Losing and finding my dad during the pandemic

My dad is 88 years old; I’m 36. I’ve known for a while that I don’t have much time left with him. Before the pandemic, I visited him in his assisted living facility frequently, cherishing our time together. We’d eat cookies while he reminisced about his childhood or told me about a movie he’d seen.

But since the pandemic, I’ve started to lose my dad in ways I never imagined.

Soon after the coronavirus hit the United States, my dad’s facility went into lockdown. I started visiting him at what we came to call his “cage,” a gate around the facility’s backyard. I’d run the 2.5 miles from my apartment across Oakland and meet him there. He’d grip the bars as we shouted to each other from a distance. I took videos for my sister, trapped in the pandemic epicenter in New York. My dad made funny faces.

I held my breath as reports of massive deaths in long-term care facilities grew. Seventy-four dead at a New Jersey home; 24 at a Los Angeles facility; 47 at a Connecticut rehabilitation center.

I compulsively reminded my always-absent-minded dad to wash his hands, winced anytime he coughed while we were on the phone, and tried not to worry too much.

As the virus spread across the country, my dad’s facility went deeper into lockdown, with residents mostly confined to their rooms. Food was brought to his door. He started to run out of necessities I usually brought him. I ordered him toothpaste and razors by mail.

The facility started to run out of things, too. Salt packets became hard to come by. My dad started sprinkling crushed potato chips over his scrambled eggs to salt them. I ordered him a saltshaker.

A few days before it arrived, I woke up to a late-night voicemail. My dad had fallen from his bed and was unable to move his right side or talk. He was taken to the hospital.

If not for the coronavirus, I soon would have been at my dad’s side. I would have been able to comfort him, or at least try. Instead, I struggled to reach him through a maze of unanswered calls and hospital room changes. Not being able to be there was frustrating. Not knowing how he was doing was terrifying.

When I eventually got through, I could hardly understand him. He’d had a stroke and his voice was garbled.

On the third day, the hospital released my dad to a skilled nursing facility. The update my family received was that he was shut down, physically and mentally.

The nursing facility was a one-story building. Each room has an outward-facing sliding door. When I knocked on the glass, my dad’s eyes fluttered open. He tried to talk, sounds rolling out. He clutched his curled right arm tight against his body. I understood little of what he said. But I understood when he asked, again and again, “Why don’t you come in?” I explained I couldn’t because of the pandemic.

But he didn’t remember what the coronavirus was. And my descriptions of today’s science fiction reality only confused him more. So I started calling it something familiar: “The flu season is really bad this year, that’s why I can’t come in.” He nodded in momentary recognition. Then asked me again to come in.

With my dad out of reach behind a wall of glass and confusion, the nights are the hardest for me. I usually call him while walking my dog. Later, I have nightmares about him dying alone and afraid.

Yet, despite my inability to comfort my dad, he’s comforting me. I can hear him say, as he often does with old-timey optimism, “Everything will feel better in the morning.” And I know that after he’s gone, not even visible through a wall of glass, he’ll always be with me. Rose Carmen Goldberg is a lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law. Previously she represented veterans with physical and mental disabilities. Her dad, Harold Goldberg, is a retired psychiatrist and Vietnamera veteran. They both live in Oakland.