Free Radio Berkeley was left behind when I moved back to the city — their signal is far too weak to reach San Francisco. But I miss having intelligent radio, so I twisted the dial this morning, trying to pull in either of the two Frisco pirates I should be able to receive.
Couldn’t find either, and there’s nothing on commercial radio worth hearing, and NPR is a 24/7 festival of tweed and totebags, so the radio got clicked off.
Maybe it’s just today’s clouds, or bad timing. One of the stations I couldn’t find broadcasts right here in the Mission, only a few blocks away.
Then came another exciting day of emptying the trash, mopping the floors, answering the phones, and assembling mail orders at Black Sheets.
After work, I took the bus to my maildrop, hanging on to one of the hang-on pipes from the ceiling all the way, because the bus had no remaining seats. Most of San Francisco takes transit to wherever they’re going, and there are never enough buses, and often not enough seats.
Ten or twelve other people were standing, and one of them was a grumpy old guy who loudly scolded the driver. “It’s too crowded for you to be braking so hard and driving so fast,” he shouted.
“You’re missing the point,” I said to the grump. “Braking and swerving is what the driver’s supposed to do. He gets bonus points when he knocks one of us over.”
The driver was definitely giving us a wild ride, and there’s no way that he didn’t hear us, but he said nothing in his defense.
The old man chuckled at my dumbass joke, and then started talking about the 49ers, but screw the 49ers. I wanted to turn around so he’d be talking to my butt, but someone wearing a backpack blocked me from an easy twist. Instead I let my mouth droop open and drooled a little on my shirt, and grumpy guy shut up.
It’s a few blocks extra walk from the maildrop, but on the way back I took BART instead of MUNI. There’s a much better chance of sitting down, and the seats are more comfortable.
On the platform, I spotted Louie, a co-worker from the office at Macy’s long ago. What’s worse, he spotted me, so I couldn’t turn around and walk away. We said hello and made meaningless yak-yak for a minute or two, and every second of it felt awkward.
I was headed south to the Mission, but when a northbound train pulled in, I said, “Well, great seeing you, Louie, and take care,” and stepped onto a train headed for North Concord. Then I switched back to southbound at the next station.
Louie, though, was one of the rare people I liked at that job, so I should’ve enjoyed a few minutes catching up with what he’s been doing since whenever. Even a cup of coffee might’ve been nice — if I’d known in advance.
Being yanked out of my internal fog, unexpectedly, and all of the sudden I gotta be sociable with someone I haven’t seen in a couple of years? Hell, no. Some people can do that, but not me. I’d take a train to anywhere to escape.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
While I was visiting Mom at the nursing home a week or so ago, Mehar stepped in. She’s the facility’s activities director, and I dislike her.
She smiled and said hello to my mom, mispronouncing her name as she always does. After correcting her three times, I’ve given up. If Mom’s awake and cognizant, she corrects her name when Mehar gets it wrong, but she was asleep that morning, so Mom was someone she isn’t and never has been.
Mehar was knocking on every door, inviting patients and visitors to “a non-denominational Easter service” on Sunday, April 5. Mom’s big on religion, so I knew she’d want to be there, and I’m big on Mom, so I’d be there too. In texts over the next few days, Easter at the nursing home became a family event — my sister Katrina would be there, along with my brother Clay and his wife Karen.
Many years ago, my wife Stephanie spent a springtime in the world’s worst nursing home. The place didn’t have internet access, so Steph read a lot of books but was often bored. When they announced there’d be an Easter celebration, we went, expecting cringe-entertainment, but to our surprise the service was good. They’d brought in a local pastor, who preached a short, not-very religious sermon, and then the injured and recovering crowd sang some hymns, and had an egg hunt. Honestly, it was the best Easter of my non-religious adulthood.
I was hoping for something similar at Mom’s nursing home on Easter Sunday, as about 20 wheelchair and walker people gathered in the dining room, along with a smattering of family and friends.
Mom was in her wheelchair at our table, wearing one of her best dresses, which Katrina had brought from home. Katrina and Karen wore nice outfits, too, and Clay wore a necktie. I was in a clean t-shirt. Mom was awake and happy, and almost clear-headed.
Fifteen minutes late, Mehar walked in, and started speaking to the small crowd. I hadn’t expected her to speak, hadn’t even thought she’d be there, and hoped against hope that she was only going to introduce a preacher, but to my disappointment, no — Mehar led the service.
Carrying her cell phone and reading from its screen, she walked among the tables and asked each of the patients, “How do you feel about your loss of independence?”
What? The? Fuck? This is the Easter service? Asking disabled people about their loss of independence?
One by one, Mehar extracted answers from all the patients present, and guess what? None were happy about their loss of independence. Several said that they were frustrated by their health issues, and one old guy in a wheelchair said, “I don’t have any independence at all. I rely on you people for everything.”
When Mehar asked Mom, “How do you feel about your loss of independence?” she replied, “I hate it.” And I hated Mehar, but cripes, this was our family’s Easter and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I kept my rage internal.
