Thank you to those who have posted here and for the messages.

Things are always a bit easier to deal with in the light of day.

Even though I have been here for three months now, it can still be a shock when I learn a bit more about how helpless my father has really become.

I was very positive today, making several little changes and including him by asking him to do something to help. Which he did, without complaining.

Hopefully he will see that I really am here to try and help, whatever the problem.

Bernie, you put your personal life on hold and moved across the country to help your father. There is no possible way that your father does not recognize that you are there to help. Even if you make a little mistake or two along the way in dealing with the complexities of eldercare, I'm sure your father will always know and appreciate the fact that he has a fine son. And as I always tell my students, "mistakes are not mistakes if you learn something from them".

Carry on bravely, soldier!

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In my mother's case, she has some sort of dis-attachment from reality. She loves me being here, but doesn't truly realize I'm almost always here. Leaving the room is sometimes like me being gone for a couple days to her. Her concept of the passage of time is truly in Stephen Hawking's realm. She thinks she's 40-45 years old, which is of course impossible given I'm 48, and she has trouble grasping the fact she's lived in the same house 50 years. She keeps mentally reverting to her childhood house, and asks me to take her "home", which of course is horribly frustrating and depressing for me, because I have made every effort possible to make sure she stays in the house where all the memories of the past 50 years have been created. She recognizes where she is, but still makes illogical statements about it. If you're familiar with an M.C. Escher drawing, that's how her mind seems to be working, and it literally hurts my head to try to get inside her head and understand, let alone explain it. So - Bernie, don't try too hard to understand your dad's perceptions. Just enjoy being there with him. If something about his behavior frustrates you, do your best to let it go, and focus on something positive that you both can share together.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Gordon. I understand a bit about what you post about your mother's time disassociation. So you are saying her time sense is not as linier as it was. Her time arrow is moving both ways.
I suggest watching "Arrival" when it comes out on DVD. The main female lead character has a series of flashback dreamlike scenes that jump back and forth in time about her life.

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Sometimes we can't do more than just enjoy the moment with our loved ones. Gordon, you mother is lucky to have such a loving son.

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Gordon. I understand a bit about what you post about your mother's time disassociation. So you are saying her time sense is not as linier as it was. Her time arrow is moving both ways.
I suggest watching "Arrival" when it comes out on DVD. The main female lead character has a series of flashback dreamlike scenes that jump back and forth in time about her life.

I am comfortable enough with my mother's situation to leave for a couple hours to go to a movie, or whatever, and I actually did go to see Arrival last week, but the film broke halfway through, and I was given a raincheck. Talk about time interrupted!

Everybody says I need respite, but honestly, in the grand scheme of things the idea of involving others in this is really more stressful in and of itself. I have a couple close friends who visit occasionally, but I don't want them babysitting, and as far as social service visits go, we're eligible for something I think, but I don't want us to be under the microscope like that. Iva's doctor told me this week that he knows I have my hands full, but that I'm the best private duty nurse he's ever seen(she's doing very well, all things considered), and he's not worried about her or me.

Angela mentioned enjoying the moments. Yes, it really is about that. I try not to dwell on my frustrations about my mother's otherworldly perceptions of reality. I focus on things like when she just read me one of our favorite books, The Night Before Christmas. She was so excited reading it, and it was definitely one of the moments to cherish.

I keep a daily journal of her behavior, and the entries are increasingly filled with more of these lucidly focussed moments. I actually just got off the phone with her doctor, and he said he thought she looked more calm and relaxed this week than she has in years, plus her blood work is perfect. I told him I think she has stabilized mentally. During her 4 month hospital incarceration, she never was diagnosed with a stroke or dementia. There's something not quite right up there, but whatever it is, I think it's evening out, and I take a lot of credit for that because of the way I am handling things.

No, she'll never walk again, is very physically weak, has a lot trouble with her short-term memory and general life timeline, hallucinates a little bit, calls me her mother and her husband, and thinks her bed is a car, but I'm ok with all of that. I told somebody the other day I don't just love my mother, I really like this person, and that's a big key to success. As crazy as it may sound, I find myself happier today than I was before my mother got sick. There was no focus in my life, and there was underlying anxiety about my mother's future. I worried about her getting older and what might happen to her. Getting through the sickest portion of her crisis nearly killed me as much as it literally nearly killed her, but I feel I'm in the right place, and my mother, in spite of her limitations, is ok.

