Less than a week after my brother got back from Viet Nam my stepfather threw him out of the house. A year before he had thrown out my oldest brother. He was recovering from an almost fatal accident that left him crippled and in need of therapy. My other brother, my sister and I left shortly after. Red was nasty.
They called him Red because at one point he had red hair. When I met him he had red eyes and what little hair he had was hidden under a hat. His red eyes, sensitive to light, were also hidden, behind dark glasses.
He died of Alzheimer’s.
In the beginning stages, he bought a new car and gave his old car to my brother, who said, “He forgot he doesn’t like me.” It was true.
Before he got sick he hated us but loved Ginger, Tim, Peppy, Shelly and Cleo. He shopped every day and cooked special meals for them, chicken usually. The two dogs and three cats liked chicken.
His vocabulary narrowed. His pets were “the boys.” People were you, he, she, or they. Any inanimate object was a thing. The “place” was the store, the gas station, the post office – anywhere he wanted to go.
He loved feeding the boys and cooked plenty of chicken for them. He started to put it outside on the patio. Word got out and some new “boys” started showing up for dinner. He was delighted, but my mom had to put an end to the all you can eat buffets. The new boys were black with white stripes running down their backs.
Pre-illness he always kept to himself. He spent most of his time hiding out in the house. My sister lived next door. She always had company. Her friends, my niece’s friends, and my nephew’s friends all knew about him, but hardly anyone outside of the family knew what he looked like. Occasionally someone would catch a glimpse. They were called “rare Red sightings.”
But when he got sick he became very social. He went over to my sister’s all the time. Then he’d forget why he was there and forget how to get home. Often, he just walked around the yard “fixing” things.
On one of his fix-it missions he choked my nephew’s windsock. It flew from the top of the garage. The wind was perfect there – the happy face in perpetual rolling motion, tails flittering out gracefully. He tightened a rope around it like a noose. “The thing! The thing! It was blowing! I fixed it.”
He did some decorating at Christmastime – on my sister’s house. Even when he was well, this was something he enjoyed. My sister never objected even though none of it was her taste and each year the display grew. One of her friends remarked one year that from a distance the house looked like a cruise ship.
But that last year, as words were lost to him, he announced “I bought a new thing, um, you know – that you shoot in the woods.” My sister enjoys photography. As she pondered what she would shoot – a flower? a tree? – he walked her outside and proudly pointed to the giant reindeer affixed to the roof.
Red’s personality changed. He was delightful most of the time. He laughed at himself, and his lapses of memory didn’t seem to bother him.
Toward the end he was too difficult to take care of. He hardly slept. He used dish detergent instead of vegetable oil to cook for the boys. He became paranoid and distrustful of the neighbors. He started wandering. He went missing one day and everyone frantically searched for him. After about an hour my mom spotted him climbing up the steep hill bordering their back yard. He had fallen and rolled down. My sister and mother took him to a nursing home the next day. About a month later he passed away.
I find it odd that when I think of Red, it’s the Alzheimer’s man that comes to mind. Except for that last year, he was rude and mean. He hurt people. He had no friends and cut off any contact with his siblings long before we knew him.
The Alzheimer’s Red didn’t know me, but he liked me. And I liked him.