Friday, November 28, 2008

Temporary Thanksgiving Tirade

Thanksgiving should be a day of giving thanks. A day for appreciating our family and friends. A day to extend our love for who we are, what we have become and even what we have - tangible and not.

Unfortunately by mid-morning, I found myself in a Thanksgiving tirade. I was distraught after receiving a call that a good friend's father had a "stroke" (later determined to be an aneurysm) and was in the hospital. In lieu of the message and Thanksgiving Day, it seemed only fitting to call my own father to wish him and his wife a happy Thanksgiving.

I wish that it was as easy as that; however, the conversation with my step-mother left me extremely angry. She proceeded to carry on to say that she didn't know what to do with my ailing father. He hadn't taken his medication in sometime, including his insulin in at least a week. She was threatening him by telling him his kids should come down and discuss putting him in a nursing home. She whined about what to do and how she was just frustrated and at a loss. Mind you, every time (did I mention EVERY TIME) I speak with my step-mom, I hear the SAME story?

I have offered suggestions. I have offered support. I have offered nothing and only listened. I don't know what else to do.

So I did something for the first time. I got angry. Very angry. So angry on Thanksgiving Day that I was yelling and screaming expletives, while my parents and son sat in the other room looking shocked and horrified. I had had enough. I was tired of listening to the broken record. Tired of her saying that as a grown man, she shouldn't have to open his pill bottles or make him take his medication.

So let him die. Leave him and let him die or continue to stand by him and watch but clearly don't help. Don't help him to live.

My anger even went so far as to say that as his wife, she made a commitment to help him through sickness and in health. She threw the daughter card at me and said that I wasn't doing enough for him. Absolutely, she was correct! I don't live with him! He is not my husband!

The conversation was ended shortly after with me wishing her a Happy Thanksgiving and giving her my love. My father, apparently par for him, was still in bed and wouldn't be getting out of bed until about 2p.m. Apparently another reason that he doesn't take his morning medication, because she leaves for work at 1p.m. Anyway, I asked her to wish my dad a Happy Thanksgiving as well.

After I hung up the phone, angry and upset I stopped cutting 1/2" bread cubes for my last minute decision to make homemade stuffing and I cried. I cried because I was so upset. Wasn't it suppose to be a Happy Thanksgiving?

Some eight hours later, my dad called me back. He mentioned that maybe he should have answered my call since he was awake. He then proceeded to tell me that it's just too much to take 18 pills at a time. He just gets tired of it all and has to decide which path he wants to take. That it is his choice and his responsibility to take his medication, not his wife's and not his children's.

While this is true for someone who is medically and physically competent, it would not be true for my father. It appeared that his phone call and response to me had been "coached" and rehearsed. For when he said what he needed to, he couldn't answer my questions or follow the conversation and he said he had to go.

It just makes me sad. How so many people choose to live and will do anything to increase their livelihoods and quality of life to no avail while others...

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