Some Guy Says

The Big Rain

Both of my parents were US Navy veterans. In fact, that’s how they met. The story goes that, as my father was being promoted to work directly with Admiral Arleigh Burke, my mother was assigned to be his replacement at the Pentagon. It was his job to train her for her new role.

I mean…as if!

I often wonder what they would have made of the world in which we find ourselves.

This is a story about them. About us.

So, do you remember, like, however many summers ago, when we had those insane rains? I mean, it was torrential, relentless, crazy rain. You remember?

I was at work one day in June that summer when I got this phone call from my mom:

“Your father’s gone crazy – he says he doesn’t love me anymore and he’s gone out of the house and I don’t know what to do. You’ve got to come over here right away.”

“Oh? I mean…OK! I’m on my way.”

Now, my dad had all kinds of things that were wrong with him, and he was pretty much blind, and he’d gone out in this rain? This can’t be good. I need more information. So I called back from the car.

This time, mercifully, Dad answered the phone.

“How’s everything going?”

“Everything’s fine and we don’t need anyone coming over here right now.”

“Oh no! Too late – I’m on my way. Can’t wait to see you!”

Click.

Well. When I got there, they were in their respective corners. I asked them to tell me what happened, and the good news was that they essentially told me the same story. I mean, it was like listening to two witnesses describe a car wreck: she told me what it looked like from her corner, and he told me what it was like from his…but...it was, you know, the same wreck.

And you know there’s this tipping point that comes in life when you start to talk to your parents as if they were your children, right? So I said to Mom, “You need to go in the den and wait there until I’m ready to talk to you.” I basically put her in Time Out.

The amazing thing was…she went!

I turned to Dad and said, “So what’s going on?”

He said, “Nothing much. Everything’s fine.”

So I refined my question: “So what’s going on today?”

He got real quiet for a long time, and then he said, “There are too many things that are wrong with me that can’t be fixed. And it’s just not fair.”

And he was right. He had diabetes and Parkinson’s and that kind of macular degeneration that causes people to hallucinate. It’s often confused with dementia which is what it ultimately leads to as your mind tries to decipher the things that your eyes no longer can, and over time, well, that just wears you out. I mean, for a while you can reason yourself away from those images that make no logical sense.

Sooner or later, though, you just have to give in.

The harder problem was that my mother simply had no patience for any of that: “Robert, you know there are no children—or cats or floaty things or burglars or whatever else you think you see—in this house!”

This was wearing her out, too.

Looking back, I think I get it. I don’t think she was angry. I know she was frustrated. I think she was mostly confused, and I’m sure she was scared. They were very traditional people. He was Commander Robert White, she was Mrs. Robert White. If there were no Robert White, then who was she?

And he was slipping away.

Know what I mean?

Dad and I sat together for a long while. Even though we were quiet, I knew I had better pay real close attention. This was the first time that this guy – who used to have a hand in running the United States Navy – had been so open, so transparent, so vulnerable with me, and I didn’t want to lose even a moment of this.

I held his hand longer than I ever had.

After a while, I said, “I need to go talk to Mom.”

***

“So what’s going on?”

“Oh he’s just driving me crazy!”

“What does that even mean?”

“He won’t let me do anything!”

“Well, what do you want to do that he won’t let you do?”

“Well, for one thing, he won’t let me turn out the lights!”

[Pause – Aside: I know, right?]

“What does that mean?”

Well, it seems that my dad liked to go to bed at around 830, and my mom would stay up on the computer until 10 or so. Listen: she was the computer queen! I had gotten a computer for him – ok, for them – but my dad could never get on the thing but for my mother. And once she got on to that Facebook, there was no turning back.

Dad had had this brilliant career in the Navy, and on account of because of that we lived all over the planet. Mom would track people down from throughout our lives and adventures, friend them, and then actually keep up!

At 1030 she would start to wind down. She’d go into the bedroom, wake my father up from a dead sleep, and ask him, “Robert, is it time to turn out the lights? Can I turn out the lights?”

And he would say, “No Mary, I have to do that,” and he would get up and wander around the house looking for lights that needed turning out.

I asked her, “Did you ever think you might just go ahead and turn out the lights and go to bed? Or maybe you could turn out the lights and just tell him you’d done it if you want to have, you know, some ‘nighty-night’ time with him?”

“Oh, I never thought of that!”

“Well let’s go and talk to him and see what he says.”

So we went back into the living room.

“Dad, Mom has a question she wants to ask you.”

“Robert, I want to know why I can’t turn out the lights!”

It didn’t sound like a question, but it was a start.

Dad was very quiet. He looked at her for a long time, and then he looked down, and then he looked to me, and then he said, “Every bite of food I put in my mouth, your mother has to make for me. Every time I go somewhere, your mother has to take me there. Turning the lights out at night is the one thing I can do to show her that she is loved and cared for and safe in her own home.”

…I know, right?

“Mom, do you have anything you want to say to Dad?”

Long pause. “Well. I guess he can turn out the lights.”

The picture that I have in my head as I drove away that afternoon is of the two of them standing under the eaves of the garage. A sheet of rain separated us and put them in a kind of fade. But I could see them reach to each other with their inside hands while they waved goodbye to me.

Please read this, too!

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month…give or take.

Special thanks to Canetha Dodd for editorial support and to Lauren Fincham for content support and encouragement!

All photos in this post are mine.

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