Twenty very difficult months

I made my step-dad a promise that he would never go back to a nursing facility again. I kept that promise. It was an awful 20 months that caused severe stress and tension on my family and myself. Instead of appreciating that he had a kind family willing to take care of him, we got a mix of bitterness, manipulation, drug addiction and withdrawal, subversion, and that doesn't even begin to include the physical work it takes to care for someone with advanced Parkinson's disease.

My lack of presence and humor we among many costs of the past (almost) two years.

His sister requested that I send her half of his ashes so that she could spread them in his hometown. I struggled with how I would eventually deal with the awful ways he treated my mother during her last few years and his desire to be scattered with her. I have decided that the half in my possession are all of the good things he used to be: a provider for my mother for over 30 years, a hard worker, a generous and caring man, and the man who got me out of a bad childhood twice when he had no obligation to do so at all.

The good parts of him will rest at Lake Crescent on the Washington coast with my mother. Chances are good our Postal Service will lose/scatter the rest of him on the way to Oregon.

You and your family should be commended for all that patience. A noble act of kindness well done.

(Went though something similar many years ago with an Alzheimer’s afflicted family member... I joined FST soon after.)

Thank you. Both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's are horrible. Very sorry for you and your loved one.

I've done my best to make amends for the turmoil my family were brought into without really being allowed to choose. Apologies and money only make up for so much.

Definitely a lot of healing to do ahead of us. Heck, even the house looks like a tornado tore through the interior.

You are a saint. It did not rise to the same level, but I can definitely see parallels to the later years of my grandmothers before they passed.

Hope you and yours have some time to focus on yourselves and your own needs going forward.

Ngl Saint Meg has a nice ring to it :D

Truth is that he passed on May 2 and I am just now coming out of a dark shell. There was no emotion that fit with the experience. Nothing feels right about it.

In my mind I pictured somehow making him happy. That's not always possible, it seems. And constantly trying to do so and failing takes a HUGE toll.

I have a few legal things to take care of then we're all headed to stay in the West Wing of Idol's mansion.

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Originally Posted by megabyteme

I made my step-dad a promise that he would never go back to a nursing facility again. I kept that promise. It was an awful 20 months that caused severe stress and tension on my family and myself. Instead of appreciating that he had a kind family willing to take care of him, we got a mix of bitterness, manipulation, drug addiction and withdrawal, subversion, and that doesn't even begin to include the physical work it takes to care for someone with advanced Parkinson's disease.

My lack of presence and humor we among many costs of the past (almost) two years.

His sister requested that I send her half of his ashes so that she could spread them in his hometown. I struggled with how I would eventually deal with the awful ways he treated my mother during her last few years and his desire to be scattered with her. I have decided that the half in my possession are all of the good things he used to be: a provider for my mother for over 30 years, a hard worker, a generous and caring man, and the man who got me out of a bad childhood twice when he had no obligation to do so at all.

The good parts of him will rest at Lake Crescent on the Washington coast with my mother. Chances are good our Postal Service will lose/scatter the rest of him on the way to Oregon.

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Your stepfather was a nurse in Lake Crescent?
PS Reading comprehension isn't really my thing.
PPS There goes my theory that this was some sort of leftist plot to have shay replace you.

Your reading comprehension isn't inherently bad, you have simply developed a condition known as Shaylexia.

It also told you that all relatives are close to hott to look after him, both you and your sister in the same manner, otherwise it happens that often this responsibility goes to one person

In my experience, except for baby polar bears, the world is a pretty bleak place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqMMHAb_sr8

Of course mature polar bears will happily disembowel you but that's a story for another day.

Interesting...I never realized that I sit up just like a baby polar bear.

Maybe you're actually a bear. You do shit in the woods afterall.

Meg, I have the deepest empathy for you.

I'll recount things a bit later, but suffice it to say - as you know - everything is just below the surface, and the feelings have a tendency to overwhelm.

