Twenty very difficult months

**IdolEyes787** · 05-27-2022, 10:59 PM

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

**j2k4** · 05-27-2022, 11:02 PM

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.

**megabyteme** · 05-28-2022, 06:16 AM

Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

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

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

**megabyteme** · 05-28-2022, 07:07 AM

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.

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.

**j2k4** · 05-28-2022, 03:16 PM

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.

**j2k4** · 05-28-2022, 03:18 PM

Originally Posted by megabyteme

Originally Posted by IdolEyes787

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

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

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

**megabyteme** · 05-28-2022, 03:49 PM

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.