Cooking - Carol Arnold

My father is 97 years old. He wants to die. Not that he has anything particularly wrong with him, other than the fact that his body is bent over and frail. His mind is in many ways sharper than mine. He recently was able to figure out a complicated chart involving the towing capacity of a truck I may buy, and I was not. I rely on him for things like that, and much more.

He lives alone in the ranch house he shared with my mother, who died over 20 years ago. He has had “girlfriends” but never remarried or lived with any one. He is the last of his friends and acquaintances of his generation. It is lonely, he says. But he doesn’t mind that part too much. He just says it’s time for him to go, and he’s getting impatient.

I say to him that I will miss him terribly but I understand how he feels. It took me a long time before I could say the latter. I still try to talk him out of it, or at least do things that might make him change his mind. I cook meals and leave them stacked in his refrigerator. Just today, I left four servings of meat loaf, roast potatoes, broccoli, apple sauce. I reminded him of the meals before I left. It was like saying, “Just look in your refrigerator and you’ll see how much I love you.” Somehow, it’s easier to do that than to actually say it, just as interpreting the truck chart is easier for him.

He appreciates my meals, but I don’t think he cares about food all that much. He doesn’t care about much of anything, except how my sister and I are doing, our families, our dogs. He is up on all news events but it’s like he’s seen it all already, many times over. I do understand his feeling that it’s time to get on his way, but I still want him to see it differently. The next time I’m there I will cook pot roast, scalloped potatoes, green beans and creamed mushrooms, maybe even rhubarb pie. Surely that will convince him to stick around.