The father and daughter did not talk about profound things. Sometimes they do not speak at all; they only look at each other and they feel well enough. Nancy Mushlin slid her manicured fingers over the hands that had cradled her as an infant nearly 50 years ago. Arthritis has bent Myer Mushlin's fingers like old tree roots. He wears a gold wedding band, as he has since 1940, though old age and Alzheimer's took his wife last year and ended a romance that began with two teenagers and spanned seven decades. Since her mother died last August, Nancy Mushlin has been insistent: her widowed father must never feel alone.
On a warm Friday in March, she left work at the Citizens Bank office building in Providence, as she does each weekday, to spend her lunch hour at the Tockwotton Home in Fox Point. She found her 90-year-old father sitting in a recliner outside a nurses' station, in an intersection of hallways lined with easy chairs, which functions as a town square. People bustled around Myer Mushlin. Nurses wheeled patients here and there, or gave pills. Staff members did paperwork. The cleaning crew made its rounds. Nancy pulled a metal folding chair to her father's knee.
"I want a kiss," he said.
She kissed him. "It's like 65 degrees outside," she told him, on what had been the warmest day of the year so far.
"I'm so proud of you, so proud of you," he said. "Can I have a kiss?"
They held hands, as Myer and his wife used to do. His wife's name was Beatryce.
Myer always asks his daughter what's new. She sees him five days a week, so it's hard to come up with something new every day. On Mondays she can tell him about her weekend. They talk about Nancy's sister Ellen, who visits on Saturdays. Beatryce's sister keeps in touch with the family; they talk about her. They talk about daily life. How is Nancy's car running? She asks often if he needs to talk about anything, to confide in her. Most of the time, he doesn't.
The rare times he feels nostalgic, they talk about the past. Sometimes he confides in Nancy that he still thinks of his wife. He doesn't get too emotional. Sometimes he gets withdrawn and Nancy can tell his thoughts are elsewhere. She had feared he would die of a broken heart after he lost his wife, and Nancy is impressed by how her father has adjusted. He had been a liquor salesman for Narragansett Brewery and never had many hobbies, never played golf, never played cards with the boys.
On holidays, his family, the four of them, was all he wanted. He didn't want parties; he just wanted the four of them to be together.
One time several years ago, when Nancy was researching nursing homes for her mom, Myer suddenly asked, So what made you feel you had to put your mother out to pasture? She had replied, Mom needs the care and she needs it constantly. They'll take care of her, and I'll make sure that you're there with her. Once he knew that they would be together, he was all right. In assisted living and later in the nursing home, Myer and Beatryce held hands all day, sitting side by side; he in a recliner and she in a wheelchair. Nancy thought they seemed like newlyweds.
Now, Nancy held her father's hands. She rubbed his fingernail.
"Where's your coat?" Myer asked.
"It's like 65 degrees and I didn't wear one."
They looked into each other's eyes.
"The puppy is fine," Nancy said. "Aunt Harriet sends her love. When Ellen goes on vacation, I should probably come one time on the weekends. I don't like you to be alone too much."
"I'll be all right."
Nancy smiled. "You have all your friends here," she said. "What else do you want to talk about?"
In a few months, he would turn 91.
"Do you want a party?" Nancy asked.
"No."
"You want a new outfit?"
"I have so much clothes, the closet is full."
"You must want something for your birthday."
"Just you," he said. "That's enough."
"You never ask much of me."
"I'm very happy."
"Good," she said. "I'm happy that you're happy."
Nancy, 49 and single, has always been close to her parents. She lived for several years in Florida, working for Fleet Bank. In 2000, she had a chance to leave her job with a severance package, due to a bank merger. Her parents were then into their 80s. She did not want to one day get a call that one was sick, and have to rush to fly north and then have to juggle life in Florida with family in Rhode Island. That's it, she thought, I'm coming home.
Her mother, who had Alzheimer's disease and was recovering from a broken hip, moved to Tockwotton in January 2005. Nancy got her father a room in the nursing home, too, three months later. That August, Nancy sat beside her mother's bedside. Eighty-six-year-old Beatryce Mushlin had fallen into a coma. Nancy told her dad to sleep. She held her mother's hand and spoke to her all night. At around 3 in the morning, Beatryce awoke, and her eyes winked at her daughter. Nancy said: I love you, Mom. And she watched her mother mouth the words back. She could not have gotten a better goodbye. She woke her father and told him, talk to Mom. Myer held Beatryce's hand and talked with his wife. She died quietly the next night.
Nancy finds it hard sometimes to see her father frail. He had been an active man. His hands at one time played the violin in an amateur orchestra. Myer's smile is unchanged, though, which was one thing Beatryce always said she loved about him.
The last 15 minutes of Nancy's visit with her father were mostly quiet. They looked at each other.
"Aren't you cold?" he asked.
"No dad, it's warm today. How about in spring we go out and sit in the courtyard?"
She has grown closer to her father since Beatryce died. "I don't want him to feel alone," she would say after the visit. "That's why I go every day. I don't want him to think I'm not thinking of him. I'm coming to see him and he knows that and is looking forward to that. When he goes? God, I know it's inevitable. He's 90, God bless him. He's had a wonderful life; it's going to be a deep hole. I've always been daddy's little girl. He used to play the violin, I used to play the piano; we have a lot of sweet memories together."
Their time was running short. "I'm going to have to go to work now," Nancy said. She put away the folding chair. "I want my Dad hug." He rose, without help, from the chair. They embraced. "Have a nice afternoon. I'll see you," she said.
He stood nearby while she waited for the elevator.
"Bye darling," he said, with a dainty wave.
"I'll see you."
"I love you."
"I love you."
For a moment as Nancy waited for her elevator, her face grew solemn. She would not see her father again until Monday. She missed him on the weekends. He stood in front of her, waving goodbye. She missed him already.
Your turn: How do you keep in touch with your elderly parents and check on their well-being?
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