I talked to my Dad on the phone for the first time in awhile, tonight. It was good, and terrible, and...really fucking awful.
I just don't understand how my parents have painted themselves into such corners, and are falling apart to such a degree. It makes me sad for them, and sad that they aren't available to my kids as grandparents, and terrified that I don't want to ever be in the sort of positions they are :/
I don't know how you can just not consider going back to school or trying out a different industry, year after miserable struggling year, not eventually think to prioritize dental care as things deteriorate, not even contemplate counseling as decades pass and you get more and more muddled up and avoidant about all sorts of things.
My Dad has got approximately 4 teeth left. He's worried that he feels sick a lot of the time partially from decayed pieces of teeth gone by, that are still in his gums. He's embarrassed. He doesn't have any insurance - health or dental - and he lives paycheck to paycheck in a way that's very dependent on tourist (and hurricane) season. He's viciously dreading Obamacare because he works as an independent contractor - and hasn't filed taxes in over 10 years.
My Dad is only 53, guys. His arthritis is terrible, and he's never had any treatment or meds for it aside from self medicating (he was diagnosed at 20), and...oh God I just don't even know how to deal with it. He's living in near isolation and sees no light at the end of the tunnel. He absolutely will not accept help of any kind from me, either - even right after we got the settlement when I tried to gift him with something he'd wanted for a long time, he refused, and to this day if I mention ANYTHING the kids need or that costs more than I expected during our conversations, he says, "Aren't you glad you didn't spend that money on me?" :x
He is still him, with all these visible and invisible issues, and he wants to tell me hilarious stories that really make me laugh, and he sounds like he sounded when I was little - meaning, strong. Invincible. Really, really smart.
There are good things, my Dad has a few things - he lives on a canal his boat is parked in, so he can take it out whenever he wants and he gets a lot out of that. That sounds really glamorous, ok, but anyone can have an old, used boat in the keys and the canals are NOT glamorous where he is. I mean he literally has a 700 square foot duplex he's in with his girlfriend, and a car that breaks down parked out front, and lives on a canal with a boat, just like everybody else in the neighborhood. He's a mechanic and works on it himself. I'm just saying, it makes me happy that there are a few ways in which he is still living his life. He really seems to enjoy his job, too, which is kinda perfect for him.
He just also has this shame, about being broke (regardless of what I say about how I could give a shit less how much money anyone has) and his health, and the brokeness and the health also truly limit his options, and so we almost never see him :/ I feel like he is the person who taught me to advocate for myself, whether in fighting my way through the financial aid office and appeals process to go back to school or hunting down resources for my kids...but the whole concept of him advocating for himself seems too foreign. He truly acts like I just don't get it, and/or am living in a dream world, when I suggest options or avenues for him to improve any aspect of his life. It's so heavy, to think of what it must feel like to be really sad about all sorts of things that you've also just given up on ever improving.
My mother was recently diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), i.e., the precursor to emphysema. This explains her quarterly ER trips for bronchitis, and her need for albuterol (as a non-asthmatic person) to always be nearby, and has in no way slowed down her smoking. It's an interesting combo, to go with the Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIA)s, or pre/mini strokes, she's had several times in the last few years. She does not exercise in even minor ways, and barely eats food. Really - one small meal or two snacks in a day feel like a lot, to her.
My mother is 49, ya'll. She's the age many of my kids' friends' parents are - and my kids' friends parents are vibrantly healthy people who take vacations, join yoga classes, knit things, have social lives and/or church communities...my mom lives in this teeny tiny place, in a crime ridden yet rural area, with a car always on the verge of breaking down. She has this night shift security job she's struggled by with for the past 5 or more years, where there is no opportunity for advancement. She reads the Twilight books over, and over, and OVER in a way that is probably not ok.
