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All things are ephemeral. We are pained and wounds heal.


'Spell "World" Backward'
By BERNARD COOPER
Published: January 8, 2006

The last place my increasingly forgetful 85-year-old father wanted to be was sitting beside me in the office of a geriatric specialist. The doctor leaned forward at her desk and locked eyes with my father. "Has it been difficult for you to remember things recently, Mr. Cooper?"

"I'm fine," he said.

"I'm sure you are," she said. "But if we test you today, we'll have a base line to compare against
future tests."

"Future tests?" He looked as if he'd tasted something sour.

"I'm going to ask you several questions," she continued, "and I'd like you to answer them one at a time."

"How else would I?"

"How else would you what?"

"Answer them, for Christ's sake!"

The doctor jotted a note. "We'll be working from what's called the Mini-Mental State Examination," she explained, "and I'll score your answers as we go along."

Dad adjusted his Miracle-Ear. "So test me, already."

First she asked my father to tell her the date. I silently answered along. He got it right. I was off by a couple of days. I scooted my chair closer. Now I had something to prove. I felt as if my father and I were opponents on a quiz show.

"What state are we in?" "City?" "Hospital?" "Floor?"

Not until she whispered "Bernard" did I realize that I'd been muttering answers under my breath. But I was sure my father hadn't heard me. And anyway, I got them right. Dad, on the other hand, didn't know what floor we were on. But he probably would have known it was the third if he had been the one to push the elevator button instead of me. The mechanics of recall are delicate, so iffy and contingent.

My father lowered his head and laced his fingers together in his lap. He had the shamed, inward look of a man who knows he has blundered but doesn't know how.

"Mr. Cooper?" she asked. "Are you ready to continue?"

My father nodded. His head seemed heavy, as if with answers that would soon elude him.
"Spell 'world' backward," the doctor said.

"Why 'world'?" Dad asked, peering over his glasses.

Because the world is backward, I said to myself. Laws are repealed. Iron rusts. Logic unravels.

"I suggest you don't overthink the questions, Mr. Cooper. Just try to relax and let the answers come."

Dad deliberated on every letter. "D. . .L. . .O. . .
R. . .W?"

She recorded his score. "Now, please repeat the following list of items in the same order: Apple, penny, table."

My father cocked his head. "Did I get it right?"

"You haven't repeated the items yet."

"Not those," he said. "'World.' Did I get it backward?"

"Ask me at the end of the test."

"Suppose I forget?"

"We should move on to the next question," the doctor insisted. "Now, kindly repeat after me: Apple, penny, table."

"Why can't you tell me now?"

"Apple, penny, table," she persisted

"Apple," he said at last. "The rest I forget." He dismissed his insufficient recall with a wave of his hand, but he looked at me to gauge how he was doing. I smiled noncommittally back.

Next she held up her pen. "Can you tell me what this is?"

"A ballpoint," he said. "Does it have your motto on it?"

The doctor told him that men and women in her profession didn't, as a rule, have mottos. Then she noticed that there were, in fact, words printed on the side of the pen. She held it horizontally and squinted. "Hot Water Management Service," she read. "Where could this have come from?"

Was the question part of the test?

"Pens are everywhere these days," Dad said. "But what the hell is a Hot Water Management Service?"

We hadn't a single answer among us, not a guess or a speculation. The doctor continued to gaze at the pen, turning it as if she might find other phrases. Beyond the hospital window, the sky above the city deepened into dusk. The office walls dimmed, our faces growing vague. A clock ticked on the desk, and I felt in my bones that the three of us, second by second, were being drawn toward a vast and eventual forgetting. Nothing we could do or say would stop it. One day this room wouldn't be remembered by anyone now sitting in it.

Bernard Cooper is the author of the memoir "The Bill From My Father," to be published next month by Simon & Schuster and from which this essay is adapted.