Of Cabbages and Kings...
My father died Saturday.
It was a kindness. Alzheimer's on top of renal failure and an untreatable bacterial infection had made his life hell. Much of the time he thought we were doing this to him or refusing to make him better, that people were out to get him, and that we were lying to him when we told him his old home had burned. Over a year ago, we concluded that the physical effort of caring for him was destroying my mother's health and his paranoia had become so severe and so directed at my mother that it was no longer safe for her to be around him. She came back and lived with me full time and limited her support to the phone (by the hour...toward the end, when he couldn't sleep for days on end, she and I would trade the phone and keep talking to him for upwards to 24 hours at a time), while a wonderful woman took full care of him as he failed over the final year and a half.
We were incredibly blessed that she loved him and cared for him so wonderfully when we couldn't anymore. It allowed him to remain in a home where he received far better and more loving care than he had during the periods where he was in a nursing home. She supported him when his family home burned (though it was repaired, he was never able to move back), found a mobile home for both of them and his cats (though sadly, they passed away over the last year), took full bodily care of him when he had a leg amputated and tried to help him maintain some small level of independence even if it was just feeding himself finger foods (literally all he could do for himself in the final days). There simply are not words to describe what we owe her and how grateful we are for the help. She gave him what peace was possible and literally saved my mother's life by sparing her a job that had finally become too much.
It has been a long, and often confusing journey from the time when mom first realized something was wrong well over six years ago (not sure exactly how much over...some subtle symptoms may have even begun as much as a decade ago). It's hard to track the beginning because he was very good at marshaling himself...particularly in front of doctors. He was generally smarter than they were, and it wasn't until the very late stages of the disease that he couldn't outwit them any longer.
As for my father, people often say that Alzheimer's victims become someone else, someone they don't know, but the sad truth is that with my father, it was more a case of distilling down the very worst parts of himself. It brought out the emotional distance, the furious rages, the paranoia, the narcissism, the obsessive grudges. He needed constant attention and praise, carried on assorted feuds with various folks in town, would roar over the phone at us by the hour, bring up old issues and hurl ugly accusations. There were delusions and toward the end, he incredibly repetitive accusations that we hated him or refused to help him. He'd long collected guns, but as he got sicker, he squirrelled them away in his house, hiding them in case of "emergency." Even after my mother swore she'd gotten them all out and stored with a neighbor, when the house burned and a cleanup crew went in to deal with the place, they found two more.
To this day, I shake a little when I think about that because I truly believe that if he was a danger to anyone, it was my mother. He was a brilliant man once upon a time, and she'd long been his caretaker, allowing him to go be the genius who didn't need to worry about anything in real life, smoothing the way, taking care of practical matters, paying all the bills, even when he moved back to his childhood home, and dated half the women in town (no, I don't claim to understand why she did it, but she did). As he failed, he expected her to keep saving him and as the disease progressed and there was nothing she could do, he became angrier and more resentful and increasingly blamed her for his condition. It was insane, but then Alzheimer's doesn't exactly leave one with the best reasoning facilities.
And I'm not exactly sure why I'm discussing all of this now. Maybe it's just part of processing it all. I look at some of what I've written and it seems so horrifying and in some ways, the most frightening part is how very mundane it became because it snowballed incrementally over time. It wasn't a moment or an event. It was such a gradual shift toward insanity that it didn't always seem crazy at the time.
Dunno that I'll even post this. Some of it I've said to friends over time, some not. Going through this has forced me to go back over a lot of things in my life in an effort to understand. Mom and I have talked a lot, worked our way through a lot and accepted a lot. It's been hard on her. Society harshly judges women who don't kill themselves to care for their men, and she has had to resist her own internal judgment of herself. Mostly, she knows she did the right thing, and the people who care about her know she did, but sometimes, she still has to deal with all those disapproving voices...most of them inside her own head.