I'm with you, brother. ;)

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

Maybe you're actually a bear. You do shit in the woods afterall.

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I'll have you know I'm a civilized bear. I shit on the sidewalk. :snooty:

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Originally Posted by j2k4

Meg, I have the deepest empathy for you.

I'll recount things a bit later, but suffice it to say - as you know - everything is just below the surface, and the feelings have a tendency to overwhelm.

I'm with you, brother. ;)

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I really appreciate your kind words of support. It has taken me nearly a month to get this far. Looking back, trying to see if I could have handled things any better. Did my actions lead to any/all of what occurred? Wondering how I managed nearly 20 months of 24/7 care. Looking at myself trying to remember who I was that far back. I used to joke (poorly) and laugh frequently. My own family has *missed* me even though I was constantly in the house.

While I'm still short on answers and sense of it all...I can't imagine not taking him in, nor sending him off even a day sooner. The time he was out of my care was less than 24 hours-- we had paramedics come at 4am, he was in the hospital for a few hours, then passed away during the night at hospice. Every damn doctor, nurse, nurse's aid, social worker I encountered fought with me to put him in a 'skilled' nursing facility. "Nope." "No." "Not going to happen." "I'm coming to pick him up." "That's...just...like your opinion, man." "That's neither his nor my wishes." I met a doctor head-on with that last one who tried to make me meet him at his office to corner me into sending him to a facility. There were even times my wife got pissed enough to tell me he had to go. And there were times I didn't think I could continue.

The guiding light that I followed: I would want someone to fight for me if I were in his position. That's it. That's *all* I had left at times.

It's incredibly difficult to sum things up effectively.

I moved my late-eighties folks to the UP from suburban/rural Georgia over the summer of 2018 - selling two houses, buying one and moving two houses, then physically retrieving them and bringing them here.

Three days after we arrived, my Dad entered the hospital with a variety of difficulties and didn't come out for several months - when he passed in September of 2020, he'd been in a nursing facility for 8 months (actually we were supremely fortunate the place was staffed primarily with family and close friends).

My Mom had a fatal heart attack the previous January.

The short version is, when you put yourself in a position where a person inclined to shoulder all burdens - I'm the same way - attempts to do so, what follows isn't always disaster, but it is without fail chaotic.

I have always been a good man in a storm, and everybody knew it.




I didn't have a fucking clue, I really didn't.


You're trying to put yourself back together now, and it's not at all easy.

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Originally Posted by megabyteme

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

Maybe you're actually a bear. You do shit in the woods afterall.

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I'll have you know I'm a civilized bear. I shit on the sidewalk. :snooty:

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Not to detract from the gravity of events, but I hope this ^^ doesn't mean you've become homeless as well? :unsure:

I read and reread that-- there's so much packed into that small space of your post and that short amount of time. The common details our stories share leaves my (still very much raw) heart aching. A storm hit you and just didn't let up. I don't remember which of the Rocky movies it was in, but I remember Stallone saying something along the lines of, "It doesn't matter how hard you hit, but how many hits you can take and keep moving forward." That was most definitely you.


I was just trying to be playful mixed in with all the weight in this thread. Financially I have never been better, tbh. My heart just hasn't been in it to act on any of it.

All this confirms my suspicions that there are no ice flows in the lower 48.

Only in Republican hearts... ��

Ted Cruz says that if loving guns is wrong then he don't want to be right.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvJj7SN9EWI

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Originally Posted by megabyteme

I read and reread that-- there's so much packed into that small space of your post and that short amount of time. The common details our stories share leaves my (still very much raw) heart aching. A storm hit you and just didn't let up. I don't remember which of the Rocky movies it was in, but I remember Stallone saying something along the lines of, "It doesn't matter how hard you hit, but how many hits you can take and keep moving forward." That was most definitely you.


I was just trying to be playful mixed in with all the weight in this thread. Financially I have never been better, tbh. My heart just hasn't been in it to act on any of it.

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You definitely get my point, then.

