Finn liked the home. He had lived there the last twenty years, since he was ninety-five. Before the home he had been living with his grand daughter, Carolyn and her family in Chicago since he had that unfortunate accident with the stove while living on his own. He didn’t see what the big deal was, people accidentally started fires all the time. No one was hurt. So what if the kitchen had to be redone and there was minor water damage in some of the other rooms, that’s what insurance is for. He wasn’t losing his faculties, by god. He was the one to call 911, that had to count for something.
Carolyn had insisted he move in with them on the North side of Chicago, that had been a huge mistake, He liked Carolyn enough and knew she had a good hart, but it was a small apartment and they were constantly in each others way. He could tell she was as miserable as he was, so the experimental living arrangements lasted five years till she blew up and was yelling at him about some ridiculous thing that just didn’t matter and he was shouting at her about something equally ridiculous.
A retirement home had been her suggestion and at first he balked at the idea. He wanted to go back to living on his own. Carolyn insisted that was not an option and Finn knew she was right so that was a fight he conceded. But ‘where’, was the next battle. She wanted him to stay in the North Chicago area and he needed to be away from the whole family. He felt they were smothering him, and she was neglecting her own family. If he were close enough Carolyn would be visiting every day and he felt that would not be in either of their best interest.
That had been the problem when he was living with them. Carolyn would cater to his every need. She had her dinner with him so he wouldn’t eat alone and Finn could retire to his bedroom early, but her husband didn’t get home till after six and the kids were doing school activities and ate later. He tried to go to some of the kids soccer games and things, but if he wasn’t up for it, Carolyn would not go either and stay home with Finn. She rarely left him home alone at all. She was doing to her kids what he had done to her mother and uncle. Avoiding them.
So he wanted to get some distance between them not only for himself but for the sake of Carolyn and her family. Her husband and kids needed her more than Finn did, even if she didn’t see it that way.
So he told her that his old bones couldn’t take the Chicago winters anymore and he needed to get South of the Mason Dixon. They settled on the “Key West Retirement Home”. The corporate headquarters were in Chicago so Carolyn felt she could go raise hell with someone in person, if she felt she needed. And it was far enough away for Finn that a spur of the moment visit from her or her family was highly unlikely.
The home itself was pretty nice. They had a weight room, Finn had used, working his arms and legs with the lighter weights, till he had been confined to a wheel chair. He still liked to go down and hang out with some of the friends he had made over the months and years. The dining room had a stand up piano that Finn liked to sit at and play, dreaming of times gone by in places gone by, with friends and family gone by. Even at ninety-five when he had first got to the home, he could still play pretty good. His hands had been spared the worst of the arthritis that plagued his back and hips. But each year his memory lost it’s sharpness, he would sit longer and longer at the keys trying to think of what came next. There was no muscle memory in his fingers any longer and when he could remember the music he struggled getting his hands to catch up with the music in his mind.
In other area’s he was fit as a fiddle. Finn had always liked to play cards. Neither his mind nor his hands had to work as hard. He played poker regularly on Friday night, often losing more than he won, but that was due to the fact he wasn’t good at poker. Never had been. It had nothing to do with a diminished mind. But he kept playing because he liked the ‘act’ of playing cards. Much like a fisherman who will catch and release the fish, it’s the act of fishing that’s the draw. He did miss the cigars though, that had been a big part of playing with his friends in years past. Often during these games he had heated political debates with men and women much younger than him. Finn would argue both sides. If his opponent was a damn Democrat he would argue they were ruining this country, but if he knew they were a damn Republican, he just as easily argued how they were the ones doing the ruining. He didn’t belong to either party, they were all a bunch of crooked weasels as far as he was concerned.
As time ran on Finn found he was the one running these Friday night card games as one buy one the original card players died off and were replaced by new residents of the “Key West Retirement Home”. Like the Energizer Bunny, Finn kept on going.
Occasionally when a hurricane threatened, they would pack up all eighty-three residents, most of which would be sent inland to higher ground. Finn, along with a few of the other less mobile patients would go to the local hospital where they would, if necessary, ride the storm out in the hallway of an upper floor. In 2005 they had to evacuate for hurricane Katrina. The residents who got evacuated to the mainland ended up all the way in Orlando. Finn and his group rode it out on the third floor of the hospital as the storm came by them as a category one hurricane. He felt bad for those people in retirement homes in Louisiana who didn’t evacuate. They must have been terrified. That’s the thing he didn’t want was to die frightened. He couldn’t think of a worse way to go.
He was old and he was tired. He was ready to die. His affairs were in order. Most of the people he saw in the home assumed he was on some kind of government program in order to stay here. A few people would say he was a rich old man, but he very rarely talked with anyone about it, very few new what he really was worth. He had decided years ago to leave a substantial portion to the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters. They were good about helping old musicians down on their luck and educating new musicians in Jazz. The rest he split up here and there. Some of the people who worked at the home would get a big surprise after he was dead and gone. They wouldn’t have to clean up anyones crap again for the rest of their lives if they chose not to.
His own kids were long gone and the grand kids and great grand kids seemed to be doing fine. They didn’t realize he had anything to leave them and he wasn’t going to let them know anything different.
He wasn’t religious at all. He had been raised Catholic, but WWI had him questioning what kind of god would allow the things he had seen there. Then when Kim and his oldest son had been killed in WWII, he was convinced that God, if he had ever existed, was dead and couldn’t help anyone, anywhere. There was no after life and there was no one on the other side waiting with open arms. This was the only life you got, so better make it the best you can.
This was not a popular feeling amongst the people who lived or worked in the home, so of course, he felt the need to express his beliefs every chance he got. He loved to goad others into a brisk debate over the likely hood of a God watching out for each and everyone of us, or the more likely scenario that this is all there is, when you expired your spirit didn’t go anywhere except into that grave with your cold corpse.