DOCTOR

2025-05-04 09:11:00, Kulturë Agim Xhafka

DOCTOR

Elsa occasionally visits her parents. They have now entered true old age, having passed the age of 75. She meets them for some shopping, listens to their rheumatism pains, advises them to walk morning and afternoon. A girl goes to drink from a cup.

And this Sunday she went to them. She found only her father with the TV remote in her hand. She didn't even ask the first question when there was a knock on the door and Elsa jumped like a squirrel from the armchair she had just sat on. She opened it, and her mother appeared in front of her with three bags full of food. She wanted to warn her that they were quite heavy, but Olga headed towards the bedroom, loaded. She opened the wardrobe and put the tomatoes, peppers and apples there. Elsa was surprised. You put the fruits and vegetables in the clothes, my! No matter how much you tell her, Olga went to the bathroom and left two fish on the washing machine. They looked like fish from the shape. Another surprise. Fish in the bathroom, fish on the washing machine! She looked at her mother in surprise. Not a muscle moved on Olga's face. As if she was saying, wait, you bitch, you know where to put my things! And as if to cover her up instead of her blouse that was at home, she threw Besnik's, her husband's, sweater over her arms. It fit her like a bag. Her sleeves dragged across the parquet floor like a mop. Just like that, looking like a scarecrow, she went out onto the balcony and started talking to the canary. My dear, my soloist, I tell her.

Elsa was shocked. She thought of some disease that had lots of names on Google, but which was basically called memory loss. She went to her father and asked him:

-Does mom forget anything, Dad?

He was surprised at first, then he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. He laughed and said:

"I don't know," and he was changing the stations with the remote control again.

Olga had left the balcony. After making a coffee in the espresso machine in the kitchen, she went to the bathroom to drink it. There Elsa could not hold it in any longer. She almost retaliated:

-Why is coffee being drunk in the toilet?

Olga looked at her gently, as if she didn't understand her question. Then Elsa rushed to her:

-How can you put fish on the washing machine? Why do you put tomatoes in the closet, mom? Why...

At that moment, Olga covered his mouth with her palm.

-Listen, daughter, a big trouble is approaching us.

-What?

-Besnik, your father, is starting to forget. He wants to get a sentence out of his mouth, but he stops mid-sentence. He can't remember the names of some objects, for example. Look, yesterday he wanted the belt of his jeans that he had taken to the dry cleaners. He couldn't remember. He was showing me the pants, the holes where the belt was placed, and he wouldn't take it any further. I panicked, but I gave myself strength. I know that age brings such strains on our health, but I want us to get through it with as little drama as possible.

-And how?- Elsa asked.

-I remembered my mother, every time I scratched my hand or foot and blood came out, I would scream as I stood up, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I almost died from panic. My mother, in this madness of mine, would turn her back and with a needle or a piece of glass if we were outside, she would prick her finger and draw blood too. She would show it to me, but she never screamed. She would laugh and in those seconds my anxiety would go away too. We would rub our hands, blood against blood, and she would tell me, from now on I don't just have you as a daughter, I also have you as a sister.

Olga was silent for a moment. She noticed that her daughter understood, but not everything. So she continued:

-This forgetfulness doesn't happen to Besnik very often. Occasionally, but so that it doesn't get worse, I've found a cure. If he learns that his memory really slips from time to time, then he will suffer trauma, it will get worse, and his entire speech will be built on obstacles. He won't forget words, but entire sentences. He won't build a simple reasoning, or give an opinion on something. His brain will be under the attack of nightmares. And to make everything easier for him, I relativized the problem like my mother did for me. He sometimes realizes that he's forgetting, he looks me in the eye at that moment like that guilty person who asks for help from a lawyer. At that moment, I appear to him exactly like a real forgetful person. I take him with me to find, for example, the tomatoes I bought. But where did I leave the flagged ones, I tell him with shouting and drama. We look together. He finds them because I direct him where to look. And laughing, he brings them before my eyes and says:

-But you put mine in the dresses! Didn't you find another place?! Ah, my dear, - he caresses me.

Then he finds clothes in the refrigerator. He takes them out and takes them to the trash. He looks at me with pain, thinking that I have sclerosis, that I have been infected with the disease. He gets sad, I understand that he is suffering, he hugs me and whispers in my ear, don't be sad, my dear, our age has these things. I know, I talk to myself. Age plays tricks on us, but we also respond to it with games.

Elsa stood still frozen. As if she had returned to her childhood. Back when she and the palace girls spent the day playing "Doctor's Game"./ CNA