Last weekend, I realized that I had been finding excuses to avoid visiting my dad. No time today. Of course I want to stop by, but this or that thing just popped up that “needs” to be done instead.

Visiting isn’t joyful, although there are, I suppose, small moments to be treasured. Walking into the nursing home is a reminder that this is a one-way trip we’re all on, each patient now only a fragment of a life lived, a family raised and scattered, hopes, whether fulfilled or not, now only fading memories, if memory by chance remains. Walking down the hall towards his room requires negotiating passage past men and women in wheel chairs, leaning on walkers, moving slowly, sometimes painfully, or sitting, some alert, some blank, past nurses managing medications or special care, past nursing assistants providing the nitty gritty hands-on support needed for so many simple tasks, getting up, sitting down, getting to the bathroom, getting out of bed, greeting a son or daughter. It’s an inescapable reminder of our own mortality, and I find myself mentally fidgeting, subtracting my age from his and wondering about how long it’s possible to avoid this collision path with aging.

One patient dies, another takes his place. That happened again recently in my dad’s room, and so there’s someone new in the next bed. He’s hooked up to a medley of electronics and tubes delivering oxygen, monitoring responses, dripping solutions or medications. There’s a curtain separating their beds most of the time, but some times of day it’s apparently pulled back and my dad can turn his head and see what’s going on over there.

The first day I visited after the new patient’s arrival, my dad pointed to the curtain, and whispered: “That man sleeps with his mouth open.” He imitates, opening his mouth, exaggerating the act of breathing. It bothers him, the open mouth in the next bed, although I’m not sure why he fixates on this among all the things he hears and sees each day.

Then there are the sounds. When I arrive, my dad again points to the curtain, asks me what’s going on. He can hear can hear one of the CNA’s at work, tries to hear what she’s saying.

“What’s going on out there,” he sometimes asks me, pointing generally towards the rest of the room and out to the hallway. “It sounds like they’re doing a lot of work in the hotel today,” he’ll say, his mind trying to make sense of the sounds beyond his own sheltered bed next to the window over looking the bus stop on Beretania Street and City Feed Store.

He listens to the beeping machines, sounds of heavy breathing. Then there are the occasional human sounds. Moans, shouted, seemingly requiring more accumulated energy than the wired-up man in the next bed could possibly muster. He groans loudly. Repeats. Once. Twice. Again. No real rhythm, no language. A strangled sound of frustration. The nursing assistant tries to shush him.

“Don’t make noise, Mister,” she calls. “Oh, don’t make noise.”

I can’t tell whether these are involuntary visceral outbursts or attempts to communicate. If it’s communication, I admit that I’m trying not to listen, as if ignoring the disturbance it will somehow shield my dad from it as well.

And I find myself not wanting to know what’s really going on. It’s hard enough dealing with my dad’s condition, and I draw a mental curtain around us. I know that I should extend my empathy to the others here in the room and on the floor, but I haven’t gotten into the space to do that. So I pretend not to pay attention to what’s going on behind the curtain. I know it’s distressing for me, and I’m only there for short periods. I worry about the toll it may be taking on my dad, who is there essentially 24 hours a day, all the while struggling to make sense of what’s happening in the next bed. Or, as he says, the next room. Next door. I want to pretend all is well, but the sounds of labored breathing, interrupted by urgent moaning, give the lie to my efforts.

When I arrived to visit one day earlier this week, made my way down the hall, stopping first for a squirt or two of hand sanitizer, into the room, past the other beds, past moaning man, then around the curtain, and found my sister, Bonnie, already sitting at the bedside. My father is on his back, sheet pulled up just above his waist, foot moving restlessly under the sheet. He’s awake, lucid. Bonnie finds the button to move the head of the bed higher so that he’s almost in a sitting position.

I look to sit down. The nearest empty seat was the portable hospital commode sitting in front of his bed, next to the closet. On the wall, two photos, one of my nephew’s daughters, one of my dad on his boat after a successful fishing trip. On a not so good day, Bonnie says that he looks at those photos and asks who the people are. On a good day, I point to the boat and he smiles gamely, not letting on whether or not he is remembering.

In any case, I select his walker, which has a built-in seat, move it over near the foot of the bed, sit down. We make conversation for a while, Bonnie’s good at that. After a while, the man behind the curtain started the loud groaning again. There’s nothing we can do about it. I flinch. It’s jarring, uncomfortable. I want to get away but can’t.

I watch for my dad’s reaction.

He looks to his right, then gestures at the curtain and beyond.

“Would you call that ‘disturbing’?”

We nod, yes, of course. The groaning from behind the curtain continues. I’m worried about my dad’s reaction.

Then he slowly raises his right hand off the bed, holding it out in front, palm down. The hand moves, slowly, up and down, left and right, and suddenly I see the twinkle in his eye and realize that his hand is moving with the sound from beyond the curtain. He’s no longer just enduring a disturbing sound, he’s directing it, leading the choir. Taking control of events, even in this small way, a big victory.

Live and learn.