Ladies and gentlemen, you are all delicious and lovely and I lust after you all to varying degrees in my secret heart, but lately I just aint feeling the blogging vibe. The reason for this is that my father in law has been declining in health steadily and my rage and impatience with this whole process is eclipsing everything else.
I wish he'd hurry up and die.
I swear to God, this makes me feel like the most evil human being on the face of the earth, too. He's not a stupid man and I know he guesses why I don't spend very much time hanging around him lately. But there it is. Everyone involved knows that he isn't going to get better and everyone involved-him most of all, probably-is sick and tired of the whole hopeless interminable process. I am not feeling the compassion any more; what I feel is anger and impatience and aversion, frankly. None of which are just. It's not like he's doing this on purpose, right? It's just happening. I'm so tired of the constant, constant SUCK factor. I don't want to be fucking bothered with it any more. And I know how shitty and low that is of me to feel yet thats how I feel anyway. Probably because its easier than pity and regret and helplessness, which is also what I feel...and hate feeling.
This is tearing my husband up. This is going to have a permanent effect on him. Not only the process, but dealing with all the unacknowledged issues that he has with his dad..yeah, this shit is aging him. And I'm really hating it. I'm really wanting to have our lives back. I'm tired of this man dying for the last fucking two years.
How's that for perfectly selfish?
I have my own issues involved here too. The people who adopted me were less than thrilled with my chronic illness and finally decided to treat it as thought it were all imaginary on my part; they stopped taking me to the doctor for it. Just stopped. The story I was supposed to believe was that they thought that I was just making myself sick to get attention...and that they were doing this whole big tough love thing, right? They would 'toughen me up' by 'not giving in' to my 'spoiled behavior'. The hard, evil truth of the matter was they simply wanted to be shut of it, and me. Fuck it. We're done with you and your annoying problem. Thats something I finally had to come to terms with about a year ago, and it was no treat making myself face that either. Kind of a relief, but still, knowing that your family would really like you to be dead because they're sick of your problems sucks pretty bad, too.
Now here I am, and I feel the same exact way about my poor father in law.
It's true. I'm so done with him and his annoying, lingering death. Die already. Just get it over with and die. Quit being helpless and sad and depressing and just DIE.
Would I deny him medical care? Hell no; every time he has the least little issue we all jump and see that he's got the right thing happening. We've marshalled our resources like an invading army. The medical community fear us. And he's being treated really, really well as a consequence.
So he can continue to die slowly.
I'm so tired of caring. I really am. It scares me to death to see him lose everything by slow, agonizing degrees...everything except his mind. No, that he retains. Perfect awareness. Yes, he gets a front row seat to this. It's like watching someone disappear beneath quicksand. You don't 'cheer someone up' out of this shit. I can't even take him out for a drive any more because his system is so delicate.
I want someone to come into his room with a really bad cold, like the Angel of Death.
Not me, though. I could never do something like 'help him over'. Like go in myself with a bad cold. But here's the deal... on the one hand, I've thought about it every time I've gotten one. And on the other hand, I simply cannot do it. It isn't in me....and yet I am happy with a cowardly kind of relief that when I do have a cold, because it means that I CAN'T go take care of him.
Thats the whole deal right there in a nutshell. It's a perfect self-cancelling equation and it fucking persists and persists and persists. And at the very center of it all is a man that I've really come to love. Yeah, its just excellent.
So. How was your day?
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Oh hon, I really do know exactly what you mean. It took my grandfather 15 fucking years to die after he was given 3 months to live, and I think my mom got 30 years older in that time.
ReplyDeleteThis is why our right to die in the manner and time of our choosing is just as important as our right to live, and if that means enlisting the help of a medical professional to help shuffle us off the mortal coil, so be it.
I wonder if the Playboy wants to get it over with, or if he wants to hang in as long as possible?
My mom's best friend died last year of Lou Gehrig's disease, and boy, that was teh suck, largely because she couldn't bring herself to hasten the inevitable, and clung on as long as she could.
