This is the place where my father spent several years near the end of his life. I visited him every day on my way to or from Randolph Technical College. I took him home with me and made his most delightful treasure – coffee, or we went on trips to family members or into the countryside. He had Alzheimer’s by then, so he never remembered my previous visits, only things about his early life. Who knows, maybe we did repeat the same experience over and over.
In 2009, I drove by the old Randolph Rest Home where he had lived in a room at the front on the right wing. I crossed the railroad tracks and drove as close as I could to the building and got out of my car. I spent a few minutes perusing and scanning the area. Memories flooded my mind and I had to prop my folded arm to keep my head steady on the car roof. I could not speak, and there was nothing to say.
I’ll never forget the scene, the pristine white-washed cinder-block walls and chalky boarded windows. It was like angelic hosts had swooped in with huge vials of liquid holiness and covered the sadness and aloneness of that place, memorializing the spot set there amongst ancient oaks. It was a photograph for the soul, one stop along this railway of life, to say goodbye again to someone at a remote crossing along the way.
I had called this meeting between man and memory. It was heavy, yet buoying; wistful, but hopeful; quiet, with a heavenly haunting; even with the concrete and mortar, somehow ephemeral . I started the engine to my car, its hum concurrent with the relentless march of time’s continuum. There for an instant, I had superseded mortality.
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