"Does the house smell like urine," my father asks me.
"Gee, I don't know, Pop," I reply. "There's a gallon milk jug half full of piss sitting next to your recliner. What do you think the house smells like?"
My father is crazy. I have independent, non-familial verification of this. It's hard to know crazy when that's what you grew up with.
My brother, who is a year younger and about a decade smarter, has been a savior to me as I struggle to deal with a deteriorating parent. When I complain to him or share with him the latest "Pop-isms" he totally gets it. And now he gets it even more: we moved Pop back to his home in northeastern Pennsylvania, and my brother and his wife moved back to the area to be close to him and help out.
Whomever spends the most time with my father eventually ends up on the shit list. When he lived in Texas near me, I was on it. For a long, long time. But now he's moved back, and it's my brother's turn. I'm now A-list material and can be safely loved (and manipulated) at a distance.
My father's deteriorating mental condition expresses itself in grandiose ideas that are almost immediately forgotten and repeated several times in any given conversation. The current one, which is on heavy rotation, involves me finding "a Mexican lady, in her '50's, preferably a widow, who owns her own house, but who wants to leave it to move to Pennsylvania" to live with my father and take care of him 24x7. Room and board would be, of course, provided. She must know how to drive and be willing to haul him around, should he ever actually want to leave his recliner. He has clearly thought this out very carefully. He even shared that while he wasn't looking for any romance, he would be willing to get some Viagra. Good.to.know.
My brother has fallen in to the trap of trying to reason with him. I, probably none too helpfully, pointed out that we are beyond reason. Our father has devolved into a toddler, complete with diapers and temper tantrums. If you haven't experienced parenting a toddler, they are like terrorists. And you never negotiate with a terrorist. Only in this case, instead of growing out of his terrible two's...err...80's...he is going to continue to devolve.
It's very hard to watch. I can't imagine what it is like to experience.
My father was a large, robust, ebullient and highly narcissistic man, with huge appetites. He was a functional drunk who was lucky to have a good job as a mechanic at the local Proctor and Gamble paper mill. Today, looking back, he recounts all he is thankful for: Six good dogs, never worked a job he didn't like, a good wife, and two good children. Note the order.
When we were in the process of moving him from the assisted living home in Texas to a (brief) respite with my cousin in Oklahoma, I was in the process of packing up his things. I found a small notebook in which he jotted things he wanted to remember. Page after page of the same notes, in increasingly erratic handwriting. This is what it looks like when a mind is failing, I thought.
My father is the most profane person I have ever met. It is not that he curses, which he does with alarming frequency, but that he's descriptive and pointed with his epitaths.
"It's as easy as pushing a drunk whore off a piss pot."
"She couldn't find her own cunt between her legs," said of one of the women taking care of him. In her presence. She quit.
"Goddamn the Goddamn," which we have argued is actually a double negative and therefore not violating the Commandment of taking the Lord's name in vain.
I resemble my mother, or so I am told. Some of her features, yes. But more of her mannerisms. Some of which I am conscious of. Others not. But enough to elicit the "you are so much like your mother!" hum drum. The curious thing is that those who know me and my father also venture that I am more like my father (in character) than like my mother. For someone who spent a better part of her life hating her father, this is quite unsettling. And, yet, I can own this. I'm creative, I have my emotional ups and downs. I am a very good story teller.
My father is lucky. He saved enough during the course of his life that he can afford to pay for women to work in his house, 24/7, to tend to his every need. A sorry substitute for my mother who babied him all of their years together.
While staying in Texas, my father got a pacemaker. He'd been having bouts of passing out, so Medicare had allowed for a nurse to visit him daily to check his vitals. One morning, while the nurse, my husband (an Emergency Room doctor), and a handyman were there, he collapsed. I was out of town on a business trip. Got the call from my husband: Pop on his way to the hospital, roaring about his need to make a bowel moment, and that the EMT's in the ambulance wouldn't let him. So much of his life is defined by the regularity of his bowels.
He got excellent care. His heartrate was 20 when he entered the hospital. Hence the collapsing. But being a bull of a man, he was able to muscle through. A simple surgery to place a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat and, well, he is going to outlive all of us. Only the good die young.
So he suffered through a stint in rehabilitation and then I put him in assisted living. He's six foot and 350 pounds. Cantankerous, impossible to please. I'd run myself ragged trying to take care of him and desperately needed a break.