When I was growing up, my various houses (we moved...a lot) could be pretty terrible, but my grandparents were all very good, and actively engaged grandparents. My Dad's parents had some health issues at times, and didn't work, but they lived on their own, had enough money to get us (small) birthday and Christmas presents and leave $20 bills under our pillow if we lost a tooth while we were visiting overnight. They left baggies full of quarters around "from the Easter Bunny." They came along on Disney World trips, when I was little. They cooked us delicious meals and read us stories, when we stayed with them for weeks at a time. Took us in their above ground pool and on their riding lawn mower. We crouched in their windows at dawn with them, watching for deer and rabbits. I have nothing but good memories.
My mother's mom and stepdad (her "real" dad was the "pirate" - read, "international drug smuggler" I'm descended from), who were married from before my birth, both worked full-time until about 5 years ago. They always provided huge Christmas Eve celebrations for the family, including my own children for quite awhile. Laura and I spent every weekend there, as little kids, and weeks of the summer later on. When my mom checked out, that was where each of us ended up living for our high school years. I was driving Nana's car when I learned to drive, on the weekends, and they got me my own phone line and just...
I heard all kinds of stories, from my parents, about how their parents were shitty when they were young. Inconsistent, borderline neglectful, functioning alcoholics, broke as hell, etc etc. What I inferred as the natural order of things, is that people may be kinda derelict, as young parents, but then they get it together enough to take care of themselves, and pick up the grandkid slack, at some point in middle age. This seemed to be the way of the world, a pattern that could be counted on. My various stepdads and their parents seemed to follow this same trend - adults who played too many video games, smoked too much weed, got fired a lot...and their parents, older people who owned homes others could go back to in times of need, and never yelled at children who came over, despite the terrible abuse of yore that would be referenced at times. A need to size up in bras, or to get braces or have wisdom teeth pulled, was something taken to grandparents for review, when I was a kid.
The point is, my parents have not held up their end of this bargain at all. They eagerly accepted the help from their own parents, and talked shit about how their parents had sucked back in the day, and then they just kept on being total derelicts with no self-awareness, once we were grown. I mean. Do you know what I mean?
Grant's parents are not in much better shape, healthwise, though they are engaged grandparents and fully realized human beings - by which I mean, they have friends, and interests, and hobbies, and are living their lives. "Opa" provided half a house for us to live in for 5 years, too, allowing me to stay home with babies and toddlers while Grant built his resume, which is (beyond WAY above and beyond) priceless and lovely and I will never be able to adequately thank him for it. Oma has always been a great place to visit, a sure call and card on birthdays, she stayed with them all while we went out of town to Maryland in August. More importantly, since those kids needed them so much more, they have full on RAISED my sister in law's kids from day 1 of their lives - which has often been an awful lot of very complicated work.
So, I don't mean it as any reflection on their characters, when I say that it is still so scary and awful, what poor health they're in, and how totally without financial resources they are :/ My mother in law has a degenerative bone condition that causes chronic pain and a gradual loss of mobility. She and her husband have also been utterly financially devastated by him getting cancer, losing his business as a result, etc. They're in such a vulnerable position...my father in law has untreated back issues that nobody knew were debilitating him to the degree they apparently have been for a decade, until very recently. The amazing government job he had for a long long time, is no more.
Both of them, like my parents, have moved hundreds of miles away in recent years, and so are not at all easy to help out. There is also a scary, fast-forward effect, wherein more times passes between visits and thus their aging seems to happen in rapid fits and starts since they've moved. Grant and I have rarely gotten used to how old any of them looked the LAST visit, before we're seeing them again and it's progressed...
His parents are early 50s, too. It makes me wonder if maybe that's just how it is - time, and our bodies gradually falling apart.
My sister is really angry about how uninvolved our father is with our children. She remembers how great HIS dad was with us, and wants that for our kids. I get it, I really do, and I also think about it sometimes - but I don't feel mad at him. I feel like our kids (Laura's and mine) are in a totally different situation than she and I were, and NEED external relatives so, so much less. WE read to our own kids, and look at animals together, and take them swimming ourselves, and buy them their bras and their braces...they're safe, at home. They would love him, and they do love him, when he's around, but. Their lives are full, either way. Likewise with how my mother beats herself up semi-annually and vows in a passionate way to be more involved as a grandmother. I just kinda smile and nod. It's not something I'm very invested in. They don't really notice her coming and going.
