Instead of figuring out who's taking care of Uncle Raymond when and how, Titi Janis and I are more focused on Dad who now has pneumonia and a form of diabetes. There are many unhealthy choices he has made over the years but one that I find particularly questionable is that he doesn't like going out with a hat, something about real men not needing hats. So his idols Sinatra, Bogart, Cagney, Edward G…?
“Do you want me to die?!” he challenged to his younger daughter Christine when she dared to question his diet.
Rocky as their relationship is, she still said, “No this is me NOT wanting you to die!”
To me, he says things like,
“Did you wash the spinach?”
To which I reply,
“Yeah, dad”
And then he comes back at me with,
“I didn't hear the water running!”
As if I would try to sneak my way out of that step, lie about it, and serve you dirty spinach.
He scoffed at the husband pillow I bought him, after I was so excited/relieved to have gotten the last one off the shelves at Target. He's using it now as we wait for his new bed to be delivered tonight. I guess it's typical fussy patient where nothing is good enough vs. frustrated caregiver figuring out what else could be done to make this more bearable.
Old TCM movies and Abbot & Costello routines help as well as company from fam and friends. My birthday gift to him, the box of wine, mocks him now that he can't partake in any of it. His insistence on 100% carrot juice which can’t be found anywhere now for some reason, has forced me to buy a juicer, something I wanted to get anyway. It reminds both my sister and me of Mom when she had cancer and the juice we'd make for her, particularly carrot juice. My memories of the juicer were more positive and encouraging like, “hey we're doing something super healthy for Mom!” whereas Christine who was only a child during Mom’s last months said, “No, for me, remembering Mom make all that carrot juice just reminds me of sickness and death”. She's still getting a kick out of this new one though, and we look forward to the yummy shakes we can make from now on.
I feel as though Dad’s childhood secret that he finally revealed a couple weeks ago is having a kind of aftereffect on him now. Is it a kind of release, this illness that hit him out of nowhere? Yes, years of what he's done to his body over the years (decades!), but also this release of finally telling someone after 55 years? I can't get over how respectful he's always been to each and every family member, especially his elders. This secret involves a family member who did some serious harm to him when he was a child and I'm trying not to get into it too much here; like I said before, it's not my story. I mean, maybe on some level it is, but I've got to squirm my way around it just a little more.
I've been praying for some kind of a breakthrough or something good to happen to my father lately, whether it's getting his writing noticed or his health to get better and so I wonder- Were angels having a conference up there deciding how they should answer my prayers? Did they take all physiological logic into account and say, “well we can't exactly heal him just like that, he needs to learn consequences. Maybe we can give him a ‘scare’ and have him flip the script on his own.” And so maybe they gave him this excruciating pain he's never experienced before, shooting up his usual 130-135 blood pressure to 200, chest pains, fever, chills, spasms, the works. Will this willingly switch him up to a healthier lifestyle? Will he now see that he can't just live until he dies? That it’s not as cool and snazzy as it sounds and yes, I said “snazzy” because what other word matches that ridiculous but fabulous Rat Pack style he idealizes? So… yeah, let's take this one day at a time. Let's find out about his Medicare plan and whether he was supposed to renew it or not... and let's just see how this all unfolds.
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