Eventually, Mehar’s plagiarized point revealed itself as, still holding and reading from her phone, she got to the point. “In reality,” she read and mispronounced, “we are none of us independent. All people are totally dependent on God’s mercy.”
Well, that’s a chipper thought, and an odd lesson to offer on Easter. A gifted orator with a carefully crafted script might pull it off, but Mehar is not a gifted orator, and her flat reading and frequent struggle with the words was the opposite of inspiring.
On the bright side, Mom had fallen asleep.
With no segue, Mehar started reading something else. Through her accent and hesitation at random words, it took a minute before any of us recognized what she was saying: “God sent his son they called Him Jesus, he came to love heal and forgive he lived and died to buy my pardon an empty grave is there to prove my savior lives, because he lives I can face tomorrow because he lives all fear is gone because I know he holds the future and life is worth the living just because he lives…”
She was reading the lyrics to “Because He Lives,” a standard hymn Christians might sing, but she wasn’t singing, wasn’t even reading it like a poem. She read it the way someone who doesn’t enjoy reading might read words they’d never seen before, if they’d been told to read out loud.
Again with no break or change in tone, Mehar went directly to “Low in the grave he lay Jesus my Savior waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes,” and of course she stumbled and paused at “o’er” because she’d never seen that word before. She was reading the lyrics of “Up From the Grave He Arose,” but again, making it sound like an essay on trigonometry, not a song or a poem, and certainly not religious.
Next she read and ruined “How Great Thou Art,” reciting the song as if it was Bible verses, and I wondered whether she even knows the difference between scripture and hymns? Which led to the next slow-dawning thought in my fat head — wondering if Mehar is even a Christian.
And I don’t think she is. I think she Googled “Easter service,” and read us the search results.
Look, I grew up in the church, and in any language, through any accent, I know what Christianity sounds like. There’s a certain tone of voice, pause and emphasis when Christians talk about Christianity, and Mehar’s reading had none of it. She had no emotional connection to the sermon or hymns or anything she said. She was simply the activities director, directing an activity called ‘Easter’.
Everyone at our table looked puzzled, except Mom, who was still asleep. Finally, Clay spoke up, saying, “These are hymns. Could we, you know, sing them?”
Mehar said, “Sing them?” like this was a wild concept, then started clacking at her cell phone. Thirty seconds later she’d found a recording of “How Great Thou Art,” so she stopped reading it and hit ‘play’. She walked among the tables, holding her cell phone like show & tell, while it sang the hymn and people tried to sing along.
It was difficult, because somehow Mehar had found a recording so slow it was a dirge. Imagine the slowest rendition of “How Great Thou Art” you’ve ever heard, and then turn it from 45 rpm to 33⅓. Mom woke up and joined in singing the hymn, but she was almost immediately a line ahead of the cell phone, then two lines ahead, and then she fell asleep again.
After the recording and difficult sing-along of “How Great Thou Art” ended, Mehar smiled at everyone and said “Thank you,” and left the room. Service over!
Only, it wasn’t over. Clay stood and started singing “Because He Lives,” and people responded by singing along. Mom opened her eyes and joined in, and we sang several more hymns. Talking about it with Clay afterward, I made sure he knew he’s the hero of this story. For everyone in the room, my brother saved Easter.
Being the opposite of a religious man, it’s been difficult trying to understand why Mehar’s Easter service bothered me as much as it did. And it did seriously piss me off, so let me try to explain why.
Religion is something most people take seriously. I wish they wouldn’t, but they do. And Mehar didn’t.
Consider Zoroastrianism — I know nothing about it, and I’m using it as an example only because it has a funny-sounding name, but if my job required me to host a Zoroastrian service, on the most sacred holy day of Zoroastrianism, I couldn’t come close to mangling it as badly as Mehar mangled Easter — because I would put in more effort than a quick Googling.
Physically, Mom’s legs are too weak to stand or walk, and if she can’t stand, can’t walk even a few steps, the house she shares with my sister Katrina won’t be feasible. Mom will have to be at a nursing home for the rest of her life. To address this, her “skilled nursing and rehabilitation center” provides 15 (fifteen) minutes of physical therapy daily, with weekends off.
Mentally, Mom knows the very basics of who she is, but a conversation is like slurping soup with a fork with the lights out at midnight. It takes ten seconds for Mom to begin answering a question, and if she’s saying something unprompted, her sentences sometimes get lost on the way. To address this, the facility provides group games and conversations with other patients and a facilitator in the games room — an hour at a time, seven days a week. The exercises are designed to stimulate the mind in some way, so it’s not just games, it’s therapy.
Family and visitors are welcome to sit in on the both physical and mental sessions, and I’ve been there for several. I don’t have any complaints about the physical therapy, except that 15 minutes is far too little. And I like the idea of the group talk-and-play sessions to build mental acuity, but there’s a problem.