So, Bernie, I hope you will get through things with your dad. I think you will find these days, as stressful as they are, to be a necessary part of your life, and I think you will be happy in the long run that you are doing things the way you are doing them.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Gordon. That is really such a lovely post. That and the ones before it too, reminded me of something I read recently that actually has no bearing at all on this thread, but would do well for starting another. It may even indirectly help us understand just what the world these wonderful people in our lives might be living in, while we're stuck on the outside looking in .

So I will just quote a tiny bit from it, here. The bit reading your post reminded me of :)

"Time is the thing that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Time gives us lives with memories, and learning skills. Time lets us build structures and order, lets us move on, or stay behind for good or bad, and it opens up choices.

When that disintegrates it must feel like the most precious of all fabrics is decaying to threads in your hands.

It's how it is for my mum. She still has the threads but without the weaving. And it's the weaving that's precious. It's in the weaving that we find ourselves after all :) It's there that time gives us the opportunity to return, and mend a hurt we couldn't mend then. It's what caring for someone like them - my mum, or Gordon's mum, or Bernie's dad - is about, preserving and patching with the fabric of ours, the fabric of their lives, so they have them for longer for us to share and enjoy.

I can do that less and less for my mum. The threads in her hands are so frayed, and so muddled - and so disassociated - it's like even their meaning is lost to her

So. I can't remember the last time she knew who I was and it made her smile. It's disconcerting to be told I'm dead, and to never see a flicker of sadness whilst I'm absorbing the news. It's strange to weep in front of some one who does not see you are crying and when they do, thinks it's funny. It's bizarre to watch someone smash something in rage and then instantly have no knowledge of doing it, and then laugh every time they see the consequences. It's peculiar to be told "oh you do look funny" when you look funny because you're in pain and really not well.

But I do get to love her in an entirely different way, to that which intact timelines would never have allowed. Perhaps as the child she was and once wished I'd been mother to, I don't know. Maybe :)

The threads in her hands are so frayed, and so muddled - and so disassociated - it's like even their meaning is lost to her

I can't remember the last time she knew who I was and it made her smile. It's disconcerting to be told I'm dead, and to never see a flicker of sadness whilst I'm absorbing the news. It's strange to weep in front of some one who does not see you are crying and when they do, thinks it's funny. It's bizarre to watch someone smash something in rage and then instantly have no knowledge of doing it, and then laugh every time they see the consequences. It's peculiar to be told "oh you do look funny" when you look funny because you're in pain and really not well.

What you are saying is very scary and painful. I'm extremely lucky my mother can still hold the threads and fragilely weave them together, even if not always in the original pattern.

This brings up my guilt again about how I wish I'd never moved out in the first place and should have stayed with my mother to take care of her. My dad died in 1982, and my mother and I were alone together. Sure, it's natural for a child to move away from home after awhile, but nothing good ever came from my independence, and I will always feel like my mother's loneliness accelerated her decline mentally. Her lower back injury that landed her in the hospital for 4 months in 2014 also played greatly on her overall physical and mental decline, and it probably couldn't have been prevented, even with my presence in her home, but it still weighs heavily on me.

But I do get to love her in an entirely different way, to that which intact timelines would never have allowed. Perhaps as the child she was and once wished I'd been mother to, I don't know. Maybe :)

That is a profound statement.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Gordon I can relate to a feeling of guilt but a bit different for me.

I really never got on with my father. I was a child of the 50's my father had fought in a war and returned home to a fairly bleak UK.

He had very strong feelings as to how he saw the world and as I grew into my teens I found that I was starting to see things differently. The "swinging sixties" were a complete anathema to my father.
Long hair and loud music that I was part of, just went against all he believed in, and probably more importantly to him, fought for.

I did not see things his way and left home as soon as I could to get away. My mother was the one who kept the family together, so I did visit .

When my mother died in 1982 at the age of 58 my father was devastated, and so was I, but I could not bring myself to share the grief.

When 5 years later he married my stepmother, she was instrumental in trying to bring us together again, also my partner at the time was always pushing me to see my dad.

So I did visit him and my stepmother several times after they moved here to the island. The rift was not 100% healed but we did at least get on.

My stepmother died in 2010 and my father was devastated again. Perhaps it is other peoples grief I cannot handle as I found his phone calls to be so totally depressing that I started avoiding them.

