive indefinitely for more and more endless suffering? And what is all this going to do to us?
We both remembered the discussions, in person or on the phone, years before, when he was still in New York on his own, when we were trying to convince him to move to California to be closer to us. The clinching argument we used over and over was to tell him that eventually, inevitably, as he gets older, there would be a time when he would no longer be able to take care of himself without help, and that we could provide that. His standard response was always a cocky, smug, self-assured statement that he has that problem completely covered, not to worry. He is just not the kind who would depend on help – he would make sure he would not be around to need it.
Yes, George, the man always in control. Master of the universe. Meeting a challenge with chin outthrust, risks with a shrug, danger with a condescending smile. In no condition to do anything whatever even vaguely resembling taking control…
We never discussed it at the time, but we both spent time and energy on fantasizing about various ways of helping George (and ourselves?) end his misery and suffering. We were not able to talk about this, because the thought itself was too shameful, but we also could not keep the thought from coming back with increasing frequency. Who knows, perhaps we could have talked about it eventually, perhaps we could have even acted on it eventually.
But in Late November George’s condition started to deteriorate further. He seemed only marginally conscious most of the time, and when conscious he was clearly agitated, trying to change position with jerky motions, or waving an arm like shooing a fly away, but never saying anything and not responding to questions. My instructions from Dr. Pompei included increasing the dosage of certain medications and decreasing others, in order to see what combination would have a calming, stabilizing effect. I kept trying various combinations without discernible changes or results.
Eventually his breathing became seriously labored and irregular. Every minute or so he stopped breathing for maybe 30 seconds, then started again with barely a flutter, gradually increasing and speeding up, till he took one or two normal breaths. Then it would weaken and slow down and stop again. I emailed Dr. Pompei describing the pattern. He answered right away, explaining that I was describing a perfect example of Cheyne-Stokes respiration, often seen in end stage cardiac and respiratory conditions. He did not feel anything we could do at this stage besides palliative care would be useful and he prescribed morphine drops.
The next days were exasperating. I cannot say how they were for George – I can only imagine that they were a lot worse for him. I took time off from work to be home to relieve Juthica in her struggles to feed George and give him pills or morphine drops. The only predictable reaction George produced was to squeeze his lips together whenever he saw a spoon, or fork, or dropper in our hands. And the Cheyne-Stokes breathing continued, becoming ever more dramatic.
I remember one morning waking up and telling Juthica that I don’t think I can bear another day of this mindless, pointless battle that we have been waging now for longer than I cared to remember. She said for me to stay in bed a little longer, she would go down to see how things were going. A few minutes later she called from downstairs. While she only called my name, her tone said much more, it had genuine urgency in it. I hopped out of bed and raced downstairs. Juthica was standing at George’s door, just looking at me, saying nothing. It was not necessary. I knew.
George was quietly lying on his back. He was calm and peaceful. He was staring at the ceiling. And he was quite cold to the touch.
I closed his eyes gently, and we called Dr. Pompei. He was not surprised. He expressed his condolences very gently and kindly and said he would drop off a death certificate before noon.
When Henry woke up that morning getting ready for school, he was amazed that George had passed away in the night. He said there was absolutely no noise from his room. We did not think there was.
We called Stanford Med School’s Department of Anatomy. They arranged for a funeral parlor and George was transported away in the afternoon to start his new career as a cadaver.
I am not generally given to sentimental contemplation. But that day it did strike me that I had just been left very much alone. George had been the very last of the Stangl family besides myself and my two children. When we pass, an emphatic full stop will be placed at the end of the Stangl saga.
Had George been a little less detached, and had Stephanie been a little less engaged, the two of them might have been good surrogate parents for me and I might have made fewer costly mistakes in my younger days. And they themselves would have had happier lives. But, alas, we do not get to replay the tape. We have to settle for what we have.