In yesterday’s post, I mostly focused on martial arts. I want to set that aside for this post and contradict what I had said in yesterday’s post about not having any more goals for this upcoming year. This is going to be family-focused, and it probably isn’t going to be pretty. Because family isn’t pretty. At least not mine, especially not now.
My father has dementia, and it’s getting worse. He’s almost eighty-six years old, and his decline in the last six months has been rapid and alarming. I talk to him maybe once every other week or so, and we Zoom (with my mother) once in a long while. We did that a few days ago, and my father was clearly not having a good day. Usually, he can hold it together enough to talk to me–and he almost always remembers who I am–but this time, it was clear that his mind was wandering.
Dementia is a cruel and ugly disease. It strips the person of everything–especially if the person is…look. My father was self-centered and self-absorbed before he got dementia. It’s only gotten worse because that’s what dementia does to you. It makes you a toddler who can only think of themselves, and it seems to be worse in my father because of his proclivities prior to getting it.
In addition, it emphasizes the dysfunction that already exists in my family. My mother has devoted her life to my father, and now, she has a valid reason for doing it. But she also resents it at the same time, and she has some pretty rigid ideas as to what he should and shouldn’t be doing.
The problem is that she’s hoping against hope that he’ll return to ‘normal’, and she cannot accept that dementia only goes one way. She told me about a promising new medical study for early-onset dementia, and I could hear it in her vocie. She knew that my father was beyond that, and yet.
I don’t blame her for hoping, honestly. Most people hope for miracles when something really bad happens. It’s the fact that she pushes my father to do things because she wants him to get better, and the things she pushes him to do border on cruel. Like when we were talking on Zoom, he suddenly decided he had enough. He abruptly stood up and started to leave. My mother protested and tried to stop him from leaving. He was pretty insistent on going, and she was equally insistent on him staying.
I broke in and told her to let him go because it was distressing to watch. And, there was no need for him to stay if he didn’t want to. That’s my mother, though. Once she gets an idea in her head, nothing is stopping her from executing it.
Side note: I broke it to my brother that he was on the spectrum a few months before my medical crisis. I didn’t think I was telling him something he didn’t know, but apparently, I was. Several weeks later, he wanted to talk about it with me because he had done extensive research on it. He said it made so much sense, and I was heartbroken that I hadn’t told him earlier.
It wasn’t until after my medical crisis that I started questioning whether I was autistic or not. My mother and I were talking about my brother being autistic (I think he talked to her about it), and she wondered if she was, too. At first, I shrugged it off as her just wanting to be in on it (as was her wont), but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was quite possible.
I’m not going to talk about this in this post, but it has given me insight to my mother.
Here’s my issue. She made me her emotional support person when I was eleven. I am the receptacle for all her frustrations, despair, and other negative emotions. She has resisted talking to anyone else, which is a huge weight on my shoulders.
Every time we talk, I can feel the heaviness pressing down on me. It gets worse and worse as we talk, and by the end of the conversation, I am so depressed. It used to make me suicidal, but it’s not gotten that far in quite some time. It does make me depressed, though, and very empty inside. I just want to put my head down and sleep for days. She always says she feels better after talking to me. Of course she does because she has laid her burden on me.
One thing I have to figure out is if I’m going to visit my parents in the next few months. My father is fading fast, and I have no idea how long he is going to last. It’s hard to say because even though his mind is going, who knows how sturdy his body is?
The other issue is that I’ll be expected to go for his funeral as well. We’re talking a full day of traveling, which is not…look. I have not been on a plane in six or so years. My whole medical crisis was provoked because of my weak lungs. People don’t care about Covid any longer or about taking precautions. I don’t want to be shut up in a small area with several sick people. There will be sick people because as I said, people don’t care.
I hate traveling, even when everything is optimal. Doing it under stress/duress is ten times worse. In addition, the last time I saw my parents in their home country, I hated everything about it. I was stopping myself from walking into the ocean on the daily, and I could not wait to leave.
There are many reasons for that, but the bottom line is that deciding to fly there and stay there for ten days would be a big thing. It would have to be ten days because going for a week would be even rougher on my system and not really worth it.
I have to make that decision pretty soon. My brother and his GF are going in December, and I would like to go when they do rather than by myself. More tomorrow.