It was 2013 before I made the effort to visit him again and to be fair it was OK, but I still found his views and outlook on life to be so opposite to mine I kept the visits short.

His heart attack in November 2015 made me realise that perhaps I needed somehow to "make up" for not being a good son. I originally intended to visit him more often, however it became apparent that he really could not cope on his own and there came a day when it was perfectly clear to me I really had to do what I could to make my fathers last years as easy as possible.

I now don't think it was guilt I just felt I was acting as a son should.

However in the years before I did feel guilt as I know I avoided contact with him.

The past is the past you cannot go back and undo things, however I believe what you do now and in the future can make the guilt and pain of the past less.

I am going forward each day happy that I am able to help my dad whenever he needs it.

I am not going waste these last years feeling guilty, and neither should you.

The past is the past you cannot go back and undo things, however I believe what you do now and in the future can make the guilt and pain of the past less.

I am going forward each day happy that I am able to help my dad whenever he needs it.

I am not going waste these last years feeling guilty, and neither should you.

I agree. In the grand scheme of things, as hard as the past couple of years have been, I feel happy(not sure this is the right word for it, but I can't come up with an emotional term to describe it right now). Everything I'm doing is because I want to do it. I've always been a little bit of an escapist, so this situation has made me address the past, present, and future and I feel very healthy and happy overall. That doesn't mean the nitty-gritty care-giving is simple, but it does mean I feel a sense of fulfillment. I've had deep discussions with my mother about all of this, and while she doesn't really grasp the reality of her ailments, she has assured me that I've never disappointed her. We are usually our own worst enemies. I would say I like myself better now.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

I should also say I don't like making "parental" decisions. It's one of the reasons why I never wanted kids, but under the circumstances, my mother is my child, and I have to be her parent. It's very hard for me to transition into that role.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Dear Gordon,
Your Mother is so lucky to have such a loving son,
God Bless you and your Mother,
Byron.





@ Bernie,
thank you for sharing about your,
life experence.
With deepest repect,
and May God Bless and keep you and your family,
Byron.

Dear Annie,
Your Mum is lucky to have such a loving Daughter,
With deepest repect,
and May God Bless and keep you and your family,
Byron.

I have read much in this thread and can only offer my sincere wishes of consolation.
I shall be 60yo very soon, and have by the grace of God, both of my parents still alive to talk to.
They are both approaching 80yo, and I make special efforts these days to stay connected to both of them, somewhat in response to things I have read here.

My father had 5 bypass heart surgery a number of years ago, but he came through it and is still active and able to do yardwork and almost anything he used to do.
My mother is also active, and works doing housekeeping in a nursing home, which involves some relatively hard labor at times.

Must be in the genes. My father is second generation full blooded German, and my mother is second generation full blooded Dutch.
Good hearty stock, I guess.

Must also have something to do with the fact that I am still alive and kicking hard after all the years of self abuse I have put myself through.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I made a big mistake the other day by reconnecting with an xgf from 96/97. I just sort of wanted to talk to her about my mother. Her mother died in 2001, and that's the last time we had contact. She was happy to hear from me, but her concern about my situation with my mother took a negative turn. She said if it was her mother, she would have “put her in a home”, and also told me that I sounded suicidal. She bases most of this on the fact I've decided to take care of my mother on my own full-time, and doesn't empathize with why, but I think what sealed the nail in the coffin was when I sent her a picture of the very nice tombstone I had made for myself(a lot of people don't understand that either, so she's not alone). She is an attorney/social therapist who I met when we both worked at the local Crisis Center.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

@Gordon
I completely understand about the headstone. It is just one less thing to worry about when the time comes. And it was done the way you wanted it. Not some other persons idea of what it should look like.
And where is your exg going to spend her last years? So don't worry about her opinion about what you are doing now.
My Dad's father was looked after by his adult children until cancer took him away. Now his mom is in her mid 80's and is still able to live semi dependent in her own home with limited help.

@ everyone
More power to you if you can do it.

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don't worry about her opinion about what you are doing now.

Thanks, admiral. She's an xgf for a reason. Boredom made me look her up. I should have known better!

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Well, my father passed away this morning.
I feel for anyone else in this situation.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

I am so very sorry to hear that news Steve. My condolences to you and your family.

+1

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.