This time, our drive took us to my friends Josh Schweitzer and Mary Sue Milliken’s house for dinner. When we arrived, Randy seemed distracted. Josh shook his hand and ushered him in, but Randy looked puzzled. “I can’t remember your name,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. What is it again?” Later, when Duke and I were talking to him, he said, “That’s your son?” He hadn’t recognized him. After dinner, he told me he was uncomfortable because he couldn’t keep up with the conversation. He was beginning to lose the battle with memory in an all-too-familiar way.
In 2014, at the end of his third year at Belmont, a letter from Hillary told us what was already becoming clear: this golden period for Randy was coming to an end.
Dear Diane, Robin and Dorrie,
In a lot of ways Randy continues to try to rediscover himself, while also losing himself all over again. His past is beginning to catch up with him. As you all know, this last year Randy’s slowed down, and so have our adventures. He forgets where we’ve been by the next visit. He continues to look at his writing as a job. He still puts pen to paper, sometimes staying up all night, or walking early in the morning. He thinks he’d go crazy if he couldn’t write. He loves his table and the street below with the light coming through his window making crazy shadows in the room. Cutting out magazines, writing, listening to music, and eating dry cereal with honey and oats makes him happy.
As his memory fades, he started doing strange things, like putting Vitamin Water in his coffee because it makes it sweet. Sometimes he has the heat so high it feels like a sauna in his room. Sometimes he answers the door naked. Things are becoming more of a crap shoot. What will I find as I walk into this room?
I continue to write on his calendar to try and help him keep track of time, but somehow the calendars have started to disappear. I have to take him for an outing, or to get lunch, so the staff at Belmont have enough time to come in and vacuum, change the sheets and towels and clean the bathroom. It is absolute hell if we come back to someone in his room. He’s been observed by the staff getting extremely frustrated and upset if even the slightest thing is wrong. For example, he was reading a play and couldn’t follow where the characters were or what they were conveying. He became very agitated. Another time he was playing a game that involved little tile pieces. He had to put down a 5 but he couldn’t find it, even though it was right in front of his face. He was so mad he threw the tiles across the table, got up and stormed off. He hides things. He hoards them, too. He hides his money because he’s afraid someone will take it, and then gets horribly upset when he can’t find it. He won’t let me throw away his old coffee bags because he might use them in a collage. These are difficult days.
All the best, Hillary
CHAPTER 14
KICKED OUT
Two major events secured Randy’s removal from Belmont in 2015. One morning, he fell out of bed, hit his head, and was rushed to the USC Medical Center, where he was put in a medically induced coma. The doctors determined he’d had a stroke. Once he returned, he began lashing out at people, even Hillary. He kicked trash cans, threw chairs, hit walls. His anger was back, full-force. There was no explanation. Hillary and I took him to a highly recommended psychiatrist in Westwood, who suggested we arrange a physical examination. The results revealed signs of advanced dementia, as evidenced by rigid muscles, tremors, trouble with balance, and even hallucinations. And so to his list of woes was added, above all, Parkinson’s disease.
A few weeks later, Hillary called and said that Randy was in a rage. He wanted out of Belmont and was freaked about his keys. Someone had stolen them—not once, but twice, maybe three times, actually. The next morning, she opened the door to punched-out walls, collages flung all over the floor. Hoping to escape from his fury, Hillary decided to take him to see one of my movies. When they came back to Belmont, he got all riled up about the keys again. He started screaming. Hillary found them inside a door hinge. She also opened a drawer and found a half-eaten yogurt, collecting mold, next to important meds, Aricept, which was supposed to help with his dementia symptoms, and Seroquel, for his bipolar disorder. Because he hadn’t been taking his medications, Randy’s week had been horrific.
It was then that Dorrie and I were politely informed that Randy’s impulsivity had forced the staff to request his departure from Belmont. Perhaps he needed the kind of care provided by a convalescent home. The place they recommended was out of the question for me. Hillary lived in L.A., and so did I. We started looking for something closer. Sunrise Villa Senior Living, for older adults who value their independence but need some assistance with daily activities, was located in Culver City. After Hillary and I took a tour of the Spanish Revival facility, we agreed this would become Randy’s new home.
As Hillary and I began packing up Randy’s belongings, something strange happened. Dorrie called from the 405 Freeway in Valencia, and she was shouting into the phone. “Diane! Listen to me. I just turned away from looking at Six Flags’ world-record nineteen roller coasters when, I swear to God, I spotted a random office building with a large gray sign on top spelling out the words Hall and Foreman. Can you believe it? Dad’s old company sign in Valencia? Can you believe it?”
“Slow down, Dorr. How could there possibly be a Hall and Foreman sign, much less one on top of an office building across the street from Magic Mountain? There is no more Hall and Foreman. Not possible.”
“Diane, I’m telling you it’s true.” And with that she started crying. I listened to her sob into the phone, with the sound of cars behind her, until she was ready to hang up.
The very next day, I drove to Valencia and looked across the freeway from Six Flags. Sure enough, there, on a frontage road lined with office buildings, stood a seven-foot-high sign with letters spelling out our father’s company’s name. Like Dorrie before me, I burst into tears. Jack Newton Ignatius Hall—Mary Hall’s son, Dorothy’s husband of forty-six years, our father, USC graduate, civil engineer, president of Hall and Foreman, “breadwinner”—had returned in the form of a seven-foot-high gray sign in bold white letters. I took one last look at Dad’s sign, picked up my iPhone, and called the owner of the building. When his assistant put him on, I asked if he was interested in selling the sign. As of one month later, Hall and Foreman stands in my rented warehouse, waiting for me to step up and buy the horse ranch across the street from Mom and Dad’s old Tubac, Arizona, home, which Dorrie owns. What a tribute that would be…right there where their ashes rest under a variety of crosses.
* * *
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A few weeks later, Dorrie joined Hillary and me in packing to move to Sunrise. I came across one of Mom’s old eight-by-ten-inch portraits. Randy has to be in his early twenties. His hair is greasy, and he’s beginning to gain weight. His full body sits in profile on one of those cheap scalloped Mexican chairs we must have bought in Tijuana. He looks down at a piece of paper in his hands. Mom’s photograph has not aged well. As for Randy, I can see he’s beginning his long journey into isolation. Superimposed over his body by Mom in collage form is a poem he wrote, “the study of birds’ eggs.”