mr. t.

old people are far from boring.

mr. T. is close to 90 years old. he has had a long, not always easy, life. he has a tendency to drool, for which he carries around a white cloth handkerchief. the result of ageing and a stroke years back. when he reads the paper, he lays it on the table in front of him and leans over it with his face 5cm above it; it's the only way he can still see the letters. sometimes he falls asleep in this position, his back hunched, his arms stretched out holding the top corners of the paper, his head held just above the front page. he does everything slowly. very slowly. he's still 'all there', just at a slower pace than the world around him. but he talks alot (slowly of course) and he smiles alot. and he plays Triominoes every wednesday. he watches the others make their move, then looks at his board, he mutters to himself, he slowly picks up a tile and lays it next to one he thinks might match, it doesn't, he slowly picks it up again and puts it back on his board, he picks up another, lays, picks it up. painstaking. deliberate. he misses the clear match that i see sitting on the corner of his board, but i don't point it out. he's not a child. he's played this way for years. he hardly ever wins. and he loves it.

today his drool was red.

first the corners of his mouth were pink. i thought maybe he had eaten a coloured candy. then i saw red drops on his cake plate. and red swimming in his coffee. we checked his mouth for missing teeth or open sores. he wasn't coughing, it couldn't be from his lungs. he wiped his chin with his white handkerchief. he muttered that we should stop fussing about him. he seemed fine. so we let him alone and kept an eye on him.

it didn't stop. his handkerchief is spotted and streaked. his collar and sweater have large dark blotches on them. he'd soak it in warm water, he said.

we checked his mouth again. this time we found the source. he'd bitten his tongue. and he's on blood-thinners, his blood won't clot, so it just keeps bleeding. i wiped his mouth and hands with a warm wet cloth. he chuckled at me. this afternoon when he left for home, he spit on the handkerchief and showed it to me. 'See! It's clear! Now stop worrying!'

we're on for Triominoes again next week.