some father's day musings
Jun. 17th, 2018 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaBack in late January, I posted (among other things):
I'd intended to write more about this, but never got around to it. I guess Father's Day is an appropriate time to reflect on this experience.
I am the oldest of three children, and the only girl. You could say I was the stereotypical "daddy's girl", though my father was not a stereotypical dad. He was a nerdy NASA physicist who taught me to read at a very young age, who never doubted I was as smart and could do as much as any man, who had no ability at small talk and so all our dinner conversation was about the news and religion and philosophy and science. In some ways I was his favorite, and although I loved my mother, my father was my favorite, too. (My middle brother was always easier with our mother, and my youngest brother seemed to please and exasperate them equally, so it was a sort of division of labor!)
My father and I had had differences of opinion over the years. Not fights, exactly - my family doesn't fight - but angry sulking disagreements. When I bought a motorcycle. When I moved in with a boyfriend. When I quit graduate school. When I broke up with my boyfriend (who they liked) and moved in with my new boyfriend (who they hadn't met; who I married; who they quickly came to adore). When my husband and I quit our jobs and bought a sailboat. I have lived ~2000 miles from my parents for almost 30 years, far enough away that we see each other only every few years.
And yet caring for my dad - taking him to the emergency room at 3am, watching over him to make sure he didn't try to get out of bed, emptying his urinal, wiping his bottom as he asked, confusedly, why he had made a mess in the bed, patiently explaining for the seventh time that day that he'd had a cerebral hemorrhage and that's why he couldn't remember anything, sleeping in the armchair in his hospital room, convincing him to take his medication when he accused the nurse of trying to drug him, getting blankets for him when he was cold, assuring him that Mom would be there soon and we all loved him - brought home to me the truth that on some level I love him more than anything or anyone. I fought with the nurses when I felt they weren't doing what he needed them to do. I got angry with my mother when I thought she was being selfish and not putting his needs first. I hung up on my husband when he suggested that I didn't really need to be there. I took two weeks of vacation on top of my two weeks of family sick leave. In my spare moments I tried to unravel my parents' finances (Dad had done everything, and now everything had been left undone) and made endless phone calls trying to arrange full-time home care until we could move them into assisted living.
I basically went full-on momma bear, protecting my dad, and I guess if I had had children I would have understood that instinct, but the fierceness of my feelings took me completely by surprise. I hated doing all the things I had to do - I felt completely out of my depth - but I also felt as though it was completely natural and right that I do them, that there was no question that of course I would do them. I mean, I wasn't doing everything on my own; my brother was helping a lot, and spent a lot of time at the house, hospitals, and rehab center, but he had had to go back to work. His wife did an amazing job of researching assisted living centers near them, and also helped a great deal.
In fact, working so closely with my youngest brother changed our relationship quite a bit. I'd always been closer to my middle brother, as we're closer in age and in interests. (He would have come out to help, but couldn't take off work. He did come out when we eventually moved our parents into assisted living, a month after Dad got out of the rehab center, and the three of us kids had a really wonderful time together.) I pretty much only talked to my youngest brother when he called me for my birthday once a year. I didn't feel we had much in common. But working together to help our parents made me see him differently, and we really bonded over the craziness of it all. On New Year's Eve we bought a bottle of bubbly and after an early toast with Mom - Dad was in the rehab center - we went to Dad's computer and spent the night looking at old family photos that Dad had scanned in, laughing our asses off at our younger selves.
So it was a stressful, horrible, crazy, sleepless time. But there were good things I took away from it, and I'm grateful for the lessons I learned about family and love, even if it was not much fun to learn them.
