Crossing the bridge

     I would like to sit alone in a dark room, in a comfortable chair curled up in the fetal position and cry until I dry up from dehydration. The pain that I feel when I see how far dementia has brought down my Dad is something I have tried desperately for almost a year to run away from. But today, as the rain pours down outside, it is fitting that I sit here amidst the mountain of unfolded clothes and dirty dishes and work piled up around me, that I type how I feel because today, Dad was admitted to Hospice and they say it might be only a couple of more weeks before he goes to be with Mom and Jesus. He's in a nursing home on a dementia unit, but Hospice nurses go there too, and they are like beautiful angels who help you cross the bridge from medical personnel who are trying to fix a broken man over to the common sense and realistic ease into the inevitable.
     And so here I sit. He's in Gadsden. I'm in Huntsville. No nursing home in Huntsville would take him because he came from the old folks crazy hospital in Tuscaloosa.  He stayed there about 2 months while they took him off of anti psychotic medications.  He started losing weight at a much faster rate. He weighed 148 when he was admitted there. He weighed 136 when he came out. He still had that stubborn drive to get up even though his brain could not tell him it wasn't safe and he would fall. He'd get angry that he couldn't get any help getting up and out and who knows what else. A judge committed him because he was deemed a threat to himself and mean to some of the caregivers. I think they just got in his way. He was too weak to hit anybody, but he grabbed a caregiver trying to get up. That got him committed...But that's all behind us now. He survived it. They helped us find a good nursing home in Gadsden..2 hours away, but still it's the best one he's been in so far..and honestly, I don't know if it's that they're all that good or that he's just declined so much that it really doesn't matter anymore. But yesterday, he weighed 123. He's 5'10". He had been speaking a little here and there.  Now, he just grunts and there are no audible words. He looks like a concentration camp prisoner. We try to feed him and he just takes a little then either spits it out or doesn't swallow. I have so many things I want to write about this, but it just all floods in and I can't quit crying.
     My wonderful sister and I have a routine each time we go to see him.  After our visit with him, we go to the Cracker Barrel, eat lunch, then go to the discount bread store, then go to the garden store and walk through the nursery. Sometimes we buy a flower or two. Then, we go get ice cream. It is what we have deemed "our decompression routine".  But today, it didn't work. Today, we had a professional tell his it's close to the end. The unknown date is starting to come into view. He can't exist with a 9lb weight loss per week for very long....and again I can't stop crying. I held his hand, tried to feed him, rubbed his head. Sometimes his eyes would meet mine, and he seemed to recognize me for a split second. Then it was gone. He used to wink at us. He seemed to be trying to do that again. I didn't want him to see me cry because I wasn't sure if being that close to his face if he would realize I was crying.  Sometimes when I would smile, it would seem like he was smiling back - at least with his eyes - but I don't know how much of that is really me just wanting some kind of recognition.
     But life goes on. The children still have things they need Mommy to do. Laundry needs to find it's way to the bedrooms instead of the couches and chairs where it's new residence seems to be. Life just goes on and you either move on with it or sit somewhere curled up in the fetal position and wait for the crew from Hoarders Buried Alive to knock on your door. I guess that's the grieving process though. It's just another thing to do....just another bridge to cross.
   

December 7, 2013....I don't know if I every published that entry above. I haven't blogged since then, but now feel like I'd like to again. That was on 5/17. Dad died the next day. We got a call from the nurse who said she didn't think we had much longer. We dropped everything and drove to Gadsden. He died about 30 minutes after we were there.

The funeral was better than our Mom's was, but in a way it was kind of for both of them. It was a military funeral complete with a 21 gun salute. We also had a bag pipe. It was a grave side service, and I wrote the eulogy which the funeral director informed me that I would be reading at the last minute. I told him I didn't think I could do that, but I would try...I was right...I couldn't even stand in front of friends and family and read something I'd written.  I motioned for my husband to come over and he saved me. He read my words, and I stood here and cried like a baby.

But as I've said before.  Life goes on.  The grieving goes with you. You just push it aside and do the next thing. It sneaks up to take front and center in the strangest of ways. It might slap you when you're just cooking dinner and you see a recipe your Mom wrote out for you. You might be going along pretty well and then all of a sudden for no reason, you get an image of your Dad saying something to you. Then you cry...for awhile...Then, you move on again.

SO...during this Christmas season now...the first one "officially" without Dad, I move on by reminding myself that although this is the first Christmas without him, this is his first Christmas in Heaven. I make myself dwell on that and on what he and Mom are doing there. It is the only way to get through it.

I might write a book about this someday...or I might just grieve quietly and move on...blog here and there and revisit these feelings someday. I kind of doubt I will though. It's painful to relive those memories, and honestly, life is too short to grieve all the time. We let death rob us when that happens. I won't let that hapen.