Light Stuff
With BlogHer ‘14 looming, I decided to have business cards made up. Minimum order was 100, so damn if I know what I’m going to do with the other 98 of these bastards come next month, but I am enjoying how they turned out:
“They’re pretty crass. You OK with that?” My husband asked when he saw them, tone half-way between eyebrow-raised amusement and mental-health-professional check-in. “I mean, you’ll have to hand them to an actual person. Who you might want to impress.”
I love them. I’m uncomfortable as hell about it. Now the only thing to do is to go to BlogHer and face down my two biggest fears. 1) I won’t talk to anyone. 2) I’ll have to talk to someone.
Darker Stuff
Thank you for the insight concerning day care for my dad, and my mom’s reaction to it. It never ceases to amaze me that third-person insight can cast light that is impossible to create on my own. I have spoken to my mom since, but she seems to still be of the same mind-set as before.
Another part of what happened when I saw my parents was that my dad has gotten mean.
I mentioned the big blow out in passing last post: During Middle’s hospital stay, my parents and I were tag teaming visits to the hospital and childcare for Middle’s two-year-old. During that time, my phone died. Because my parents both had phones, my mom offered to give my Dad’s, so each team would have a phone.
Truth: This was a logical solution.
Truth: There are a lot of things my dad can’t do anymore, but he forgets he can’t do, so he gets angry when people act like he can’t do them. One of these things is using a phone. Another is driving a car. A third is operate things like baby gates.
Truth: My dad seems to read the emotional content of situations perfectly, even if they are filtered through demented thought process. My mom and I had the phone discussion right in front of him, with both of us understanding Dad’s phone was useless to him.
My dad was PISSED OFF. Rightly so, I’m guessing. I mean, we treated him like he was less than equal — a child with no say-so over his own possessions, or a piece of furniture, or well, like a demented person.
(Here’s where I have problems processing, because treating my dad less than equal seems ghastly cruel. He is still a human being. He is used to pitching in and being a valuable team player.
But when Mom treats him like an equal/rational adult, Dad will problem-solve things with solutions like, ‘Well, I’ll drive down there and do that’ which is not a solution at all, because he can’t drive, or run an errand on his own. Mom then has to hem and haw about why that solution (which would totally work if Dad was still his old self) won’t work, and Dad gets irate because if you buy into the lie that he’s still a functional adult, his solution is sound. To me, it feels all kinds of gross, perpetuating his dementia somehow, when the conversation takes on a weird dimension which is not based on reality.)
Anyway, when Dad called me and Mom out, I immediately started bawling. My dad, who taught me everything about being a good person, and I had slipped right into treating him like he was barely even there. It was so easy, too!
That evening, after I’d had a chance to think things through, I broached the topic again, saying, “You know, we had that fight this morning and…”
Before I could finish, this triumphant/angry smile lit up his face and he pronounced, “And YOU lost,” in a tone suggesting he was putting me in my place.
I was so shocked. My father has always been smarter/more powerful than me. Never in my whole life has he used a tone to lord a win over me, like some smug victory. In many respects, he was a harsh, perfectionistic, demanding parent, but his motives were always clear-cut — to lift me up into a better state of personhood, never to push me down.
My sister, Middle, is something of a brain specialist. She can explain in vivid detail the pathways in the brain affected by Dad’s dementia, and why personality changes are a function of vascular deterioration in different parts of his cortex – that his behavior is nothing more than the lights going out in the cityscape of his mind.
But I find myself wondering if his reaction was because maybe his life is all about being wrong now – the landslide of negative reactions from people, the confusion in their faces when he tries to express himself, the off-kilter feedback that lets him know he’s not smart anymore, he’s not really who he was. Maybe the way he tried to make me feel – small and wrong – is a cry in the dark, and expression of how he feels all the time.
Or at least, the way I made him feel when I took his phone.
I hope it isn’t too soon to mention this, but dementia patients often qualify for hospice care. Your mom might be able to get some people coming to the house to help care for your dad, and in addition a volunteer to spend some time with him so she can get out for a few hours. If it’s too soon, they’ll tell you.
It’s a hard subject to bring up, but you might ease your way into a conversation around it.
So, I know nothing at all about dementia and maybe there are good sound reasons why this is a bad idea – in which case listen to those.
But why not level with him about what’s going on, in those conversations? “No, Dad, you can’t drive to the store safely, that’s not going to work. Let’s find a different solution.” Maybe this will make him angry too – but maybe not continually trying to hide his deterioration from him is something he’s picking up on (as you say, his emotional literacy seems still there). He still gets to be a participant, he’s not furniture, but no one is going to pretend that everything is the way it used to be.
Then again, doing this calmly and over and over again may take more fortitude that it makes sense to expect from those in crisis like you & your mother. Honestly, at this point, surviving as best you can is really the only standard you should be holding yourself to. Do your best. Godspeed.
When I moved back in with my parents to “help,” I knew that it was going to be challenging … and that it was the beginning of the long slide into physical and mental descent. But, I was utterly unprepared for the anger and the venom.
