A time to endure

Two days after American voters once again hand Donald Trump the presidency, I visit my mother-in-law. She’s 99 years old and on what’s called a “mechanical soft” diet, having lost most of her teeth. So it’s all mashed potatoes, viscous cream soups, and slippery puddings. Her days at the retirement home are mostly the same, all empty minutes on loop.

Today I tell her bits of news as she eats: a granddaughter’s impending engagement, a cousin’s widow now in hospice. She occasionally tilts her head in feigned interest, but mostly she doesn’t pretend to care about any of it. When you’re 99, you don’t have time for falsity.

I wonder if she ever gets furious, like her neighbor down the hall, Dorothy, sometimes does. Some days Dorothy, who is 101 and thin and crumpled as a tissue, sits at the table behind my mother-in-law’s, smiling sweetly and saying thank you when an aide brings a spoon for her ice cream. On quiet days she muses softly to herself about when her parents are going to check her out of this place. On other days Dorothy rages, bellowing an incantation about how everyone is out to get her money. She hunches forward, balls her hands into fists, and chants about the sonofabitch who took her across and about how you can all go to hell, hell, hell.