Talks With Ira

by Claire R. Goldfarb

“Pop was an albatross around my neck,” my brother, Ira, said to me after he took a bite from the chopped liver sandwich he had ordered at the Second Avenue Deli; I had opted for the mushroom barley soup. The Deli was within walking distance of the funeral home where we had made arrangements to bury our father in Hungarian Fields cemetery. Much of the grief over his death had passed for Ira who was venting to me about how difficult life with Father had been.

As I nodded and listened to him, I imagined Dad alive and slurping mushroom barley soup alongside me. The reality would have been different from my vision because after about three or four spoons full, he would have started coughing, something he did at every meal during the last year of his life. Nothing helped him, not water, not getting up and walking around.  Ira and I could do nothing but listen and watch him suffer.

Dad had died in the same hospital where our mother had died, three years earlier.   About a year after her death, he spent more time either with his newspaper or the TV than he did taking care of the household, relegating most domestic chores to Ira. In addition to going to work as an inside messenger at Bellevue Hospital Monday through Friday, Ira cleaned, cooked, shopped, and did the laundry. Although my fastidious mother might have found fault with the dust bunnies under the sofa and the wrinkled shirts on their backs, the two of them muddled along fairly well.

During those three years, Dad and I spoke on the phone once a week; my husband and I visited the apartment in New York; Dad and Ira flew to our home in Michigan for periodic reunions. At regular intervals, my father made me promise that when he died, my brother would come to live with or near us in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

“He can’t live alone. He needs someone around.” I had heard these lines over and over, and when my dad went into the hospital, and I flew into New York this last time, I was ready to pack up the apartment and get Ira moved out of the city. Today though, at the Second Avenue Deli, I kept silent and let Ira talk, as he had never done before, about how overwhelmed he felt by the responsibilities brought on by Dad’s infirmities and demands. Our dad had been a high maintenance person all his life, so the albatross comment didn’t really throw me. Chopped liver and sympathy was what I was offering that day.

We got through the next few days, funeral, phone calls, financial stuff, sorting, throwing out. After a week of straightening up, I told Ira that it was time for me to think about going home, and that we were looking forward to having him come out to us.

“No.  I hate Kalamazoo.  I’m a New Yorker.” Ira said this firmly. 

“You can’t manage without someone.”

“Yes, I can.  I’ve been doing everything. I don’t want to go with you.”

This was not in the playbook I had brought with me. I had no plans other than taking him home, finding him a place to live and, with any kind of luck, a job. I talked more, and I promised him he could have a cat. That bribe didn’t work; my animal-loving brother would not budge.

I argued with him for another day and then spent a sleepless night, figuring out how he could manage on his own. Plan A was born along with outlines of Plans B, C, and D, if A failed.

Ira would stay in the apartment; he would go to work and continue to shop, clean, and do his laundry. That was the easy part of the Plan because it was what he was used to doing; however, he had never managed money. Dad was the money boss, but now I had to make arrangements.

I decided that Ira would mail me his paychecks from which I would pay the big things including rent, phone bills, taxes, and apartment maintenance. We would set up a checking account, and I would send him checks to cash for his everyday expenditures such as food and bus fares. If, at any time, either he or I felt that the situation was not working, this trial run would end, and he’d move to Michigan. We shook hands on it; Ira liked to shake hands.

The trial run worked, with many modifications, for twenty-four years, which, in retrospect, seemed like a New York minute. At first, I vacillated between worry and guilt, mainly the latter because I knew my father didn’t want him to stay alone in the city. And so, whenever there was a problem, I yelled and threatened him with that worst of all possible fates, a move to Michigan. Even in peaceful times our conversations in person and on the phone never rose to the level of talks we had in the days after Dad’s death. Most talks were q and a sessions with my playing interrogator.

Me:  “How could you spend so much money this week?”

Ira:    “I needed things.  I have to eat, don’t I?”

Me:  “How did you manage to lose another watch?”

Ira:  “I don’t know.”

Me:  “Those pants are a mess. Why don’t you wear the ones I just sent you?”

Ira:  “I like the old ones. They’re comfortable.”

Me:  “You’re buying ANOTHER new radio?”

Ira:   “The old one doesn’t play any more.”

Me:  “How did your new refrigerator break?”

Ira:  “I did not try to defrost it with an ice pick.”

And so it went until I stopped trying to get him to do what I wanted him to do; instead, I accommodated myself to what he wanted to do and did, no matter what I said.  As time went on, I realized that he was busy and happy in spite of my never    understanding where some of his money went or how those cheap watches kept disappearing. His wearing ratty pants instead of the new ones that languished in his closet never ceased to bother me, and my husband had a tough time accepting that he never learned that replacing batteries would make a radio play again.

