When It’s Time to Take the Keys

I sat mesmerized watching the television as George Russell Weller was led into a police car after the deadly tragedy when he apparently lost control of his car and mowed down visitors to the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market. So far, 10 people have died and scores are injured, some critically. I sat there mesmerized because it could have been my father. He and Weller are the same age -- 86.

I am the caretaker for both my parents. My mom has Lou Gehrig’s disease and my father is in the second stage of dementia. Four years ago, my father was still driving -- well, he would get behind the wheel of a big Buick Regal and disappear into the increasingly unfamiliar bowels of the Santa Clarita Valley. It wasn’t driving as we know it: being alert and attentive.

At least three times a week I was at the local mall helping my father and security officers locate his car. He could never remember where he parked it. There were gouges in his windshield made by wipers worn down to the metal. He would inadvertently turn them on and not know how to turn them off without turning off the engine. He frequently unlatched the hood while looking for the windshield wiper switch. It was a frightening sight as he drove the streets of Valencia with emergency lights flashing, hood popped up and windshield wipers wiping.

Four years ago, it was time for my father to retire from driving. He would have none of it. I’ve learned a painful truism about men. His car offered an escape route from whatever demons were plaguing his mind. Without a car, he felt trapped.

When it was time for his license renewal, I didn’t go with him because I wanted him to fail on his own. I thought there was no way the Department of Motor Vehicles would grant him a license renewal. I didn’t accompany him because I didn’t want him to complain that I had sabotaged him. I should have been there. My father later relayed what happened. He missed 15 questions on the quiz. They took him into a special room and showed him the quiz with his 15 wrong answers circled. They let him take the test again. He passed.

“Dad, how did you do that?” I asked. He said that when he got to the questions he had answered incorrectly, he just chose another answer.

He couldn’t read the passing line on the eye chart. They told him he could step closer. And closer. He passed the eye test.

I was incensed. I called the DMV in Sacramento. After talking to two or three officials, I reached someone in charge. I told him that my father was a menace on the road and I feared that someone was going to get hurt. I could never have imagined what happened Wednesday on that crowded, two-block stretch in Santa Monica.

The DMV official was shocked at my call. He told me that he spends the better part of his day talking with children of the elderly who beg to have their parents reinstated for driving privileges. The two-person working families say they don’t have time to transport their parents to the doctor and on errands.

I was asking for, no, I was demanding help. The DMV official said it would help if my father’s doctor wrote a letter stating that my father was incompetent to drive. I had tried that, but the doctor had made all sorts of excuses and would not provide a letter. He just didn’t want to get involved.

The DMV official said he would look into it. I never heard from him again. A few weeks later, I took the car keys from my father. He was furious and has not been civil to me since that day. But I know it was the right thing to do.