My anger towards the both of them is more like, "WHAT THE FRESH HELL IS YOU FOOL'S PLAN, for 10 years down the line when you're utterly incapacitated? You're just gonna leave it in my hands, to either take your care on full time or put you in some state run, Medicare type home somewhere? Drink some water, put on some supportive shoes and go for a walk, and start repairing your credit, you assholes!"
That is partially me railing at mortality, and inevitability, as I am wont to do. Mom, Dad and the Grim Reaper all collectively piss me off.
I don't want them to die. Even more than that, I don't want them tottering around suffering and decrepit for long, torturous decades that are not much of a life.
I have these beacons, these inspirations that I look to as role models (and for hope).
Nancy is one. 65, travelling, attending births, speaking at conferences, working on her next book. She gets up every single day and walks or swims for 30 minutes. She has a great haircut, can laugh at Louis CK and is always searching for new music. Her clothes are mostly from Etsy. She really listens, when people talk. Nancy's bringing her mother (who lives alone, drives, etc) to our house for Thanksgiving.
Our pediatrician is another. He's 70, and spends every summer in South America doing charity work and care for brain injured kids. He moves with purpose and energy but stops and takes his very patient time with everyone who comes to see him. He and his wife have adopted over a dozen special needs kids over the years. His jeans are ripped up and he has a long rat tail and the embossed wooden sign hanging out in the strip mall outside his office says, "Dr Spiderman." I was actually shocked to learn his age just a couple of months ago, after going to him for many years and several kids, and then thought, oh yeah. Liver spots on the hands. Around his eyes. I can see it.
I think about my Cuban great grandmother, my Abuela, jogging around the island each morning into her 90s.
I am very aware of how much I'd like to age well - meaning, with tears and laughter but not bitterness or denial, without too much loss of mobility, with introspection and honesty. I would choose pain over loss of cognition, given the choice (which nobody is). Financial security, at least enough to cover essentials like my Nana and Pa have, would be nice.
One thing my "pirate" grandfather had that I think is enviable, is a quick death following a life lived just as he wanted it to be. The man drank all his waking hours, slept on couches (and boats) all over town, told jokes, collected stories, had affairs, got high, hung out with his dog and so forth literally until the night before his liver quit and then he spent a few unconscious hours puking up blood, and died without waking up.
My Nana, by contrast, my poor Nana, following surgery gone wrong, has been wearing diapers and struggling to discern reality from hallucinations for 4 years now, as people spoon feed her in the bed she can't get out of :/ I love her, but she can't stand to have us around and I can't help but wonder at times whether she would have wanted it this way, if she'd had a choice (which nobody does).
Both of them were, I believe, 62 years old - his death, her strokes. It was the same year. They were only 15, when my mother was born. My mother's stepdad, my Pa since I was born, is 80 and caring for Nana. He's starting to fall apart, now, but it's very recent and obviously somewhat related to the enormous burden of her care. All throughout his 60s and early 70s he was walking, dreaming, doing yard work, telling old stories, planning and executing their vacations. He took us out to see hot air balloons take off at dawn, and drug us to hot, bright, dusty things I didn't care too much about (rodeos, air shows with the Blue Angels) that were still better that NOT seeing things or going places. The world has always been very big to him, since he traveled all over it for most of his life before he married my Nana as a retiree and started a kind of second life.
I suppose the lesson to take from every really vital and with it old person I could aspire to be like is, MOVE YOUR BODY AROUND. Every day. Get out of the chair, up off the couch, etc. Keep learning, yes, and keep feeling and communicating, but also keep moving. It's mandatory.
It is so past my bedtime.
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