Of the six group talk-and-play sessions I’ve sat in on, two were run by Anita, whose badge says she’s the assistant activities director. She talks with patients, asks questions, listens to their answers, and subtly nudges them to think more clearly. Anita herself is mildly disabled, walking with a permanent limp, which maybe gives her extra empathy. She’s quite good at her job, and seems to give a damn about the patients.
Most sessions are run by Mehar, though. She’s the activities director, Anita’s boss. Mehar is not good at her job, and seems to give no damns at all. When Mehar facilitates a session, she’s looking at her phone all the time, reading instructions or playing audio that’s clearly lifted from a website for nursing home workers.
I don’t object to the cribbing, but it’s obvious during Mehar’s sessions that it’s the first time she’s read the material. She struggles with longer words, like ‘appropriate’. “Oh,” she’ll say, talking to the website, “I don’t know what that word means,” and then she’ll use her finger to flick to a different section of whatever instructions she’s reading on her phone. When the questions are designed to trigger patients’ memories, Mehar always says ‘rememories’ instead of ‘memories’, like, “What is your favorite rememory from childhood?”
Like a lot of workers in nursing homes, Mehar is an immigrant. Usually I’d say an accent doesn’t matter, but her job is helping people recover their cognizance, and she mostly adds to the confusion. The most commonly-asked question in any of Mehar’s sessions is, “What?” after she’s said something. The patients are all foggy-headed to some extent, but even for me it’s a struggle to understand what she says. “What?”
What I’m starting to understand about Mehar has little to do with language, though. She’s simply shitty at her job. I’m not sure there’s anything else to understand.
♦ ♦ ♦
After meals, Mom likes playing the piano in the dining room. I push her wheelchair up to the keyboard, she plays hymns, and we sing together. It’s good for Mom, and her face is at its brightest while she plays, but the second day she was at the piano after lunch, Mehar came over and slowly pulled the keyboard cover closed while Mom was playing.
She gave Mom time enough to get her fingers out of the way, then announced as the lid came down, “No piano today. We be play Bingo at 2:00!” She said it cheerfully, and invited Mom to stay for the bingo session. It was 1:55.
“I can’t play the piano?” Mom asked. Mehar answered, but I honestly couldn’t understand what she said.
“Not today,” I said. “You can play the piano tomorrow.” I was slightly seething inside, but I didn’t snap at Mehar. Even asked Mom if she wanted to play bingo.
“I guess,” she said, so I wheeled Mom to a table, and we waited and waited for bingo at 2:00.
Mehar’s “No piano today” announcement irked me, and still irks me. If they need the dining & piano room for bingo, that’s cool, and sure, we’ll quit the piano — but it’s tacky to just pull the cover closed in the middle of Mom banging out “How Great Thou Art.”
A dozen patients were in the dining room, seated at tables waiting for bingo, along with half a dozen visitors like me. Little seemed to be happening, though. No bingo, no pre-bingo, and more patients weren’t coming into the room. A few patients talked with each other, but most just sat there, bored and waiting for something to happen.
Mehar looked at her phone until about 2:10, when she walked around to all the occupied tables and gave a bingo sheet to every patient.
The sheets were 8½x11, with one large-print bingo game on the sheet, poorly photocopied, like the image at the top of this page, only with smudges all along the ‘G’ and especially the ‘O’ columns. You could read the numbers, but it was ugly.
I asked for a better copy — asked nicely! — and Mehar smiled, shook her head no, and showed me her stack of bingo sheets. “They all dark,” I think she said, and she was right. Every bingo sheet was yucky.
After passing out the sheets, Mehar sat down again, and resumed scrolling her phone. She scrolled through her phone for ten more minutes, while Mom and I talked about other things. She said again that she wanted to play the piano, and I re-explained that we were supposed to play bingo instead.
Mom said, “What are we waiting for?”
“We’re waiting for bingo at 2:00,” I said.
“It’s 2:20,” Mom said, looking at the clock. Maybe Mehar’s bingo-without-bingo session was a shrewd test to make sure patients could read clocks. “Could I play the piano while we’re waiting?”
Being a rebel I replied, “Sure,” and wheeled Mom to the piano again, but no tunes were tinkled. Lifting the keyboard cover was all it took to get Mehar to stop looking at her phone.
“No, no piano please! We playing bingo!”
“When?” I asked, still keeping my voice low and trying for pleasant.
“2:30,” Mehar said.
“You said 2:00 when you shut down my mom’s piano playing.” My volume was inching up.
“Bingo at 2:30.”
“Fuck you,” I didn’t say, but to Mom I said, “Do you want to wait ten more minutes for bingo?”
“I want to play the piano,” Mom said.
“Mehar won’t let you,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Then can you take me to my room please?”
As I pushed Mom’s wheelchair across the dining room toward the exit, I said to Mehar, loudly as we passed, “Nothing clears my mom’s head like playing the piano, but there must be half an hour of silence before bingo…”