 Ira would always promise to be more careful with his money, to keep a better tally of his possessions, to do his laundry more often, and to buy new batteries for his radio—that is, until the next time I’d check up on him and find nothing had changed. On his side, he never again used an ice pick to defrost his refrigerator.

When Ira finally retired from Bellevue at the age of sixty-eight, he was the guest of honor at a party, and his co-workers gave him many hugs. Once again, I asked him to come out to Michigan, but he refused, insisting, “I am a New Yorker.” Refusing to leave, he continued to live in the apartment. He was busy every day doing his chores, running an errand, keeping a doctor’s appointment, or visiting a neighbor.

There were always adjustments to be made to the Plan with which we had started; we were probably on Plan M by the time he fell off a ladder while changing a light bulb. A neighbor called 911, and he went to Bellevue Hospital for tests and treatments.  Miraculously, he was OK, but it was time for him to leave New York; he knew it and he gave me no static about a move. That surprised me because when I arrived at the hospital the first day, a nurse told me, “You should know that when he was on the gurney in the Emergency Room, he kept saying, ‘don’t let my sister take me to Michigan.’”

I made all the decisions that had to be made about the apartment, got him checked out of the hospital, and off we flew. From day one, he settled into Kalamazoo, Michigan, as if he were a native Midwesterner. For three happy years, he thrived in a very friendly assisted living facility. He made lots of friends and told me repeatedly how much he enjoyed not having to cook and do laundry. Countless times, he said to me, “I’m sorry I gave you so much trouble about coming here.”

His high blood pressure, always a concern, continued to worry the doctors, and when the inevitable stroke led to his death, his new friends and I mourned his passing.

*  *  *

“I can’t vote because I’m retarded.”  That was what Ira said to me when I got him a voter’s registration card upon his move to Michigan. He never had trouble using the word, “retarded.” When we were children, softer words such as “developmentally disabled,” or “slow learner” were not in our vocabulary. Mental retardation was not a “hot” topic, and there were few magazine articles or newspaper reports giving parents advice. There wasn’t even an Association for the Help of Retarded Children.

My parents knew Ira was not like the other little boys in the neighborhood. It wasn’t only that he had too many earaches; it wasn’t that he didn’t sit up until he was eight months old or walk until he was two. For several years, they made the rounds of pediatricians and psychologists. The best and the brightest could not diagnose Ira who was subsequently labeled, “mentally retarded.”

“What caused his condition?” Mom would ask. One doctor suggested that maybe his earaches caused his developmental delays. Another thought that his difficult birth had something to do with it. No one was sure, and since no one offered her a “cure,” my mother stopped making appointments with the latest, highly recommended expert whose assessment was of no use. She took charge of Ira’s future all by herself.

 Education was the first thing to be considered. She enrolled Ira in elementary school, the same one I went to when it was time for me to start. No such thing as special education meant that Ira was what is now called “main streamed.” He never got grades or regular report cards, but the teachers did whatever they could, whenever they had time, in the classroom.

By the time he was seventeen, he could read almost anything, maybe not with total comprehension, but he could manage a set of directions, most newspaper articles, and any book on plants, fish, and animals. He could write notes and short letters, three or four sentence essays, but he couldn’t tell time, and he couldn’t make change from a dollar bill because he couldn’t tell the difference between a dime and a quarter. Nevertheless, despite missing a few days because of earaches and the usual childhood illnesses, Ira stayed in school through the ninth grade.

There was no way that he was going to get a diploma, but my mother tried to have the school give Ira a certificate of attendance. The Principal of the school was firm in his denial. “There are standards, ” is what he told my mother. She never forgave him for his refusal. All she wanted was a piece of paper that Ira could present when it was time for him to find a job, something to prove that he had attended school.

My mother decided that if there were indeed standards to be met, Ira would meet them, and she found what we would describe today as a special education school in upstate New York. Ira was interviewed and accepted.  After two years, his reading comprehension had improved; he could tell a dime from a quarter, and he could add, not subtract, simple numbers. Unfortunately, Ira never got a piece of paper from the Anderson School attesting to his academic prowess.

Ira left after two years because he wanted to get out of the place. My mother found that out from one of his letters. I came home one day from school, and she showed me Ira’s latest note, “Read this. Do you see something funny?”

I read:  “Dear Mom, Pop, and Sis, How are you? I am fine. I am going to take part in spring sing. Mrs. Hiatt asked me to play the piano. How is everything at home? Love, Ira.”

“What’s funny?” I asked her again.

“Look, look!” She said impatiently. “See how he’s underlined words. He never does that.”

I looked and then I saw what she meant. He had underlined, “take” and “me” and “home.”