The story, by the way, has a happy ending. Dad began to improve after he got home, sleeping a little less, eating a little more, and becoming more engaged and "present". I think this was partly due to being in a familiar environment with his wife, and partly due to having a live-in CNA to help him, along with in-home physical and occupational therapy. A month later we moved them into an assisted living facility that's actually only walking distance from my youngest brother's house. It was tough at first, and they're still not completely comfortable, but it is the right place for them right now, and Dad's continuing to get better. He was in a wheelchair when we moved him there; now it sits in the closet, and he gets around with a cane. His cognition and short-term memory are much stronger, though he still doesn't remember much about what happened last winter, and maybe that's a good thing. Last month the facility dropped him down a tier in their "levels of care" rubric, because he doesn't need the assistance he needed when he arrived. He's reading again, and using his computer again, and when I called today for Father's Day - and I just realized it's exactly six months after he had the cerebral hemorrhage - he sounded nearly like his old self again, talking about politics and science and asking questions about the things I'm doing.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, well, a bunch of platitudes about love being the strongest and most important thing, and about rising to the occasion and doing what's necessary, even when you don't think you can, and about how it doesn't feel like sacrifice when it's for someone you care about, or at least most of the time it doesn't. It sounds kind of silly, I guess. But it turns out to be true. All of it.
[After a weekend of skiing and mountain biking in mid-December, we] got home, put away our gear, showered, and sat down to dinner...and my phone rang. It was my youngest brother, telling me that my father was in the hospital, having just suffered a cerebral hemorrhage...and my mother was due to return from the nursing rehab center [where she'd been after hospitalization for a bad fall two weeks earlier] the next day! He and his family live fairly close to our parents, and they'd been helping out while Mom had been in the nursing center, but having simultaneous health crises with both parents was a bit much to cope with.
And so I flew out to Maryland on a one-way ticket the next day, after spending the morning on the phone with my brother, checking flight schedules online, and emailing my (extremely understanding) boss. Four incredibly difficult but rewarding weeks later, after getting the situation more or less stabilized, I finally came back home.
I'd intended to write more about this, but never got around to it. I guess Father's Day is an appropriate time to reflect on this experience.
I am the oldest of three children, and the only girl. You could say I was the stereotypical "daddy's girl", though my father was not a stereotypical dad. He was a nerdy NASA physicist who taught me to read at a very young age, who never doubted I was as smart and could do as much as any man, who had no ability at small talk and so all our dinner conversation was about the news and religion and philosophy and science. In some ways I was his favorite, and although I loved my mother, my father was my favorite, too. (My middle brother was always easier with our mother, and my youngest brother seemed to please and exasperate them equally, so it was a sort of division of labor!)
My father and I had had differences of opinion over the years. Not fights, exactly - my family doesn't fight - but angry sulking disagreements. When I bought a motorcycle. When I moved in with a boyfriend. When I quit graduate school. When I broke up with my boyfriend (who they liked) and moved in with my new boyfriend (who they hadn't met; who I married; who they quickly came to adore). When my husband and I quit our jobs and bought a sailboat. I have lived ~2000 miles from my parents for almost 30 years, far enough away that we see each other only every few years.
And yet caring for my dad - taking him to the emergency room at 3am, watching over him to make sure he didn't try to get out of bed, emptying his urinal, wiping his bottom as he asked, confusedly, why he had made a mess in the bed, patiently explaining for the seventh time that day that he'd had a cerebral hemorrhage and that's why he couldn't remember anything, sleeping in the armchair in his hospital room, convincing him to take his medication when he accused the nurse of trying to drug him, getting blankets for him when he was cold, assuring him that Mom would be there soon and we all loved him - brought home to me the truth that on some level I love him more than anything or anyone. I fought with the nurses when I felt they weren't doing what he needed them to do. I got angry with my mother when I thought she was being selfish and not putting his needs first. I hung up on my husband when he suggested that I didn't really need to be there. I took two weeks of vacation on top of my two weeks of family sick leave. In my spare moments I tried to unravel my parents' finances (Dad had done everything, and now everything had been left undone) and made endless phone calls trying to arrange full-time home care until we could move them into assisted living.
