Reality Check III: Crash Course on Dementia, Death, & Dying
Shortly after 9/11 my son, R, qualified to earn the Boy Scout's highest rank, Eagle, which was to be awarded at the prestigious Court of Honor ceremony. Friends and family were in attendance, including my father (a longtime scouter himself) beaming proudly from the audience and my mother who wept uncontrollably beside him throughout the entire affair. Although she was a woman of strong feelings, this over-the-top display of emotionalism seemed out-of-character even for my mother.
A week later she had a stroke.
At the hospital we learned she had diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and later realized she now also suffered from mild dementia.
My father immediately became my mother's primary care-giver and took to this task like a duck to water. He managed her medication, gave her the insulin injections, and prepared all her low-carbohydrate restrictive meals. Always active, my father seemed to thrive on taking care of mother, as if making up for years of neglect.
When father turned 80 in January 2006 we noticed he wasn't his own spritely self. We were becoming hesitatingly aware of his approaching mortality. Almost over night he'd lost a lot of weight and had become considerably weaker. In March 2006 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and by April it had metastasized first into his liver, then into his brain. He didn't suffer long. He died on April 29th, 2006, just five weeks after he was initially diagnosed. He lived in his own home up until his last week when he went first to the hospital, then into the hospice to die. Mother would not be so fortunate.
Because of her unbalanced mental condition and daily health needs we needed to place mother into an assisted living facility almost immediately following father's death. At first she complained and groused about being away from the house where she'd "lived for fifty years" but eventually warmed to the new environment and began making friends. And then she had a second stroke which caused her to black out, fall and break her arm at the shoulder socket, and tear an artery. She spent the two weeks in Virginia Mason Hospital then four more recuperating in the Anderson House rehabilitation and nursing center. When it was nearing time for her release, we knew mother's care prevented her from ever returning to an assisted living facility. We shopped around and found her a nice group family home near Woodinville where she lives today.
My mother's dementia and father's death affected me in ways completely unexpected. Although naturalistic and pragmatic when it comes to accepting the fragility of the brain and finality of death, I found myself unprepared for the onslaught of emotions that followed my father's departure. For several weeks I was exquisitely aware of his absence, as if a kind of black hole had suddenly appeared in the world that was soaking up all the light that had been my father's life. My brother, Brant, was experiencing this same sensation, but we had little time for commiseration as we were entrenched in our parents' legal, financial, and health affairs, having to deal with Social Security, Medicare, life insurance policies, retirement stipends, taxes, bank transfers, signatures, public notaries, and the transfer of health insurance for our mother.
One side effect of my father's sickness and death was I became acutely sensitive to the understanding that life is transitory, that all things must pass, and that the world will end (as it must for each and every one of us) in the last breath, in the final hearbeat, in the blinking of an eye. I began taking stock of my own life, my journey thus far, and the path on which I found myself currently walking.
I recalled stories of my premature birth, remembered in vivid detail the incident with my mother that landed me in the hospital, all the people I loved or ever hoped to love, my struggles with religion, and truth, and substance abuse, and coming out clean and whole and grateful on the other side.
I realized I wanted to share my journey, to make it available up on the web, even if no one ever found or read it.
I also realized I needed to make a kind of confession, to come clean, to apologize to everyone and everything I'd ever wronged. I needed to speak my mind and I needed to tell the truth.
I went about completely redesigning my website and started to write. And then, as soft and quiet as a whisper, something else happened...