He absolutely hated assisted living. He didn't see that he was as physically and mentally decrepit as the majority of the residents. He referred to it as the "insane asylum" and began calling friends and family complaining that he was being kept against his will.
And then he started telling those same friends and family that he was going to kill himself. He's made this threat before, back when he was in Pennsylvania, living by himself. My dear cousin, Doug, advised him that if he was doing to "blow his fucking brains out," that he should do it outside, as to minimize the mess. I love Doug.
I got a panicked call from his older sister, my dear aunt Rosella. She was completely freaked out that he was going to kill himself. He wasn't. I knew it. He knew it. But I finally decided to declare bullshit and call his hand. So, I told the administration of the assisted living center that he was suicidal.
And the process kicked in.
He got put on a 24 hour watch: someone in his room for 24 hours a day. And a mandatory psych evaluation. Except, given my father's crazy luck, the psychiatrist scheduled to do the eval wasn't in town. And so there was a scramble to find someone to talk to him.
The psychiatrist who was available spoke to him for one hour. My father is a fox...cagey enough that he can pull his shit together when necessary. But even with that effort, the psych opinioned that my father was probably bi-polar and had been self medicating with alcohol most of his life. I guess it's nice to have confirmation of what one experienced and to have words to describe it. It makes me sad to think about the life he, we, could have had if he'd been properly diagnosed and treated.
So...fast forward...evac from Texas, short-lived stay with my cousin in Oklahoma, where he rapidly outlived his welcome, treating (verbally abusing) my cousin's wife just as he had done my mother. My cousin called me and in no short terms told me I had to get Pop out of his fucking house.
Which I did.
And now he's back in Pennsylvania and has been there for sometime. With my poor Shit List brother, trying his damnedest to take care of him. There is no win here. Nothing my brother (or anyone) can do will make him happy. We can't make him young again. Can't bring our mother back to life. Can't provide a dog to make him happy (too much effort). Can't fix his body so he can roam and drink and cavort as he did.
I feel helpless. And guilty. Because I am in Texas and my brother is bearing the brunt.
And all I can think is: Please, God, don't ever let me do this to my children. Please don't ever let me become this pathetic, this dependent, this unappreciative. And, yet, in the game of life we don't have control of the hand we're dealt, whether one of those cards is the club of dementia. Or some other mentally or physically debilitating suite.
"Gee, I don't know, Pop," I reply. "There's a gallon milk jug half full of piss sitting next to your recliner. What do you think the house smells like?"
My father is crazy. I have independent, non-familial verification of this. It's hard to know crazy when that's what you grew up with.
My brother, who is a year younger and about a decade smarter, has been a savior to me as I struggle to deal with a deteriorating parent. When I complain to him or share with him the latest "Pop-isms" he totally gets it. And now he gets it even more: we moved Pop back to his home in northeastern Pennsylvania, and my brother and his wife moved back to the area to be close to him and help out.
Whomever spends the most time with my father eventually ends up on the shit list. When he lived in Texas near me, I was on it. For a long, long time. But now he's moved back, and it's my brother's turn. I'm now A-list material and can be safely loved (and manipulated) at a distance.
My father's deteriorating mental condition expresses itself in grandiose ideas that are almost immediately forgotten and repeated several times in any given conversation. The current one, which is on heavy rotation, involves me finding "a Mexican lady, in her '50's, preferably a widow, who owns her own house, but who wants to leave it to move to Pennsylvania" to live with my father and take care of him 24x7. Room and board would be, of course, provided. She must know how to drive and be willing to haul him around, should he ever actually want to leave his recliner. He has clearly thought this out very carefully. He even shared that while he wasn't looking for any romance, he would be willing to get some Viagra. Good.to.know.
My brother has fallen in to the trap of trying to reason with him. I, probably none too helpfully, pointed out that we are beyond reason. Our father has devolved into a toddler, complete with diapers and temper tantrums. If you haven't experienced parenting a toddler, they are like terrorists. And you never negotiate with a terrorist. Only in this case, instead of growing out of his terrible two's...err...80's...he is going to continue to devolve.
It's very hard to watch. I can't imagine what it is like to experience.
My father was a large, robust, ebullient and highly narcissistic man, with huge appetites. He was a functional drunk who was lucky to have a good job as a mechanic at the local Proctor and Gamble paper mill. Today, looking back, he recounts all he is thankful for: Six good dogs, never worked a job he didn't like, a good wife, and two good children. Note the order.