I basically went full-on momma bear, protecting my dad, and I guess if I had had children I would have understood that instinct, but the fierceness of my feelings took me completely by surprise. I hated doing all the things I had to do - I felt completely out of my depth - but I also felt as though it was completely natural and right that I do them, that there was no question that of course I would do them. I mean, I wasn't doing everything on my own; my brother was helping a lot, and spent a lot of time at the house, hospitals, and rehab center, but he had had to go back to work. His wife did an amazing job of researching assisted living centers near them, and also helped a great deal.
In fact, working so closely with my youngest brother changed our relationship quite a bit. I'd always been closer to my middle brother, as we're closer in age and in interests. (He would have come out to help, but couldn't take off work. He did come out when we eventually moved our parents into assisted living, a month after Dad got out of the rehab center, and the three of us kids had a really wonderful time together.) I pretty much only talked to my youngest brother when he called me for my birthday once a year. I didn't feel we had much in common. But working together to help our parents made me see him differently, and we really bonded over the craziness of it all. On New Year's Eve we bought a bottle of bubbly and after an early toast with Mom - Dad was in the rehab center - we went to Dad's computer and spent the night looking at old family photos that Dad had scanned in, laughing our asses off at our younger selves.
So it was a stressful, horrible, crazy, sleepless time. But there were good things I took away from it, and I'm grateful for the lessons I learned about family and love, even if it was not much fun to learn them.
The story, by the way, has a happy ending. Dad began to improve after he got home, sleeping a little less, eating a little more, and becoming more engaged and "present". I think this was partly due to being in a familiar environment with his wife, and partly due to having a live-in CNA to help him, along with in-home physical and occupational therapy. A month later we moved them into an assisted living facility that's actually only walking distance from my youngest brother's house. It was tough at first, and they're still not completely comfortable, but it is the right place for them right now, and Dad's continuing to get better. He was in a wheelchair when we moved him there; now it sits in the closet, and he gets around with a cane. His cognition and short-term memory are much stronger, though he still doesn't remember much about what happened last winter, and maybe that's a good thing. Last month the facility dropped him down a tier in their "levels of care" rubric, because he doesn't need the assistance he needed when he arrived. He's reading again, and using his computer again, and when I called today for Father's Day - and I just realized it's exactly six months after he had the cerebral hemorrhage - he sounded nearly like his old self again, talking about politics and science and asking questions about the things I'm doing.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, well, a bunch of platitudes about love being the strongest and most important thing, and about rising to the occasion and doing what's necessary, even when you don't think you can, and about how it doesn't feel like sacrifice when it's for someone you care about, or at least most of the time it doesn't. It sounds kind of silly, I guess. But it turns out to be true. All of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-17 11:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-18 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-18 12:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-18 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-19 05:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-19 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-25 07:29 am (UTC)Anyways, again, it's good to hear it turned out so relatively well, and so nice your relationship with your brothers was stregthened, not worsened during :)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-25 07:14 pm (UTC)But yeah, it would be harder for me to take care of my mother in the same way. I was out there helping her out for the first weeks, and after a while I found I had to remind myself "this is for HER, not for YOU. She needs you to do these things, so do them and shut your mouth." And after a while I just exploded, and then I had to apologize. It's not that I don't love her, it's that I get irritated with her faster than I get irritated with my father (just as I get irritated with my younger brother faster than I get irritated with my middle brother).
(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-07 08:09 pm (UTC)It means fewer visits a year for my mom, but I started timing my visits with my sister, as it's much easier for me not to get irritated when there's two of us - and I think it's much more pleasant for my mom as well :) !
(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-25 12:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-25 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-25 11:48 pm (UTC)I have one parent left who lives on his own nearly 1000 miles from here. My sister lives in Alaska, so I know who will need to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.
I'm glad things reached a reasonable state of repose in your case.
Thanks for sharing. The things I didn't already know did not surprise in any way.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-06-26 04:31 pm (UTC)