So Long, Chester Wheeler(86)

“Oh!” she said, and I could tell she was barely listening. “There’s my granddaughter. Now her I like.”

“Okay, then. We’re getting somewhere. Let’s get you dressed and get you out there to see her.”



I limped with her, and her oxygen, to the table where her granddaughter, a woman of nearly fifty, sat drinking light coffee. As I did, I tried to ignore cold stares from other family members.

Then I went back into the Winnebago to shower and get myself properly dressed.

I picked up my phone to see if Brian had called or texted, and as I did I noticed the date. It was one year to the day since Chester Wheeler’s death.

While I showered, I tried to think of some fitting words. But all I could come up with was You got me into all of this, you son of a bitch. I know. It doesn’t sound like much of a tribute for the departed. And yet, somehow, knowing Chester as I had, I figured he would laugh. And probably understand.

Face it, it was his kind of tribute.



When I went outside again, I brought Estelle’s beret, so she wouldn’t get a sunburned scalp.

Breakfast was in full swing. There were plain pancakes and blueberry pancakes, and stacks of chocolate chip pancakes dripping with fresh strawberry sauce. There were scrambled eggs and sausages. There was coffee and there was toast.

The only thing missing was Estelle.

I limped around until I found her behind the barn with her middle-aged granddaughter. They were leaning on the old dry wood siding together. They were each smoking a cigarette.

“What the hell?” I shouted.

Estelle dropped her cigarette and ground it under her shoe, leaving her foot there to obscure my view of it. She peered at the ground as though she’d lost something important there—as though the angle of her gaze was about something more noble and urgent than avoiding my eyes.

I waited, knowing she had to exhale eventually.

“It’s too late, Estelle,” I said when I’d gotten tired of waiting. “I already saw it.”

She exhaled a great, guilty puff of smoke.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re dying of emphysema.”

“Yes, dying,” she said, switching into a defiant mode. “The operative word being dying. So what difference does it make?”

“Did you want to die in a fiery conflagration? Because your granddaughter here might not know it’s dangerous to smoke around medical oxygen. But you do.”

The granddaughter took several steps back from Estelle and dropped her own half-smoked cigarette, crushing it into the dirt with the toe of one red cowboy boot.

“But we’re outdoors,” Estelle whined. “And I switched the tank off.”

“But your hair and clothes and skin are still saturated with pure oxygen from your time inside. And you know all this, as you proved by turning off the tank even though it’s uncomfortable to breathe without it.”

“I’m sorry,” the other woman said. “I didn’t know about that fire stuff. I know it’s not really good for her. But she said she felt like there might be a seizure coming on, and a cigarette would relax her, and maybe help.”

I turned my ire back onto my patient, who averted her eyes in shame.

“Oh, so now you’re manipulating people into letting you smoke.”

She didn’t answer.

For an awkward length of time, nobody breathed a word. Then I decided that after-the-fact anger was unhelpful, and we should move the morning along.

“Have you eaten, Estelle?”

“Not yet.”

“Come on. Let’s go get some of that breakfast.”



We finished breakfast, sat back against our chairs in a synchronized manner, and a parade of relatives came by to greet Estelle. Not really enough of them, though. Maybe ten. And it’s not like the others were waiting, thinking she’d come mingle with them. The oxygen tank and her obvious frailty made it clear that she was mingling from a sitting position.

For the most part, the older people who came by and greeted her wore tight looks on their faces. One even looked away the whole time.

As they left, she briefed me as to the relationship.

“Cousin.”

“Cousin.”

“Cousin.”

“Cousin.”

Finally, when the line thinned out, I asked, “How many cousins do you have?”

“Twenty-seven. I come from a big family. My mom was from a family of eight kids and my dad eleven. And I have six brothers and three sisters myself.”

“Any of them here?”

“All dead. I’m the last one.”

At that moment, Estelle’s daughter came to the table and plunked down next to Estelle and across from me. She had long hair dyed a fiery red, and seemed to dress and style herself like a twenty-year-old when she was clearly pushing seventy.

“So,” she said. “Health aide person. Do you really think it’s your role to tell my mother she can’t smoke?”

“She’s on medical oxygen,” I said. “So, yes. It’s absolutely my job to make sure your mother doesn’t set herself on fire. It’s what she pays me for.”

“Don’t get me started on what she pays you,” she said. “Why does she need a full-time . . . person, anyway? She’s always been very independent.”