Parenting the Parent

Where do I start on this topic?

I was going to do a post on the political options for this election year.  Attempt to make it as neutral as possible by posting facts and stances of each candidate on various topics/issues, especially since I am truly terrified of the state of things in the U.S. as they currently stand.  I even printed off my passport renewal application in case November reveals something that I feel is truly bad for my future in this country.

But that has all been eclipsed by a topic that I have been mulling over for a couple of months now.  A topic that has greatly impacted me.  And one that continues to impact me and has revealed some issues with a system that should not have issues this glaringly big.

How do you prepare yourself to become the parent of your parent?  How do you sit down with your parent(s) and discuss the state of affairs as it pertains to them?  How to you adult your parents?  These are not things we as a society seem to openly discuss.  They are taboo subjects.  We are raised to respect our “elders”, including our parents.  But what happens when your parent(s) is no longer able to care for him or herself?  What if they are degenerating before your eyes?  What does all my schooling and life experience prepare me in how to handle this?  It does not.  At all.  I can read all the anecdotal experiences I want.  I can discuss with friends all I want.  But where out there are the how-tos on helping your parents?

It is even harder when you live 1,000+ miles from home.  So you only hear what is going on versus seeing it first hand.  Based on phone conversations, you have a feeling that things are going downhill.  When other family members, both within the primary family unit and extended family unit call you expressing their concern for the state of a parent’s mental health, how do you respond to that?

Through inquiries of all these people, you get your parent’s doctor’s info.  You speak to the nurse and express your concerns and request they test your parent for specific things to determine and/or eliminate possible issues.  And you hope that it works.  You hope progress is made.  Since you live many states away, that is about all you feel you can do.  And you continue to speak to your parent(s) on the phone and hear no change.  Nothing is improving.  Hospital visits ensue.  Frustration builds from the healthy party to the degenerating party.  And you sit by 1000s of miles away.  Feeling that shit is falling in a massive hand basket and you keep doing what you can, based on your knowledge from your job and your love of your family.  But it just not seem to be enough.  How does life prepare you for this?

You go visit your parents.  Things are reaching a head from the stories you hear.  Intervention is needed.  And then you see it.  You see how bad the degeneration has become.  You see your parent and all you want to do is cry.  What was once a sharp, witty, intelligent man towering at 6’4” with a deep baritone voice and clean shaven has now been reduced to something you can only liken to a WWII Concentration Camp survivor.  Bones.  And skin.  Taut skin pulled over protruding bones.  Voice whispery and weak.  Face covered in facial hair.  A man who had never once even grown a mustache is now a scraggly mountain skeletal man who cannot walk upright and to walk around the house was considered the adventure of the day.  How does life prepare you for this?  How do you react to such a scene?  The man you call Father has become this- a shell.

And try as you might, happy as you are to see your parents, how to address this with your parents?  How do you adult your parents?  Tell them how to make their life better?  There is nothing in my life experience that has prepared me for this.  Thoughts run through your head.  You realise that you must go in “Cop Mode” with your parents.  You must distance yourself to have this conversation in order to try to get your point across.

Have you ever had to ask your parent if they wanted to die?  If they were giving up on life?  I have.  Nothing in life ever prepared me for that conversation.  And you so very want to believe them when they say they are not giving up.  You point out to them the consequences of their continued actions --> death.  And somehow, your parent does not seem to understand it.  Do you believe your parent even though his actions speak otherwise?  Do you know what it is like discussing death with your parent who is quickly veering toward that path and result?

Do you know what it is like to watch one parent waste away and the other slowly being driven closer to a mental break and/or death as a result of the stress of caring for their spouse, working a self-owned business full time (doing the work of both parents) AND caring for a house and large dog?  Life has not prepared me for this.  As a result of my job and the responsibilities and experiences I have had with it, you are now delegated by the rest of the family to address the problem and come up with solutions to it…from multiple states away.   I am glad I know a pathway to help, but I cannot force someone not willing to improve his own situation to do it.

All this day, I have spend attempting to be a responsible working adult, while in the background knowing my father is dying.  I sit and cry.  I do not know what to do.  I am tired of being strong and distant.  I feel for my parents.  Both of them.  And the terrible situation they are both in.  I attempted to take the helm last week during my visit.  I saw a glimmer of the father I know in there.  But it was so fleeting.  Talking to one of his doctors over his head as if he was not there.  Seeing my father unable to lift up a mostly empty gallon jug of milk.  Unable to even remove the snap top.  Stopping to take a rest while walking the 100 or so steps into the doctor’s office.  Getting him to agree to an MRI and other tests to help determine what is wrong with him…only to refuse to comply after I left for home.