So we talk...occasionally cry, though not very often. We've mourned so many times over the last several years (he's been at death's door more often than not) that there's little left in either of us for that. We also laugh surprisingly often....more often than not in a slightly, demented, faintly giddy way. Living through this results in the ultimate in-jokes. The human impulse to survive through humor is alive and well...particularly in light of the fact that when events are simply listed, the last few years start sounding vaguely like a bad country-music song (tornado hit my house, dad's heart surgery, then alzheimer's, then amputation, plus assorted near death events, fire at his house, barn fell down on the farm...etc). You've gotta laugh or you will not survive.
And we have survived.
Now we get to deal with the paperwork. Which may be entertaining, given that he had a firm plan never to die, so his will is an outdated mess. Joy.
Oh, and his most recent (and most annoying) girlfriend is being a pain in the ass. She is officious and annoying and rude to his caretaker. I'd be nice if she'd been nice to assorted people, but since she opted for rudeness...meh.
Plus there are the legal problems because he died at home and certain questions must be asked and tests run.
And...well, you get the idea.
The running joke has been that I should write it as a novel, but if I did, it would get panned for a lack of verisimilitude.
All of which is probably more than I should say, though there is far, far more that could be said. Books worth. In all honesty, I never quite know whether or not to say something. It's often so dark and I hate it when I feel like I'm whining or begging for pity. At the same time, sometimes talking about things helps. And also, I think sometimes others have drawn something from some of the posts and letters that I've written over the last few years.
Meanwhile, I write, paint, play WoW, most recently I came up with a very kickass low fat, healthy carb cookie recipe (weird, since I'm not usually one to bake). Gonna try making it with some of the sugar replaced by Stevia next. Haven't tried cooking with it, but heck, it keeps me outa the junk foods, so that at least any comfort food is reasonably healthy. Watching the Olympics right now. Looking forward to not having to be attached to the phone by the hour, and getting out more. As this has progressed, I've become increasingly hermit-like. Maybe take mom on some kind of a vacation when there's a block of time.
I suppose by rights, this should have been some kind of eulogy, but our relationship was never conducive to that.
Don't really know what I feel. Tired mostly, but also relieved. We're all out of his agony.
And we will be okay.
It was a kindness. Alzheimer's on top of renal failure and an untreatable bacterial infection had made his life hell. Much of the time he thought we were doing this to him or refusing to make him better, that people were out to get him, and that we were lying to him when we told him his old home had burned. Over a year ago, we concluded that the physical effort of caring for him was destroying my mother's health and his paranoia had become so severe and so directed at my mother that it was no longer safe for her to be around him. She came back and lived with me full time and limited her support to the phone (by the hour...toward the end, when he couldn't sleep for days on end, she and I would trade the phone and keep talking to him for upwards to 24 hours at a time), while a wonderful woman took full care of him as he failed over the final year and a half.
We were incredibly blessed that she loved him and cared for him so wonderfully when we couldn't anymore. It allowed him to remain in a home where he received far better and more loving care than he had during the periods where he was in a nursing home. She supported him when his family home burned (though it was repaired, he was never able to move back), found a mobile home for both of them and his cats (though sadly, they passed away over the last year), took full bodily care of him when he had a leg amputated and tried to help him maintain some small level of independence even if it was just feeding himself finger foods (literally all he could do for himself in the final days). There simply are not words to describe what we owe her and how grateful we are for the help. She gave him what peace was possible and literally saved my mother's life by sparing her a job that had finally become too much.
It has been a long, and often confusing journey from the time when mom first realized something was wrong well over six years ago (not sure exactly how much over...some subtle symptoms may have even begun as much as a decade ago). It's hard to track the beginning because he was very good at marshaling himself...particularly in front of doctors. He was generally smarter than they were, and it wasn't until the very late stages of the disease that he couldn't outwit them any longer.
