Over the last year, Lana and I have occasionally shared our
trials as members of the sandwich generation:
raising kids and managing parents who are slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s
and dementia. As one of the seminal movies of our generation pointed out,
reality bites. But even when it does, it can be damned funny. Lana graciously
set up this blog so we could engage in some cheap therapy by sharing our
experiences with the world. Or the internet. Or whoever wants to read.
A little background. When I was in my early 20s, my
grandmother was diagnosed with dementia. My dad made a number of rescue trips
to Arizona to bring her home to Montana, until she ultimately ended up living
with my parents, then living with her sister, then living with my parents
again, then living in a rest home, and then dying at 91. We weren’t close. In
fact, her visits, from my perspective, were usually about preventing anything
that would make my mother lose her usually well collected shit. Probably didn’t
help that the two of them didn’t like each other. But that’s another story.
My dad, well, he’s always been my dad. Not so forthcoming on
the advice front, taught me how to use tools, took me to class with him when I
was small and he was teaching, made it explicit that there are no girl jobs and
boy jobs. Took me to get birth control when I was going off to college. Took me
for task for things my then-college-aged friends did when I wasn’t around (do
NOT let your friends take a class called Drugs, Communication and Society from
your father). Stopped speaking to me after I bought my first house and didn’t
want to wait for his schedule to move things in, until I got hit by a truck. Saw
me through some very devastating times. Sat with my Mom when she died.
And, not long after, he became a whirling ball of anxiety. When
my sister and I finally confronted him several years ago, he was scoffing at us
in a conversation with our brother about how L and I were mother-henning him,
me shouting at my nephew to take my daughter out of the house before stuff got
real. It took my brother coming out to
see us to get him to go to a neurologist to get a formal diagnosis to get him
to accept that he has dementia. Or not. Depends on the day.
Which gets us to here, more or less. I moved back to Montana
to be with him about a year ago, after deciding that I’d had enough of
corporate America driving me nuts and it becoming clear that he needed someone
with him. Really, after he thought he called my sister and asked me “what are
we going to do about Linda?”
While there will be a good measure of anger in my posts, the
point of posting is to get the anger out. To look at it from an objective
place, and, to hopefully let my dry, dark sense of humor wrap itself around the
moment and give it a lively kick in the ass.
People keep telling me how patient I am, vis a vis Dad. I’m
not – I’m really not. I’ve just gotten used to the fact that there’s no point
in arguing with someone who’s not going to remember the outcome of the argument
15 minutes later and will re-argue the same point again. And again. And again.
There is no winning. There is redirecting and reframing. And it’s fricking
exhausting.
Oh, and did I mention that I have a 10 year old daughter,
who is my sun, moon, and stars? And also thinks she has a priori rights to my
attention when ever it strikes her fancy? As does a certain 80 year old in the
house?
Welcome to my playground.
Perfect!
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