My parents waited until the next visiting day which happened to be the following Sunday. After the spring sing and his piano performance, they got Ira alone as quickly as they could. He told them that a new roommate had torn up all the bed sheets in the room, broken furniture, overturned footlockers, and then started hitting the other boys. Ira had escaped by hiding in the linen closet.

“Where was Mrs. Ormond?”  She was the housemother.

“I don’t know. I was in the linen closet,” was all my mother could get out of him.

Mom told me later that she went to see the director of the school to complain, but she got nowhere. “The boy’s parents are big shots with lots of money. He’s a genius, supposedly, but he’s been thrown out of every private school in the East. This is the last one. The family promised a new wing to the gymnasium if they keep him.”

She was very bitter, but she packed up Ira’s things, and my father returned to the director’s office to settle up the bill and officially withdraw Ira from the Anderson school.

Although he never did get pieces of paper attesting to his educational competence, he always had a job: nineteen years at a dental lab and then thirty years at Bellevue. He enjoyed working and he had hobbies: tending plants and animals, and listening to music. My parents worried about what would happen to him after their deaths; I wish they could somehow see what a good life he had.

* * *

When he moved to Michigan, he had plants, fish, and a bird to enjoy. I also visited him frequently, and we started talking as we had during those days following Dad’s death. I no longer had to worry about how he spent money, or whether he had lost another watch.  I had thrown away the ratty pants, and my husband supplied new batteries for his radio. All that helped, as did Ira’s obvious pleasure in living in Park Place. He was thrilled that his laundry was done for him, that his room was cleaned, that meals were prepared without his shopping. Most of all, he liked the people and they liked him. With gusto, he would report the “news of the day” to me. One of the aides there told me that Ira was so friendly that they named him “Official Greeter” and gave him a button which he wore proudly. After he was finished giving me the gossip which might include the death of a resident or someone else’s move to a more intensive nursing facility, we might talk about politics, the day’s menu, his delight that he could get scrambled eggs for breakfast any time he wanted them.

He was generally in a good mood, but one day when I came into his room, he was shaking his head back and forth and looking very sad. I was surprised because last night had been Prom night, and Ira loved parties. There was music, cake and ice cream, and good chatter. He never missed a social occasion and looked forward to everything from shopping mall outings, special lunches out, and group gatherings.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

He looked up at me, still shaking his head. “I wasn’t Prom King, and Kathy told me I would be.”

I said some words of comfort, but I was not happy when he told me that he had gone to Kathy, the activities coordinator, that morning to complain.

“Ira, how was the King chosen?”

“I don’t know, but I wanted to be King.” He looked utterly miserable, and I couldn’t get him off the subject. To appease him, I went to Kathy who explained that she had thought he would be the King, but the rest of the staff (who chose the King each year) had decided to name another gentleman who had been there longer than Ira and was about to be moved to a nursing home.

She had tried to get Ira to understand this, but my brother was his usual stubborn self. The next year when Ira was named King, his paper crown sat on top of his television set until his death, eight months later, a month shy of his 79th birthday.

One winter morning, when the aide had come to his room to see why he wasn’t the first one into breakfast as he usually was, she found him lying on the floor. He was rushed to the hospital, diagnosed with a stroke. Although he recovered speech and physical functions within a week, he refused to participate in any physical therapy. The protocol following the hospital stay was admission to a nursing home where he could receive intensive physical therapy, so he was moved to that facility where he was depressed, and silent most of the time. He sat in his wheelchair and said, “no,” to all the aides and therapists who approached him. I pleaded, cajoled, threatened, but he would not cooperate with the therapy team. They made valiant efforts, but after two weeks, they agreed with my decision to move him back to Park Place. I had hoped that if he were back in a familiar setting, he might improve. I was wrong. After a few days, he stopped eating.

The doctor said to me, “leave him alone.  He’s given up.” I had trouble accepting that until I said to him, “Ira, do you know what you are doing?  If you don’t eat, you’re not going to get better.”

“I know.”

I pleaded with him, and he finally stopped me, holding up his hand and saying, “I am not the same person I was.”

He died three days after that sentence, which were the last words he spoke to me.

* * *

I asked one of our neighbors who is a nurse if death by starvation was painful. She insisted, “It’s the way to go.”

I want to believe that, but when I did some research on Terry Schiavo whose death by starvation was so controversial, I felt uneasy in spite of the fact that most experts were on my nurse neighbor’s side.

“It does not appear to be painful.” Death by starvation is “not bad.” The worst symptom is a “dry mouth.”

The voices on the other side insisted that starvation is “cruel, inhumane and often agonizing.” I couldn’t stop myself from asking myself questions. What did Ira feel at the end? Did he really know what he was doing?

As time has passed, I’ve stopped asking questions or thinking about those last days. I prefer my other memories.