My mom called me last night and as usual, started the conversation by complaining. Wait. To be fair, she asked me how I was doing. She didn’t care, mind, but she did ask. Believe me. She does not care. I give her a bland answer, and we move on to why she really called–to complain about my father.
Let me hasten to say that most of her complaints are valid. As I ‘ve said many times and as most people know, dementia is brutal on people. Not just the people who have it, but also the people who are taking care of them. I would not wish it on anyone. Period. I have heard enough about caretaking on a daily basis to know that I would not do it.
But.
Here’s the thing. There are ways to make it easier on yourself. Not EASY, mind, but easier. They include putting the person in a facility or bringing in long-term/intensive care. No one should do it alone is what I’m trying to say. I told my mother to do this because she has asked me what to do. But, and I heard this from my brother, she thinks putting him in a facility will hasten his death. I think it will actually stabilize him–given a few factors. One, that it’s a good nursing home. That sounds very obvious, but so many are not. Two, that he’s moved in before he completely loses control of his faculties. Three, and this is very important, it’s a place that can deal with violent outbursts. My father has had two that my mother has told me of, and I fear that it will increase as his dementia does.
Saying all that, my heart sinks every time my mother calls. She gives that little laugh she always does when she’s about to talk about something uncomfortable or that she knows I don’t want to hear. This time, she mentioned that she had something wrong with her leg that she was supposed to get surgery on, but she postponed it because she could not leave my father to do it. She tried to say that it wasn’t necessary and that she could handle it, which just filled me with sadness.
She has given all her life to taking care of this man, and for what? He’s not grateful at all. Not that he has ever been. Even before he was hit with dementia, he just took it for granted that she should do everything for him.
The last time they were here, she said that she loved my brother and me more than anything. I looked at her sternly because this is just objectively not true. She always puts my father first, and I have hard evidence of it. The second day I was out of the hospital AFTER DYING TWICE AND BEING IN A COMA FOR A WEEK, she guilted me into showing my father a stretch for his back. I tried to demur because I was, you know, just coming back from the dead. She wouldn’t let me because, you know, my dad’s back was more important than me COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD.
It really doesn’t get clearer than that. I’ve known it for decades, but my death really underlined it in bright red. My mother amended her statement to saying that my brother and I were first in her heart. Which, fine. I can’t argue with that, but who the fuck cared what was in her heart? It was how she behaved that mattered.
There is nothing she can say or do now that will make me believe that my brother and I come before my father. Not after fifty yearsr of evidence to the otherwise. She also said that God was first, but I don’t believe that, either. She made my father her god, and she has been worshipping him ever since. She would not say it in that fashion, but that’s the truth.
She would say that she took her vows of marriage seriously. But, as a psychologist, she should know that it’s not healthy to sacrifice yourself to such an extent. It’s not healthy for her, but it wasn’t healthy for my father, either. It doesn’t matter now. Everything is changed because he has dementia. But before that, my mother still treated him like a baby/god and gave in to almost every whim. She coddled him and pushed my brother and me to coddle him as well.
She wrote us a highly-manipulative email talking about Taiwanese culture and revering your elders. Which, I mean, yeah, to a certain extent. But not to the point of slavishness. Plus, she said that we should love and respect him more, which is laughable. You can’t mandate love and/or respect. You can try, but it’s not somethnig that can be forcibly elicited.
It’s so backwards. You get love/respect by earning it–not by demanding it. Anything that comes out of the latter is fake. I don’t think my mother wolud care as long as my brother and I appeared to love/respect my father more. My parents are all about face and appearances. I honestly don’t think they care about what my brother and I actually feel as long as we show deference to the outside world.
I think this is one way in which I do better than my brother. He does not know how to pretend to the degree that my mother wishes for it. Plus, he’s going to say what’s on his mind or not, but he’s not going to lie about it. One time, he was putting tiles on the bathtub ‘floor’ so that there was grip when my father was getting out of it. As he was doing it, my father was pontificating as was his wont. He liked to talk about whatever was on his mind, and you were not to interrupt. You were to say ‘yes’ and ‘uh-huh’ at the appropriate intervals, but that was it. It was a monologue for his benefit, and he was not interested in what you had to say. He’s always been like this, and it’s only gotten worse since he’s gotten dementia.
In the case with my brother, my father was talking about when my brother was in high school, he talked about being an artist. I don’t remember if this actually happened (probably not as my brother is not artistic in the traditional sense), but it happened in my father’s mind. I would have humored him and just said, “Yep. That’s right,” butt my brother is not capable of doing this. He said rather abruptly that he did not know what my father was saying, and his tone implied that he did not care. My brother doesn’t do emotional intelligence, though he is better at it now than he was before.
My father was very upset with my brother and castigated my mother for it. This is why I think that he’s in control of his faculties to some extent. He knows that my brother won’t put up with it, and neither will I–to a certain extent. Only my mother will tolerate it for the most part. She sets no boundaries with him, which is what she’s done most of their marriage. In part because my father will not put up with boundaries. Now, it’s only getting worse.