Anyway, you're not alone. We're all here for you, and like Bill Clinton said, we feel your pain.
((((((muk hugs)))))))
I really wish I could say something that would make you feel better - I think you're great. It's nightmare time but when it's over you don't have to look back except at what's been good.
ReplyDelete((((((((xxx)))))))))
Any chance he can get into hospice, those people are usually golden for everyone. This blog is an excellent place for you to blow off...let 'er rip.
ReplyDeleteMy mother has dementia and barely recognizes me any more. She has more or less left the building and is lost in a pointless twilight, a kind of hideous inverted childhood.
ReplyDeleteI know I'll be upset when she dies, but I think much of my mourning will be spent before that happens.
So sorry...don't know what else to say. Watched this happen to my grandmother recently. She wanted to go, but it was others in my family that tried to postpone it. She finally got her wish just a week ago. But damn. It sucks. And yet...that's life. We don't just go when it's convenient, for us or anyone else. Anyway, I hope your distress is short-lived.
ReplyDeleteMan I am so sorry. I wished my grandmother a nice peaceful death every chance I got. She at least (I hope) didn't have a fucking clue as to what was going on, courtesy of Alzheimer's. But man, it was such a waste. She was such a shell of a shell of herself. It doesn't make you a bad person to feel like this. It just makes you human. It sucks.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry.
All the feelings you describe sound natural and fitting to me, my dear.
ReplyDeleteDon't we live in a strange world now, when so much can and will be done to keep us alive and so little to help us face death (when after all, we've been stepping toward it daily since we were born)?
I feel for the three of you and hope you can talk freely and comfortingly to each other.
There's a lot more I'd like to say but, you know, where are the beers!
Virtual hugs instead.
I know it probably doesn't make you feel less guilty, but what you are feeling is COMMON. I have so many friends who are dealing with aging parents (and my own mother is 85 and hanging in there), and they have mostly expressed the same desparate sentiment at some point. Try to be gentle with yourself. You deserve care too.
ReplyDeleteNone of us can express here what you really need.But you know what we all feel and are trying to say.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has already said it. And everyone I know has felt this at one time or another. Here's some therapy crap for ya: remember, feelings are never wrong. we can't control them and they are just honest. Except guilt (in my opinion). That emotion is pure-de-oh bullshit. Hugs and white light all around you and your yummy biker. And may the playboy let go and move on.
ReplyDeleteI must say, nothing cheers me up more tonight than the idea of you scaring the medical community into doing their startled fearsome best... I make Shirley Maclean screaming bloody murder at a dumbass nurse in Terms of Endearment look like little beth in Little Women,and I bet you out do me. Also bet, he being aware, gets a chuckle too, and thanks his lucky stars. Yer something else, Lady.
ReplyDeleteI love all of you. Thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteYep, so many of us have been right where you are. It sure does suck.
ReplyDeleteWe should have some t-shirts printed.
Man..I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteI've gone through a bit of that over the past few years with my nana. It's long, draining and hard, and the relief at the end is a strange thing.
The way I see it is you're a great person *because* you care enough for it to matter this much.
Like everyone else has already said...not sure what else to say other than I'm sorry. Vent it out and do what you need to to get by.
Sending sunlight your way...
Wellyou are at least amazingly honest Ms FN. Consider yourself cyber hugged - I would have gone for a fuck but the Viagra is low and I have someone coming round at the weekend....
ReplyDeleteHospice? I feel your pain and understand.
ReplyDeleteDon't berate yourself - everything you are feeling is entirely normal given the circumstances. My grandmother had severe Alzheimers and could only communicate by blinking in the end. On her 80 somethingth birthday we took her sherry and spooned it into her mouth like a baby. I kept spooning and spooning - she loved it. I went home that secretly hoping that it would send her into a beautiful woozy sherry-induced death sleep but it didn't. We and she had 6 or 7 more years of pain and inability to express it - it was terrible and I wished her to die so many times. It was a relief when she did. If she had been an animal she would have been put down due to her extreme suffering. It was awful for her.
ReplyDelete