How does a child do this?  The last words my father told me in person as I was leaving to go home to my home state: “You must come back.  Make me your project.  I need help.”  How do you respond to that?  I now feel compelled to leave my life here.  The life I have made and love so much and cherish and move back to where my parents are.  To help my father.  To force him to be well again.  Is that the only way he will get better?  I give up my life for his?  Is that selfish of me to think?  Do we children make those sacrifices?  If I did that, would I then resent him?  Become bitter and unhelpful after a while?  Fuck.  I love living here.  I am so very torn.

To get regular messages from your well parent advising they are at the hospital for the multiple times in the month.  To explain how to use key phrases such as “mental hold” and “gravely disabled” to the E.R. staff, only to be shunted away and told to just improve his diet and exercise.  No shit!  Don’t you think we have been trying that?!!  To be told mental holds only work if the patient is homicidal or suicidal.  Well, look at him!  Does starving to death, over and under-dosing medications…because he cannot remember if he took them or not, not count as unable to provide for oneself?

Do you know what it is like to contact the police department in your home town asking for resources on doing an involuntary mental hold?  Have you ever called Social Services to file a vulnerable adult claim against your own parent?  I have.  Today.  To be asked questions about your parent’s inabilitiy to care for himself.  To explain everything your mother has done to help and address the problems.  That your mother is afraid to go care for her 100yr old mother a few states away because she thinks her husband may die and cause the dog to also die since the husband forgets to feed it when she is gone?  Do you know what it is like to break down to tears while on the phone with your father’s primary care physician’s nurse explaining all you have done to try to get help and every avenue is a dead end?  I have. Today.  To find out his primary care physician also filed a vulnerable adult claim the same day, independent of talking with me.

Oh life.  This is not the direction I thought you would take with regards to my parents.  I will shoulder this burden.  I will take and have taken much for my mother.  I do what I can to help.  But shame on you Emergency Services at the hospital where my dad was taken.  Shame on you for passing him and my mother off and not truly listening and looking at the situation.  I have much respect for the medical profession.  But yesterday, you failed us.  And shame on you.

I will continue to try to get the help my father needs, even if it drives me into massive debt.  That is what I can offer.  My knowledge and experience with these very situations in life.  I keep thinking back to a mental hold call I assisted on at work years ago.  A person who looked very similar to how my father does now.  But she did not have family to look after her.  To notice she had not moved from her chair in months.  To see all the soiled diapers strewn about the home.  To see the dead dogs laying about rotting in the home from neglect.  To see her pelvis bones protruding from her bottom from all the weight lost and pressure placed on them.  To see her skin rotting off from exposed bone mixed with human excrement.  This is what I think of when I picture my father in the future if my mom was not around.  I told my father this.  I told him if I encountered him at work I would have had him taken on a hold.  That is not an easy thing to say.  And to have your father innocently ask why?  He asked why!!  He did not and does not understand what he is doing to himself.  Oh Father.

If you are reading this Father:
I am sorry for this.  But not sorry enough to stop.  If you truly wish to die, come with me to Oregon.  We will figure it out.  But if you do not, then please, please please, let us get you help.  I love you.  We have not always seen eye to eye.  But I love you.  You are the only father I have.  And it hurts so very much to see you this way.  To see you waste away to what you are becoming and have become.  Please come back.  I love you.

I would rather deal with vicious dogs running at me. With ignorant and angry and abusive reporting parties. With suspects who lie to me and threaten me. With assisting on a search warrant or arrest warrant.  Interviewing witnesses and familiy to an injury situation. These are things I can do. These are things I would rather do. Than doing them involving my own family. Put me in danger. Put me at risk. Put me on the court stand to testify.I know what to do then. But this? This is under my purview of understanding what actions to take. But now, now it involves the why. And that is a question I cannot answer, yet burns a hole within me.

And now.  I am done crying for the day.  I cannot speak these feelings aloud.  I am not good at expressing my true emotions verbally.  This is my medium.  I cannot even tell this to my UMC.  Every time I get the courage to tell him, I am so happy being in his presence that I do not want to ruin it with feelings and depressing thoughts.  So this is also for you.  This is how I can tell you why my resting bitch face looks so angry lately.  Sorry.  And now.  I am done.  No more crying today.  Back to my compartmentalized self.