Topic: My Relationships with Others
Since my teens, I have had an excellent relationship with my father. He never liked children and had little patience for them. When I was in kindergarten, I didn't like going to school. My mother would let me stay home whenever I wanted. One day I told my father I wasn't going to school because I didn't want to. He asked me what I thought would happen if he didn't go to work because he didn't want to. That didn't register with me. He was trying to use logic with a five-year-old. Five-year-olds don't understand logic of that sort. My father didn't like me as a child---or anyone else for that matter----because he couldn't control me with his quiet logic. In fact, my memories of my dad when he was married to my mother, are those of a very critical man. There was virtually nothing Mom could do to please him. I remember one evening she was wearing nothing but an apron to try to initiate some kind of romance with him. But their relationship was unsalvageable. His interests had gone in another direction; he was playing for the other team. My mother was never able to regain his affections or his passion. The naked apron was an exercise in futility. He was in love with a man. They divorced by the time I was in third grade, and my dad picked up me and my sister every Thursday afternoon after school and took us out every other Saturday.
Later my mother and her new husband moved us to Northern California and our visits to our dad became less predictable. But when we visited him in Los Angeles or he visited us in Marin, our time was action-packed. We could always count on a great time with him. We never visited him and had a dull time. For this, I was always grateful because our mother had two small children at home, and life was hum-drum.
I can remember the day my father started liking me. I had to explain something to him. I did it in a very logical and matter-of-fact manner. And I saw a new appreciation for me in his eyes. I had finally become a person with whom he could relate. From that moment on, he and I could always talk. Even when I was a stupid college student, calling him during office hours to complain about my stupid boyfriend, he would sit and talk to me. Even though he undoubtedly had patients waiting for him in those little exam rooms, he would talk to me until I had let out all my adolescent angst. For the next several decades, we talked as friends. When I felt like a complete failure, he was my biggest supporter. I can remember him telling me time after time that he believed I could learn anything I put my mind to. The vote of confidence was huge in getting me through the 'difficult' years, the years when I didn't know who I was or what I would become----or what I was capable of becoming. We had classical music and quiet logical thinking in common. He excused my poor taste in men and husbands. I was, in his eyes, brilliant and capable of anything.
The man who had been so unhappy with my mother had disappeared. In his place was a man who lived life the way he liked, who worked hard, valued education,kept an impeccably clean home, watched his weight---and everyone else's---with an eagle eye, and took careful charge of his money. His choice in men wasn't much better than mine. During his forties, fifties and sixties---and even into his seventies----my dad was a happy and supportive part of my life. On the QT, I heard that he thought my first husband was an excellent choice and my second an overgrown surfer. He and I had time together at the opera and 'visits' on occasion. On our 'visits' we would talk about virtually anything. He was enormously proud that I was bilingual and that I had chosen to put my professional efforts into working with underprivileged children. For years I taught in bilingual programs, believing in the philosophy that if you taught a child in his primary language, the second language would come more easily, a concept based on theories of basic interpersonal communication versus conceptually academic language proficiency. It was a type of education that had plenty of foes, especially people who were knee-jerk reacting to the term 'bilingual education' without any knowledge of the body of research supporting it.
The time came when my dad really wasn't safe to live by himself. In the decade preceding this time, my husband's parents had both become infirmed and died, first his mom and then his dad. Upon realizing that we had been terribly naive in letting his father take care of his mother, Bill and I had been much more attentive to his dad during his last two years. Bill spent a few days a week at his dad's, arranged for care for him, even got a grad student to live in the house with him. Even though he had tremendous issues with his dad, Bill did the 'right thing', and I was proud of him. It was Bill who recognized that my dad's ability to take care of himself and live alone was waning. He had a caregiver come in during the days at first. Then he made sure that either he or I, or both of us, joined Dad for dinner every evening and stayed at his townhouse until he was safely in bed. Bill was right; Dad shouldn't have been alone. It was during this time, in the late spring of 2008, that Dad's walking reminded me of someone on the moving floors of a funhouse. His balance was shot. He was falling and it was only a matter of time until he took a header down the stairs, even though we had installed a stairlift. Dad was truly an accident waiting to happen.
In July we moved Dad to an assisted living facility down at the beach. Bill and I were completely in love with it. We couldn't wait to get old and move in ourselves. But Dad didn't like it, not from day 1. He didn't like being with all those 'old people'. "But Dad," I said, "you're one of them!" It didn't matter. Some people don't see themselves as old, and resent the constant reminders they see in the faces around them. Some people need the companionship of people of many ages. And Dad is apparently one of those people.
Within a couple of weeks we noticed two things: 1) Dad wasn't going to be staying there and 2)there was something terribly wrong with his health. He balanced was horrible, he was having memory and reality problems, and he felt like he had to go to the bathroom every ten minutes. We decided to move him in with us. He was delighted. In order to free us up from having to be Dad's companion at the assisted living facility and have time to get our house ready for him, we hired a caregiver to take care of him. Her name was Carmelita.
Dad had been committing malpractice on himself; he was seeing only a cardiologist for his care. He needed to see a urologist, a neurologist, a gerontologist, and a primary care physician. We started making appointments for him. Oh, my God!! Was he ever angry! How could we interfere with his medical care! He was a professional for God's sake! Wow, his back was really up. His boxers were bunched up. He had a cow. He was pissed. Too bad, we said. You're not taking care of yourself. He had a special kind of water on the brain, it turns out. He needed a shunt to relieve the pressure. This water on the brain mimics alzheimers. But before we could take care of that, he developed a huge infection and became septic. He had stopped using his prostate medication and his prostate had grown so that it blocked off his ureter. He had two liters of urine in him. No wonder he felt like he had to go to the bathroom all the time! It was in there; it couldn't get out. He was in the hospital for over a month. The night he came home, his first night living in our house, Bill barbecued steak. Dad choked on it and Bill had to use the Heimlich. Flying steak pieces......
Dad's first couple of months in our house were very sweet. We all paid lots of attention to him and he was sweet and appreciative. He had a catheter. Carmelita was here 24/7. It was a good time. A couple of months later Dad had a laser procedure done on his prostate and it fixed the enlarged prostate problem for good. He now has the bladder of a 30-year-old.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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