Weed World
written by: Craig E Harms
Many of us will go the way of weeds, anyway, when we get old: prickly pain-in-the-asses with no purpose but to annoy. – Dr. Myriam Butterfield in her book, With Death, Comes Dignity
***
Joe Neidemeier slumped in his wheelchair, a rumpled sack of eggshells, eyes glazed on a TV game show, not quite comprehending why the pretty blonde was flipping over letters of the alphabet he had learned 83 years earlier in kindergarten. Joe was not quite comprehending who he was, where he was, or how he got here. Joe was increasingly not quite comprehending the world around him, thanks to the growing dementia gnawing away at his cognition of everything.
Joe’s three daughters thought nothing of his condition at first: the overflow of coffee Niagra-falling down the countertop one morning? Mom always set the brewer because it was in her kitchen and Dad could burn water. His forgetfulness? Just Dad’s old brain cleaning out files. His increasing bitterness? Growing worse since his wife of fifty-three years, Bea, died six years ago. Who wouldn’t get a little grumpy?
Over time, they became more and more concerned about Dad living alone: he once cranked up the thermostat to 86° — in August. He was not eating the dinners they brought over, relying instead on the nutritional value of Little Debbie cupcakes, protein shakes, and Marlboros. They were shocked at the long cigarette melt in the arm of his Naugahyde recliner and ashes on the carpet where he obviously fell asleep smoking while watching the tube. It soon became apparent it was time to sell the house and have Dad move in … with one of them ….
Daughter #1 immediately declined the invitation. “Our spare room is upstairs, and you know his bad hip,” she said in fake concern. Daughter #2 would have loved to take him in, but was just too busy with her too-busy schedule (although she was retired). It was thrust upon the youngest, “to care for dear, sweet Dad, as he took care of you when your mind was less developed.” Guilt–and an empty bedroom with a half bath just off the kitchen–sealed the deal for Daughter #3.
Dad was fine. At first. Docile and coherent most of the time. The loving, caring father who had raised her. Until he slowly regressed into her three-year-old:
Pouting because he had to take his daily meds (which he forgot most of the time, unless prodded), or because he wasn’t allowed to drive to Halpin’s Market (which closed its doors for good thirty years before). Towards the end of his stay, smashing his dinner plate on the floor because he had to eat spaghetti when he wanted pie. He was getting Sundown Syndrome: suffering confusion, agitation, and disorientation, beginning at dusk, calling out if Bea was ready to hit the sack, and then getting upset that she must be off to “one of her goddamn club meetings.” Then came two lorazepams and an Ambien. Then came the falls. Forgetting towards the end even #3’s name.
Joe Neidemeier earned his one-way ticket to Weed World one evening during a dinner party, when he wandered out of his room during dessert, displaying to everyone at the table with proud delight, the erection protruding underneath his padded underpants.
***
76-year-old Judith O’Brien never got to wear a wedding ring, although she came close three times. It wasn’t her fault every one of the fiancés turned out to be assholes and didn’t want to bend to her ways, leaving her high and dry and unmarried. As she aged, Judith gave up on men entirely and found someone whom she could control–a chihuahua she named Butler.
The retired bank teller and her highly obedient, highly-strung pooch lived a quiet, do-as-I-please life–until she was evicted from her apartment for starting the kitchenette on fire. It wasn’t her fault the scrambled eggs and bacon got flambéd–if it hadn’t been for the cliffhanger on her daytime drama that glued her to the tube instead of to the frying pan, she and Butler would still be in 808. Goddamn television.
Unfortunately for Judith, rent had skyrocketed since she signed the long-term rental agreement many years before, and her sole subsistence on monthly Social Security payouts wouldn’t even cover the deposit and damage insurance for a new one. Fortunately for her, her sister’s daughter and closest living relative invited the destitute woman, her nervous little dog, and her entire teddy bear collection to come live with her. “It will be fun, Aunt Jude!”
It wasn’t. Aunt Jude had a very specific shopping list, one chiseled in rock after three-quarters of a century of doing-as-I-please living. This was just the start: 1. [Store brand] pudding only. MUST be artificially sweetened, french vanilla-flavored in the three-pack, 2-oz, size. 2. There can NOT be any lining or decorative elements on the edges of paper towels. They must be rolls of only white and in perforated half-sheets. 3. NO DENTED CANS! 4. Fuji apples only – fully red and ripe with NO blemishes. (Check for worms!!!) 5. 48-roll package ONLY, of [name-brand], quilted, double-ply, unscented toilet paper (on her shopping list–weekly!). 6. A name-brand cinnamon-sweetened applesauce—every other kind “tastes funny”. 7. Butler needs a specific diet available only at the vet’s office. Regular food makes him puke. 8. . . .
