Retro-Blog 2009.12.19 - More About Dad, Too Much About Me

More about Dad, More about Me
Michael Kepler
December 19, 2009   · 8 min read  · Shared with Public

When I last saw Dad, a little over 24 hours ago, he was the best I had seen him since he entered the hospital.  My wife and I arrived a little late, and he was tired from an evening with a room full of relatives, so we didn't stay long.  But he was fairly conversational and semi-lucid, and even was aware of the nature of his condition, and able to joke about it.  When we mentioned that our Son Tony and his wife had been by earlier he said:

"Were they?  I'm not sure.  I'm still pretty small-minded."

As we left, we even shared another small joke.   He asked me if it had been snowing.  I said it had not, and there was none in the forecast, but that snow would be pretty.

"From a distance" he said.

I replied, "Yeah, no so pretty from a ditch.".

And he actually laughed a little.

That was yesterday.  Today he was transferred to a nursing and rehab facility with some of the worst ratings and customer/family reviews in the area.   My younger sister, who was there for the transfer, described the place as "yucky".  I imagine that was an understatement.

Why such a place?  Mostly, because it is the facility owned by the same people as the hospital.  Secondly, because family members who knew this was a bad choice, who had done the research to find better places, did not have the authority to affect the decision.  Basically, it was up to the hospital to decide, unless they were directed otherwise by my Dad's wife, and the only concern she expressed is that it would be as close as possible to her home.  And it is the closest to her home, but she doesn't even drive herself anywhere and plenty of family members were ready and willing to drive her farther, in order for him to receive better care.

As in most things, I have the audacity to blame myself.

When I was first belatedly informed of my Father's hospitalization,  the situation as it appeared to me was being dominated by my sisters, and they seemed to be cutting my Dad's wife out of things, leaving her in the dark and making decisions she should be making.  So, at first, I was among those who advocated for the social worker and hospital staff to include his wife more in the process.

As the days have gone by and I have observed more of how each person has handled things, I realize my misguided heroism was a terrible mistake.  It has been my sisters who have stayed at his bedside nearly 24 hours a day, while his wife has dropped by for a few minutes a day, perhaps not even every day.   Yes, I know she is very old, too, and has her own infirmities, but she is being offered any and all support and assistance by multiple family members, including her own daughter, and she is, frankly, behaving like a spoiled child who doesn't want to her husband toy any more because it is broken.

This is heartbreaking, because no matter how many people visit him, the only question he has for them is to ask where his wife is.   The only face he really wants to see by his side is hers, but she is almost never there for him, when he needs her most.

This is where the "in sickness" part of those marriage vows are put to the test, and she's failing the test.  It's not the first time either of them has broken vows they have sworn to others, so I suppose it should come as no surprise.

I know that I am being harsh.  I know that I'm being as asshole.  But that's me, and that's the way I see things.  I don't give her a free pass on being selfish just because she's old any more than I joined the medical staff in writing my Dad off as "as good as dead" just because he's old.   I know, I know.  I'm not inside her head, inside her life.  I haven't been there, don't know her, don't know what else she is dealing with.  I know, I know, I know. But still.  I can't help it.  From the outside it looks cold and selfish and childish and petty and it makes me mad and sad and hopeless.  Maybe accepting too much help is as destructive to her sense of personal dignity as what my Dad is experiencing.  Maybe she feels so close to hole that is swallowing his mind, that if she holds his hand, he'll drag her down with him.  I can't blame anyone of being terrified of that. I'm judging based on nothing, and I'm sorry, but not sorry enough to erase it all.  The feelings, and the concerns, are still real.

To be frank, none of this is being motivated by some super deep bond and loyalty shared with my Father.  The two of us have been largely strangers to each other for my entire life.  But that doesn't matter.  This isn't about earned loyalty, this is about basic human dignity that everyone deserves.  Well, almost everyone, but I don't want to get into my personal exceptions right now, especially considering that having such exceptions is morally reprehensible.  That's a cross I'm willing to bear, and will endeavor to do so in relative silence.  Wow, all things considered, the "cross" metaphor is pretty much exactly the worst choice I could have made.  Keep my room in Hell warm, I'm on my way.

Besides, I feel I owe my dad something, because I took something from him years ago, something important to him, something I can't give back; can't undo.  When I was born, I was named after him exactly, first middle and last name.   He was always a "Jim", but I was always called "Jamey", and I always hated that nickname.  To this day, most of my childhood family still address me by that name, which is one of the reasons I avoid them.  My parents divorced when I was somewhere around 16 or 17.  At age 19, acting as my own attorney, I petitioned the court for, and acquired, a legal change of name.  Not just the first or last name, but the whole damned thing, first middle and last.  I stole from my Father whatever disappointing legacy he might have lived out through me.    I'm still not sure what kind of legacy that was supposed to be.  He never made clear any specific ambitions he might have had in mind for me.  By the time I was 18, he was in a position of some influence in his industry, but would not use that influence to help me get a foothold in the field.  Besides, he was a man among men, and I was a weakling, decades away from learning that my lack of stamina was due to a congenital arterial defect.  But now it sounds like I'm just making excuses.  Excuses both for being a disappointment to my Father, and for the unthinkable insult of changing my name.  The fact that he would have anything at all to do with me after that is probably more than I deserve.  He would even try to remember to address me by my chosen, legal, name.

This is certainly, to the best of my knowledge, more consideration than he ever showed to his first family, his first children.  Somewhere, in Colorado unless they have moved on, he has other Sons, and another Daughter.  I don't even know their names, and by all accounts, he has never been in contact with them since he divorced his first wife and ran off to Oregon with my Mother, already pregnant... with me.  Me, the ugly stain on the family history.  Just ask my aunts.  I heard enough growing up, through their uncomfortable silences, their judgmental looks or more often, eyes averted in shame.  Am I imagining this?  Hard to say.  As I have probably said many times before, my childhood his mostly a blank.  Odd little dreamlike snippets of memory, nonsensical and out of context, and in between, vast expanses of nothingness.  For all I know the bits and pieces I have really are just fragments of dreams, and not my real life at all.  Does it even matter?

Now that my own children are grown, and I look back over it all, their childhood, and my own, I realize that my Father was in many ways a better Father to his children than I have been.  At least he took me camping.   Now, it is my son who takes *me* camping, even though I never took the time to do so with him when he was growing up.  My Father and I were both absentee fathers and absentee husbands during the most critical years.  Both of us were married first to employers who never, in the end, really loved us back.  Nothing we did at work was as important, or as lasting, as what we should have been doing as parents, as husbands.    And now it is too late, and what is left of our precious minds is slipping away.  He's only a little farther ahead of me down that path to oblivion.

Who will sit by my side as I slip slowly away, staring, half-seeing, half-recognizing, half-remembering?  There's another thing I have in common with my Father.  Everything, ultimately, is about me.  That, and we are both cold-hearted selfish bastards who don't care who is hurt by what we say and what we don't say or do.
1 Comment

Kevin Romero
Is there a chance of getting him moved to a better facility?

        12y