Likewise, my dad is the sweetest person I know. He was the person, still is, who would give anyone the shirt of his back. But his anger at getting older and feeling less than is much more than I could have anticipated. Add to that the anger he is repressing because he is unwilling to openly grieve over the loss of my brother and sister, and it is just too much.
He said something utterly cruel to me the other day in anger. A few days later when I tried to talk to him calmly about it, I reminded him of those words. He denied having said them and was visibly hurt by the thought. Yeah, dad, just like that, that’s how I felt.
All this to say, it is beyond hard … and I feel for you and your mother and the rest of the family as you wrestle with seriously challenging issues.
A friend asked me this morning, do you think all of this will mean that we will be more thoughtful about our own aging? I really hope so …
Thoughts, no idea how helpful this might be. I may come back to this again when I have some more thoughts.
First off, massive, MASSIVE sympathy and empathy for you and your mum and your sister and everyone else involved in this – including your dad.
I have ZERO experience with dementia so if I say something especially stupid, I apologise.
My father in law doesn’t have dementia, but is very difficult to work with sometimes. There are things we can only tell my mother in law, from small to big, because he will get ridiculously angry or upset in very non-helpful ways. That includes sometimes decisions being made on how to deal with a small or big problem. So in that sense I understand.
I also understand it because I have children, and I wonder if that might be a useful analogy for you.
I know your dad’s not a child. I’m not saying it’s a 1:1 match. But kids can’t do everything, kids think they can do lots more than they can, things sometimes have to be discussed outside of a kid’s hearing because they’ll get unhelpfully upset or angry and/or because they *cannot* be part of the decisionmaking process.
Kids also don’t have the layers over the top of their emotions that adults grow (that work well sometimes, for some people, and not so well other times). The filters. The things that tell people “it’s not okay to lash out”. The things that tell people “take a deep breath before responding”. The things that tell people “let them explain before you go off your head”.
So maybe it’s a little helpful to see your dad like that. He’s got the same emotions underneath that he’s always had, it’s just that his filters aren’t working right, or aren’t *there* any more. He does want to hurt you when he says things like “and you lost” (which is awful! I gasped for you when I read that) but like a kid, like an adult under a filter, he doesn’t actually want you to go away crying and be upset about it forever. He just wants to score a point in retaliation and then move on.
I think this is all very hard, too. If you haven’t already, I think you should give yourself permission for not being able to find easy solutions, because I don’t think there are any.
Lots of good advice up above. I’ll just say that my heart hurts for what you’re going through. You are a good daughter.
On the light stuff side, you’re going to blogher?
I have done nothing to move forward any actual PLANS to go, but I’m in the Bay Area, so it sure feels like I OUGHT to.
Your business cards are perfect for BlogHer. You are hardly going to a PTA mom roundup or Junior League meeting.
Intense, energetic, and hilarious women are everywhere. You will fit right in.
Before I went, I got all weird about the laptop bag I would need to fit in, and I went so bonkers I started making one (from my own concept, without a pattern) right before the event and didn’t want to leave when it wasn’t finished.
Madness. The crazy.
Anyway, I left with my laptop in a regular backpack, and I made a friend in the hotel check in line who I still laugh with 8 years later.
At one junior high cafeteria remeniscent lunch, the had everyone gather at tables into blogger topic groups. The first ladies at the TWO TABLES labeled parenting beamed like prom royalty while they said “no more chairs,” effectively, “eff off peon!”
Another attendee and I noticed all the people scrambling to find other topics among the sea of unlabeled, available tables. She and I grabbed made a table tent (from crap in my backpack) that read “Everyone Welcome!!” We not only got every man in the room, we had so much fun talking (/roaring with laughter) that even the organizers commented on it. My impromptu co-conspirator is now a familiar voice in my online life.
Be open to the universe (unless it involves tattoos, because those ARE forever) and it will greet you.
Re: the phone. You were under stress, and you acted like a mom to someone who is not a child. It’s reflex, not systematic malice or indifference.
Your dad was hurt and angry. You will remember to take different approaches in the future. The only truly hurtful thing you can do here is sever the relationship permanently. Being in the game shows love and takes courage; believe nothing less.
Anne, the you who we meet here, will be fine at BlogHer. I will be cheering you on from parts Midwestern. Safe travels.
Anne, I for one thought the cards were adorable. Potty bear. I’m glad I got one at BLogHer!
Dementia. That is a tough one. I cared for my mom as she slipped away. In less than two weeks I will visit my brother who has dementia–possibly from diabetes, or metallosis from bullets and shrapnel left over from Vietnam, or agent orange from Vietnam. Personality changes are the hardest as it is difficult to think there isn’t some sort of rhyme or reason behind the behavior. But there isn’t… at least not all the time. It is so hard when it is a parent, but it can be even more personally unsettling when it is a sibling. An older generation is hard, the same generation is just plain scary.