As for my father, people often say that Alzheimer's victims become someone else, someone they don't know, but the sad truth is that with my father, it was more a case of distilling down the very worst parts of himself. It brought out the emotional distance, the furious rages, the paranoia, the narcissism, the obsessive grudges. He needed constant attention and praise, carried on assorted feuds with various folks in town, would roar over the phone at us by the hour, bring up old issues and hurl ugly accusations. There were delusions and toward the end, he incredibly repetitive accusations that we hated him or refused to help him. He'd long collected guns, but as he got sicker, he squirrelled them away in his house, hiding them in case of "emergency." Even after my mother swore she'd gotten them all out and stored with a neighbor, when the house burned and a cleanup crew went in to deal with the place, they found two more.
To this day, I shake a little when I think about that because I truly believe that if he was a danger to anyone, it was my mother. He was a brilliant man once upon a time, and she'd long been his caretaker, allowing him to go be the genius who didn't need to worry about anything in real life, smoothing the way, taking care of practical matters, paying all the bills, even when he moved back to his childhood home, and dated half the women in town (no, I don't claim to understand why she did it, but she did). As he failed, he expected her to keep saving him and as the disease progressed and there was nothing she could do, he became angrier and more resentful and increasingly blamed her for his condition. It was insane, but then Alzheimer's doesn't exactly leave one with the best reasoning facilities.
And I'm not exactly sure why I'm discussing all of this now. Maybe it's just part of processing it all. I look at some of what I've written and it seems so horrifying and in some ways, the most frightening part is how very mundane it became because it snowballed incrementally over time. It wasn't a moment or an event. It was such a gradual shift toward insanity that it didn't always seem crazy at the time.
Dunno that I'll even post this. Some of it I've said to friends over time, some not. Going through this has forced me to go back over a lot of things in my life in an effort to understand. Mom and I have talked a lot, worked our way through a lot and accepted a lot. It's been hard on her. Society harshly judges women who don't kill themselves to care for their men, and she has had to resist her own internal judgment of herself. Mostly, she knows she did the right thing, and the people who care about her know she did, but sometimes, she still has to deal with all those disapproving voices...most of them inside her own head.
So we talk...occasionally cry, though not very often. We've mourned so many times over the last several years (he's been at death's door more often than not) that there's little left in either of us for that. We also laugh surprisingly often....more often than not in a slightly, demented, faintly giddy way. Living through this results in the ultimate in-jokes. The human impulse to survive through humor is alive and well...particularly in light of the fact that when events are simply listed, the last few years start sounding vaguely like a bad country-music song (tornado hit my house, dad's heart surgery, then alzheimer's, then amputation, plus assorted near death events, fire at his house, barn fell down on the farm...etc). You've gotta laugh or you will not survive.
And we have survived.
Now we get to deal with the paperwork. Which may be entertaining, given that he had a firm plan never to die, so his will is an outdated mess. Joy.
Oh, and his most recent (and most annoying) girlfriend is being a pain in the ass. She is officious and annoying and rude to his caretaker. I'd be nice if she'd been nice to assorted people, but since she opted for rudeness...meh.
Plus there are the legal problems because he died at home and certain questions must be asked and tests run.
And...well, you get the idea.
The running joke has been that I should write it as a novel, but if I did, it would get panned for a lack of verisimilitude.
All of which is probably more than I should say, though there is far, far more that could be said. Books worth. In all honesty, I never quite know whether or not to say something. It's often so dark and I hate it when I feel like I'm whining or begging for pity. At the same time, sometimes talking about things helps. And also, I think sometimes others have drawn something from some of the posts and letters that I've written over the last few years.
Meanwhile, I write, paint, play WoW, most recently I came up with a very kickass low fat, healthy carb cookie recipe (weird, since I'm not usually one to bake). Gonna try making it with some of the sugar replaced by Stevia next. Haven't tried cooking with it, but heck, it keeps me outa the junk foods, so that at least any comfort food is reasonably healthy. Watching the Olympics right now. Looking forward to not having to be attached to the phone by the hour, and getting out more. As this has progressed, I've become increasingly hermit-like. Maybe take mom on some kind of a vacation when there's a block of time.
I suppose by rights, this should have been some kind of eulogy, but our relationship was never conducive to that.
Don't really know what I feel. Tired mostly, but also relieved. We're all out of his agony.
And we will be okay.