My mom was meeting with my dad’s team yesterday. I told her I wanted to go with her.
In the last several years she has handled everything around my dad’s lengthy illness with Dementia.
I want to be a part of these things now because they are both hard and good for me to know about. Doing hard things seems to be the only way to get better at hard things. I want to be really good at hard things.
Many of my friends have handled their parents illnesses and deaths on their own.
My mom said it would be upsetting, was I sure I wanted to come?
It is such an indulgence to have your mom still protecting you when you are a grown up yourself.
Who is protecting her?
The nurse, physio and doctor were all around a big table discussing my dad.
It was odd. And really sad. He would have hated being spoken for. Such a huge personality reduced to nothing.
The first two are warm and compassionate. The doctor, however, has the bedside manner of a flea.
If he had been kind or even warm, I might have needed these.
But because he was not, I did not.
But the truth is I cry every time I see my dad. On the way in. On the way out. When I tell him I love him. When he appears to know me. When he doesn’t know me.
It is both a curse and a blessing that he does not know how he lives or what he is missing.
That would kill him.