Butler, that annoying little bastard! A piercing yipper of an alarm clock every morning at 6 o’clock sharp, per his old responsibility (or be locked in the crate all day if his dominatrix overslept and was late at her window). Peeing on niece’s recently laid–of course–champagne mist-colored carpet, and then his idiot owner joking, “oh, gee, I guess I forgot to take him out this morning, haha, dear.” Puking up half-digested food on her new champagne mist-colored carpet the old bat fed him off her dinner plate because “my goodness, Butler, you’re getting so skinny, dear!” (Yeah, Aunt Jude, he’s a chihuahua…). Once, he even shit in her purse—doggie revenge for calling him “a mangy rat that comes when called.”
It was a blessing in disguise when one of niece’s houseguests died of old age; it was another blessing in disguise when the other one stumbled and fell on her pee-and-puke-stained, once new champagne mist-colored carpet, broke her hip, and was wheeled into Weed World for “permanent rehabilitation.”
***
Herbert Mahoney was a rich farmer who loved his money more than his wife; who nurtured his crops more than his kids. Mrs. Mahoney declared her husband legally incompetent when he was 71, then had him committed to Weed World (call it Herbicide). The family sold the land, split the loamy jackpot equally, and make an effort to visit him on major holidays.
***
Kerry Beth Wilson suffered a stroke at 53, the brain damage leaving her a drooling mess who can only stare blankly out the window and repeat the word, ‘bird.’ Partially paralyzed, unable to tend for herself, she was sent to Weed World for attentive 24-hour care by her loving husband, Donny. With his wife out of the house, Donny now feels less guilt about the affair he is carrying on with Kerry Beth’s best friend, Carolyn Trout.
***
Jerome Trumbull was a curmudgeon at 88, but then again, he was a curmudgeon at 18. Disagreeable even in high school, the duck-tailed punk would raise his hand in class just to argue his point, whether it was valid or not. To his parents–yakkity-yak, he talked back.
He found factory work, bought a one-bedroom house (planning for a future with no wife or kids), and retired from factory work after 42 years. Glad to be away from the inane banter of his co-workers, Jerome spent his days and nights in seclusion holed up in the tiny living room watching sports–any sport–that might take his mind off the current rotten state of the world.
The two-fisted tight-wad was too cheap to buy a flat-panel TV, preferring instead to watch all the action on the 27-inch diagonal he bought back in ‘84 so he could enjoy the Olympics on a “big screen.” He’d get the gumption sometime to buy a new set but, what the hell . . . the old Zenith was still working fine, and, besides, he’d have to go out shopping in public, and the last thing he wanted to do in retirement was have to deal with any more incompetent idiots. And spend his hard-earned money. Even on himself.
Jerome did invest in pull-down shades and black-out curtains for the room for three necessary reasons: 1. To keep the sunlight from reflecting off the set’s convex glass, 2. The darkness made the lines of resolution look a little less noticeable, the colors a little brighter, and 3. To keep the world from streaming in, intruding on his shitty goddamn life.
Undoubtedly, the cynical sports fan would have become a rotting corpse with its skeletal phalanges and metacarpals clutching either the remote control or a Stroh’s beer can, if not for the Meals-on-Wheels delivery person coming round when she did. When he didn’t answer the door to receive his Styrofoam take-out container of barely warmed (fatty) beef and noodles, boiled, unseasoned green beans, and a cookie, she became concerned.
It was fortuitous there was a Liberty Bell-sized crack in the curtains because when her eyes got used to the dark, she could see Mr. Trumbull leaning back in his chair, unresponsive. A 9-1-1 call saved him from dying from a heart attack, induced, no doubt, by the miraculous Hail Mary touchdown his life-long hated team made in sudden-death overtime, surmised one EMT who arrived on the scene while the TV announcers were still going nuts watching the replays. The hospital, searching for next-of-kin, finally found a younger brother, three states away, whose only remark was, “always wondered what became of Jer. Haven’t talked to him in years.”
Unable to return to his crackerjack box for health reasons, and with his brother’s refusal to take him in, Jerome Trumbull became the crabgrass at Weed World.