When we were in the process of moving him from the assisted living home in Texas to a (brief) respite with my cousin in Oklahoma, I was in the process of packing up his things. I found a small notebook in which he jotted things he wanted to remember. Page after page of the same notes, in increasingly erratic handwriting. This is what it looks like when a mind is failing, I thought.
My father is the most profane person I have ever met. It is not that he curses, which he does with alarming frequency, but that he's descriptive and pointed with his epitaths.
"It's as easy as pushing a drunk whore off a piss pot."
"She couldn't find her own cunt between her legs," said of one of the women taking care of him. In her presence. She quit.
"Goddamn the Goddamn," which we have argued is actually a double negative and therefore not violating the Commandment of taking the Lord's name in vain.
I resemble my mother, or so I am told. Some of her features, yes. But more of her mannerisms. Some of which I am conscious of. Others not. But enough to elicit the "you are so much like your mother!" hum drum. The curious thing is that those who know me and my father also venture that I am more like my father (in character) than like my mother. For someone who spent a better part of her life hating her father, this is quite unsettling. And, yet, I can own this. I'm creative, I have my emotional ups and downs. I am a very good story teller.
My father is lucky. He saved enough during the course of his life that he can afford to pay for women to work in his house, 24/7, to tend to his every need. A sorry substitute for my mother who babied him all of their years together.
While staying in Texas, my father got a pacemaker. He'd been having bouts of passing out, so Medicare had allowed for a nurse to visit him daily to check his vitals. One morning, while the nurse, my husband (an Emergency Room doctor), and a handyman were there, he collapsed. I was out of town on a business trip. Got the call from my husband: Pop on his way to the hospital, roaring about his need to make a bowel moment, and that the EMT's in the ambulance wouldn't let him. So much of his life is defined by the regularity of his bowels.
He got excellent care. His heartrate was 20 when he entered the hospital. Hence the collapsing. But being a bull of a man, he was able to muscle through. A simple surgery to place a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat and, well, he is going to outlive all of us. Only the good die young.
So he suffered through a stint in rehabilitation and then I put him in assisted living. He's six foot and 350 pounds. Cantankerous, impossible to please. I'd run myself ragged trying to take care of him and desperately needed a break.
He absolutely hated assisted living. He didn't see that he was as physically and mentally decrepit as the majority of the residents. He referred to it as the "insane asylum" and began calling friends and family complaining that he was being kept against his will.
And then he started telling those same friends and family that he was going to kill himself. He's made this threat before, back when he was in Pennsylvania, living by himself. My dear cousin, Doug, advised him that if he was doing to "blow his fucking brains out," that he should do it outside, as to minimize the mess. I love Doug.
I got a panicked call from his older sister, my dear aunt Rosella. She was completely freaked out that he was going to kill himself. He wasn't. I knew it. He knew it. But I finally decided to declare bullshit and call his hand. So, I told the administration of the assisted living center that he was suicidal.
And the process kicked in.
He got put on a 24 hour watch: someone in his room for 24 hours a day. And a mandatory psych evaluation. Except, given my father's crazy luck, the psychiatrist scheduled to do the eval wasn't in town. And so there was a scramble to find someone to talk to him.
The psychiatrist who was available spoke to him for one hour. My father is a fox...cagey enough that he can pull his shit together when necessary. But even with that effort, the psych opinioned that my father was probably bi-polar and had been self medicating with alcohol most of his life. I guess it's nice to have confirmation of what one experienced and to have words to describe it. It makes me sad to think about the life he, we, could have had if he'd been properly diagnosed and treated.
So...fast forward...evac from Texas, short-lived stay with my cousin in Oklahoma, where he rapidly outlived his welcome, treating (verbally abusing) my cousin's wife just as he had done my mother. My cousin called me and in no short terms told me I had to get Pop out of his fucking house.
Which I did.
And now he's back in Pennsylvania and has been there for sometime. With my poor Shit List brother, trying his damnedest to take care of him. There is no win here. Nothing my brother (or anyone) can do will make him happy. We can't make him young again. Can't bring our mother back to life. Can't provide a dog to make him happy (too much effort). Can't fix his body so he can roam and drink and cavort as he did.
I feel helpless. And guilty. Because I am in Texas and my brother is bearing the brunt.
And all I can think is: Please, God, don't ever let me do this to my children. Please don't ever let me become this pathetic, this dependent, this unappreciative. And, yet, in the game of life we don't have control of the hand we're dealt, whether one of those cards is the club of dementia. Or some other mentally or physically debilitating suite.
