Dad Update, with spoiler-adjacent talk regarding KILLING EVE, THE CRYING GAME, THE MUPPET SHOW, and THE WALKING DEAD. Also, lacking a satisfying summation. You’ve been warned.

I called my mother last Friday, primarily to encourage her to watch KILLING EVE, so we could have something fun to talk about. She’s often stuck in the house with Dad, and shows have been a good conversation piece.

“Does it have a lesbian vibe?” she asked.

“Hell yes it does! But covert and twisty, where the killing and the romance are all mixed up.” <—This is me, already riled up to do some talking about meaningless things.

PS: If someone wants to write an article on the season finale’s sex/violence penetration aspects, esp. in that last scene, I will climb whatever pay wall it’s behind to read it. Ditto the character arcs slowly reversing.

“It comes across in the cover art.” My mom’s favorite thing to do is predict the end of a movie, as close as possible to the beginning. The more she can tell you before the movie reveals it, the happier she is.

Side note: Happiest I ever saw her in this regard was calling THE CRYING GAME twist in a 90’s era South Dakotan movie theater five minutes into that movie, to me, a naive child of 18 who did not know such a twist was possible.

The only thing that makes her happier is telling you what movie she’s seen an actor in before, usually in a tone like she’s telling you the hostess at the dinner party you’re attending used to be married to that serial killer from TV: “Ooh, that’s the guy from….” *slaps your leg lightly half a dozen times* “Horatio Hornblower! The BBC remake.”

This time, however, she’s gearing up to that tone that’s gonna say yes, but mean no. “I’ll try to watch an episode or two, but Dad and I are pretty fragile these days.”

“What do you mean, fragile?” My tone is already peak I know what you mean, but my brain lags behind in these situations, so I’m still gonna ask this question like I’m 4 instead of 44.

“We’re only watching THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW anymore, or MASH. You know, it’s safe, nothing bad happens. It’s just too much, even stressful things on TV.”

“Bad stuff happens all the time on MASH.”

“Huh,” she says after a moment, as if this is new information. “Well, I guess it doesn’t bother me if I know it’s coming.”

“How’s Dad doing?” As I ask, he comes closer to her, and therefore to me. He’s talking a whole new level of gibberish. Or maybe it just seems that way without the visual cues. But what I hear over the phone line is not words strung together, mismatched and without focus. It’s true nonsense, vowel heavy sounds. I am unable to guess whether the intent is angry or happy, a question or a statement. Maybe because I didn’t see him coming, and he is suddenly there, it horror movie style startles me, leaving me rolling my eyes at my own jumpiness but also unable to relax.

So here’s one of the truly shitty things about witnessing someone fall through the cracks:

I have low level adrenaline.
I have long term irritation and helplessness.
My dad is a tall, skinny redhead.
I have all these memories at my disposal with which to attempt to make sense of this new information of my dad saying, boogrl abba slune gaatcha into the phone’s receiver/Mom’s face.
All these come together, and my brain insists the solution is that my dad has become Beaker.

I try not to laugh, because I don’t think Mom would ever in a million years think the Beaker thing was funny. It’s not funny. Omigod, it’s so funny, it’s like I’m stoned.

“When you get to a certain stage of this,” Mom says, “People stop eating. He’s getting that. He wouldn’t eat this morning. Things just start tasting bad to them.”

Goodbye laughter.

“I’ll make you some oatmeal.” She talks like moms with toddlers talk, the conversation with him is seamlessly spliced into the conversation with me. “I’ll add a little honey, that might help. He fell off another cliff after the holidays.”

“How so?”

“He was like a… have you ever seen THE WALKING DEAD? He was like out of that show.” <– Here it feels as though I’ve crossed into some alternate reality in which my mom is finally identifying actors in previous shows with people in my real life.  After a lifetime of playing amateur, she’s leveled up into some whole new level.

“What do you mean?”

“Shuffling like they do on that show. No eye contact, no words. Like they’re not even there, just animated and… groaning. Finally, I figured he might have a urinary tract infection. He wasn’t running a fever, but he was drinking all the time, and peeing up a storm. I think on some level he knew and was trying to flush it out of his system. I took him to the doctor, and I said, ‘there’s no way we can get a urine capture, but this is what I think.’ The doctor put him on antibiotics even without any evidence. Two, three days, he perked back up!”

“You’re pretty smart.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I guess I am!”  Then, not laughing as much anymore: “He hasn’t entirely come back yet. But he still might.”

Like I mentioned on the tip-top, I have no idea how to process this, aside from undoubtedly terrific nightmares of Zombie Beaker.  I’m not sure it’s meant to mean anything. He’s dying, he’s already dead, he’s still here, he’s a childhood memory of the muppets. I just had to tell you. So I guess now we can both know it together. Wheeeeeeeeee.