***
Fred and Mildred Hoeffer came to the place as a couple. Tacking their marriage license to the wall before they did their high school diplomas, the two kept a home for 63 years, until their eyes, ears, and minds demanded assisted living. The four Hoeffer kids all agreed that they would gladly take in either Mom or Dad—one or the other—but not together, because if their habitual sniping at each other was unbearable when we were kids, imagine them now!
***
Barney Walkowski was never right in the head again after slipping off the ladder while cleaning out the rain gutters of the home he shared with his wife Alice. He was saved from splattering all over the sidewalk only because the juniper bushes he planted back in 1962 broke his head-first fall.
Alice warned him that chilly November afternoon not to climb to the roof–that the only guy his age agile enough to do the job was Mick Jagger and he probably doesn’t clean rain gutters—but her husband had to do it, anyway. Barney not only got his bell rung, but someone stole his clapper, altogether.
No matter. Despite her threatening admonitions that he’d better not fall, four months in traction, and his subsequent inability to add 2 plus 2, he came back home. Alice attended to her husband, as helpless as a toddler, as best she could while still nursing her gutter-cleaning grudge.
His constant shuffling around the house, asking nobody in particular, “Where’s your ball, Barney?” became constant shuffling through the linoleum hallways of Weed World asking nobody in particular, “Where’s your wife, Barney?” He was sent here after Alice passed away in her sleep; the house and everything in his past, lucid life was sold at auction.
***
Harriet McKenzie had narcissistic tendencies, obvious by the photo that stared back at her as she watched tv. The 8 x 10 in the silver frame was not of her kids, grandkids, pets (never! She disdained them), dead husband, or friend or family, but a studio portrait of herself posed in her finest department store duds, wearing her best fake, toothy smile.
Harriet was one of the rare empty-nesters who seemed relieved when her three progenies left home (No damn silly damn kids to bother me. Now I can work my crosswords in peace.) and didn’t seem too concerned when her spouse died of lung cancer at 60. (His money’s all mine, now!). She enjoyed her own company and the monetary control of her three silly damn kids until her arthritis became so debilitating that she couldn’t keep house anymore. It was time to let someone else bow to her every need. It was time to shop for an assisted living facility with her daughter, Mary.
Their first appointment was at the hoity-toity high-rise downtown, which billed itself as “country-club living.” Walking through the lobby for a scheduled tour and meet-and-greet with the general manager, Harriet gushed to her daughter: “This place would love to have me here!” These were her people—high-class folks dressed in their finest department store duds—even in retirement.
Harriet thought her introductory interview went well, although it didn’t. Mary was pulled aside and told that they were sorry, but mom’s personality seemed too caustic, too disruptive, for placement here, but you might try the place at the end of town.
The place at the end of town had the same reaction as the hoity-toity high-rise, as did all the other places in the area. Harriet McKenzie ended up in a shabby room at Weed World, disgusted that her peers’ haute couture consisted of sweatpants, bathrobes, and cheap, knock-off labels, clicked her tongue with a heavy sigh, humiliated at the thought of living—and dying—here.
***
Every spring equinox, exactly when the southern sun crosses the equator, magic happens, whether it’s revelers at Stonehenge feeling the surge of English countryside ley lines, a sunlit serpent slithering down the steps of El Castille at Chichen Itza, or the dreams of some of the residents at Weed World coming to life.
For one brief, enchanting moment during the first few seconds of spring, Fred and Mildred Hoeffer are young, horny, and agreeable; Jerome Trumbull turns off the tube, goes to the LA Coliseum and wins Olympic gold in the decathlon, cheered on by 104,000 sports fans from all around the world; Judith O’Brien gets reunited with a still-obedient Butler, who, in her nocturnal recollection, is now her perfect two-legged, pussy-whipped, husband; Herb Mahoney enjoys the perfumed scent of diesel fuel spewing from his gold-plated Old Harvester combine as he picks a million acres of field corn, selling at a thousand dollars a bushel; Barney Walkowski finds his ball and Alice, his wife; Kerry Beth Wilson, now limber as a spring twig, enjoys the pleasure of kicking Donny’s and Carolyn’s asses with one hand tied behind her back; Joe Neidermeir gets on the game show, and with the alphabet he practiced, wins a million bucks and a date with the pretty blonde who turned over the letters; Harriet McKenzie sashshays, arthritis-free, across the floor of her penthouse suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, its walls and ceiling, in their entirety, painted in reflective glass.
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