Saturdays With Chuck

I have recently lost one of my best friends. He was 93.

Chuck was one of the first clients I assisted once I graduated as a Nurse Assistant and got a job with an at-home care agency. I remember being so nervous about our first meeting. I arrived very early and still managed to get lost in their complex. Waze sent me round the back of another building so, I was frantically calling the office to get better directions. I had diligently read the bios and background of the family and was armed with their medication information. I needn’t have worried. Chuck greeted me with one of the best smiles I have ever seen. We were instant friends.

When I started my dream of becoming a nurse, I do have to admit to going in being a little afraid of ‘old’ people. As a kid, I always dreaded visits with old relatives in places that smelled of death and neglect and pee. I would sit on old Uncle so-and-so’s knee and say hello and tell him all the things I’d been doing lately. Little did I realize then how imperative these visit are with our older generation. They mark their legacy, they mark youth, hope and light.

When I was training to be a Nurse’s Assistant, we had 4 weeks clinical work in an elder care facility in “not-the-so-best-part-of-town” in LA county. I had passed the written module of the course with flying colors but now… the practical! Can you actually cope with the really physical aspects of becoming a Nurse Assistant? Our instructor told us that Clinical sorted the wheat from the chaff. If you can pass clinical - you can be a nurse! Can your arms bear the weight of a patient who’s limbs have atrophied or can you patient enough to care for a person who’s dementia has caused them to forget to eat? Can you cope with putting diapers on a patient, showering them, hearing the yelling, the abuse, the screams, the distrust, the agony of aging… can you cope with this, dear nurses??? In our eagerness, we said yes, of course we can. The reality was different.

Our mentors in the facility, were veterans. Many of them were delighted we were there! Finally, some assistance and extra hands for them. We were given tasks - change bedding in Room 8, bath the lady in Room 9, help feed the gentleman in room 12… These nurses were Saints! We just stepped into their world for training but these were duties they did every day, day in day out: back-breaking, mentally-challenging, gut-wrenching work, for approximately $15 an hour. This is probably less than most people pay their babysitter/cleaner/gardener and yet, this is what the country deems a fit salary for these saints who look after the parents we can no longer care for, or the folks who don’t have the money to pay for anything else.

Back to dearest Chuck. For two wonderful years, I went to his house on Saturdays to help him and his amazing wife. We had the best chats - about business, about Notre Dame football, about Scotland, about population, immigration, religion, architecture, his kids, my kids - we spoke about everything. Chuck was utterly charming. One of the best men I have ever met. In one of our first meetings he wrote down the names and birthdays of all my girls and key words to help him remember: ‘Peace corps’, ‘Long Beach’, ‘the teacher’ and ‘Berkeley’. And he did remember. Every week we would check in with all our people, running through them all, catching up. He genuinely cared.

Sometimes we would have conversations where he shared his fear of leaving this world, God, the universe - the stuff that kept him up at night. I know that he shared these thoughts with no one else. He was a deeply spiritual man. We would also laugh - a lot. Chuck was a silent laugher, if you know what i mean. His body would shake but there was no noise. When you looked up, his face would be scrunched up with his eyes shut. Best sight ever! He would say, doubled up, “Tori, promise me when you write your memoir, you’ll be kind to me…”

Chuck and I found ourselves at opposite ends of the political spectrum most of the time! He would patiently listen when I would tell him my views and then he would give me his “but what if you were the owner of the building…?”, or “so what do you feel we should do about all the homeless people in those neighborhoods?”. At the end of 2019, Chuck was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Trump administration, but he was a person of such deep integrity that he tried to never speak ill of ‘those in charge’. He was old-school conservative and was a man of honor, a man of his word.

I never spoke of Vik to Chuck and his wife, initially. I wasn’t purposely not telling them but it didn’t come up. They knew I was divorced but they never probed further. Their wonderful daughter and I did talk about Vik though and she told me if it hadn’t come up, then that was ok. Inside, I guess I thought that, as a good catholic man, he might not ‘approve’. (A bit crazy though that I would think that of Chuck.) One Saturday, their daughter rushed out to the car to greet me when I arrived and she told me that her parents knew about Vik. She said that her cousin had outed me! I had to laugh because I remember the event well. We had gone to a Notre Dame viewing party at their son’s house and the aforementioned cousin was there chatting to me, giving it the usual ‘divorced nurse' and ‘what do you do for fun?’ - yuk, yuk! Usually, the ‘Sorry, but I play for the other team’ is a deterrent but, not in this case. Clearly he deemed the news worthy of telling Uncle Chuck!

There was no discomfort of course, Chuck and his wife were very respectful, and from that day on included Vik in the weekly line-up of family check-ins. One afternoon, Vik came to pick me up and serenaded Chuck and his wife with their favorite song “Just In Time”. He had his eyes closed the entire time and I saw tears on his cheeks.

There was one day, towards the end of his life, Chuck was so excited to tell me that he was going to switch political parties - he said “Tell the Berkeley daughter, she will be so happy to know that her mother has changed the heart of an old man”…

We had so many victories, Chuck and I. We enriched each others lives in ways I feel unable to express. I can’t find the words yet. I never expected to make a best friend. I never expected to meet such a true gentleman. I miss him every day.

Chuck is the reason I rediscovered my love of college football (the American variety!) Go Irish!

Chuck is the reason I ‘still’ want to become a nurse in the middle of a damned global pandemic.