The immersion (for lack of a better term) is over, the crisis is resolved, and you have to raise your sights to your own future again.

You're way out of practice, like I am, but you'll make it.

As with you, I'm financially secure at the moment - don't owe anyone anything at all.

Remember to breathe, buddy. ;)

We can actually pull together a pretty nice summer after clearing a couple more hurdles. Timing is right.

Let's see if I can correctly pick the location and time for the next big outbreak of vaccine-immune covid!

My own father gradually became the angry, toxic cunt he is today, so I find your plight personally relatable to an extent. I like to think he at least helped in his own way, by providing many bad examples for me to learn from. In any case, after a situation like this the only thing you can do is, as you succinctly put it...

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Originally Posted by megabyteme

Looking back, trying to see if I could have handled things any better

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...and if fulfilling your promise and continuing to do so as the stress grew and the temptation to quit became stronger isn't the best possible output from your side, I have absolutely no idea what is.

As for getting your life back on track, it's best to focus on one problem at at time. May I advice starting by cleaning up after that tornado :happy:

My actual father was exactly that-- such a bad example that I used him as a blueprint for what NOT to be. So sorry to hear you got a bad one, too. If he's everything you aren't, that's certainly someone who deserves no respect whatsoever.


As always, you have just the right words. Thank you, my friend!

Coincidence. I just had and mri and a DAT scan for parkinsons. God am I lucky that I don't have it. But they just can't pinpoint why I'm getting these trermors.

I hope you're doing well, Meg.

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Originally Posted by Funkin'

Coincidence. I just had and mri and a DAT scan for parkinsons. God am I lucky that I don't have it. But they just can't pinpoint why I'm getting these trermors.

I hope you're doing well, Meg.

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Hope you're okay, but I have heard such symptoms are among those experienced by some who suffer Long-Covid, insofar as it is still a somewhat amorphous term.

I had a bit of that my last go-'round - had tremors the first time, not the last.

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Originally Posted by Funkin'

But they just can't pinpoint why I'm getting these trermors.

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Have the doctors checked for giant subterranean worms?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Funkin'

Coincidence. I just had and mri and a DAT scan for parkinsons. God am I lucky that I don't have it. But they just can't pinpoint why I'm getting these trermors.

I hope you're doing well, Meg.

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Man, so sorry to hear you are going through that. Hope they find something easy to solve soon.

This also brings up the problem with a fair and just God. Why would a good man like you suffer health problems when someone like Idol would go without severe damnation? "What about his rotting genitals and leaking anal cavity?", you ask. Those are simply consequences from years of depravity and man whoring, not the empty darkness of his soul.

Laugh and the world laughs with you; whine and you whine alone, whiner.

Speaking of God's chosen people, I wonder where shay is?

Chosin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle...osin_Reservoir

Instead of movies about this, Hollywood liberals give me Ms Marvel.

I knew there must be some legitimate reason not to put the gheys in charge of stuff.

Mmmmm....Korea. Land of uber violent revenge films and bulgogi. :wub:

Chick Corea. Neither a chick nor Korean.:no:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ZwNQvTYGI

Meg, is it true that your State is best known for large trees and serial killers? If so which category do you fall under?

I was going to mock the title of Chick Corea's album, but about 4 seconds into the music, I was enjoying it.

Serial killers are good for the environment. :shifty:

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

Speaking of God's chosen people, I wonder where shay is?

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Unless I'm mistaken, I believe he's playing Bingo and engaging in elderly sex parties in Florida. Something about 18 holes a day...

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Originally Posted by megabyteme

Quote:

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Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

Speaking of God's chosen people, I wonder where shay is?

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Unless I'm mistaken, I believe he's playing Bingo and engaging in elderly sex parties in Florida. Something about 18 holes a day...

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Shay, they sure do miss you when you're gone.;)

Meg says that the universe demands there be a yin to his yang.

Notwithstanding that shay thinks that yin and yang are the first two people who came down with COVID.