I am sorry for your loss, Just A Guy and pharmakos. My grandfather also died just last weekend. Well technically he's my grandmothers second husband, but who cares
. As cruel as it might sound though, it was really about time for him, as his dementia was constantly getting worse and he just seemed to be very confused and depressed all the time.
Xorkoth, yes I remember reading about how your mother is taking care of your father because of his illness, which reminded me a bit of my grandmother. Only quite recently she had agreed to let him move to a nursing home, until then she took care of him mostly herself with her almost 90 years. I mean there were people from a nursing service coming over like twice a week and my mother and I helped out every now and then. But still it was her who was around him every day, the stress of which brought her really close to collapse over time, like she could hardly sleep because she feared he might get up and run out onto the street at night. Also over time she became a little impatient and kind of judgemental with him, like always having a undertone of "You should be able to do this and I am very sad that you are not!" I was always like, who cares that half his food is landing on his shirt and the floor, at least he is still eating with appetite, isn't that something to be thankful for? But yeah, that's easy to say if you're just there visiting. All of which is to say that I applaud people like your mother and my grandmother for their selflessness, but if I should ever be in the situation of being cared for I really hope that the people around me doing that, will be able to pause and think about what they need to do to care for themselves. I wouldn't want anyone to sacrifice their own well being out of a misguided sense of responsibility.
Yeah my dad's parents both died years ago, it was really sad but honestly I found it a lot easier to deal with because they were really old, and had gotten sick, it was time. Still sad of course, but they had lived full lives and were ready to go. It's a lot harder when someone is younger than you expect, especially if they expected to live a lot longer. Like, my dad had just retired after an entire adult life of working SO hard to support us, he just had his 60th birthday, he was only 56 when diagnosed, and totally healthy other than that. He and my mom were excited about being able to travel together to all sorts of places they had always wanted to go but had never had the time to go. They are/were best friends, so close and loving and happy. Then he got ALS. For the first 2 years things didn't change a lot, I mean he gradually couldn't use his arms, and then had to walk slower, but he was still really happy, they could still travel, my mom didn't have a big burden of taking care of his every need. When it started getting pretty advanced, things changed a lot. I mean I don't think she can see him romantically at all anymore because she has to wipe his ass, feed him through a tube, wipe drool, and a million other things, she basically can barely have a life of her own. And he knows it and it kills him. He has told me that the worst part is that he feels like a burden. My mom has slowly stopped being able to hide it too, she'll say comments in front of him about how she never has fun anymore and shit. It kinda pisses me off, but at the same time, I can't even imagine the amount of pain and stress she feels constantly. Every time I visit she asks me if I can stay and watch him so she can go do stuff like yoga, or see a friend, with this pleading look in her eye, like she can't wait to get away for a bit. And I'm sure she can't, and I can't blame her. It's intense taking care of my dad. I'll be there for a week at a time, and by the end I'm like, shit I'm glad to be leaving. My dad loves it when I'm there because everyone else kind of treats him differently, even my siblings (they see him quite regularly though because they live close), but I try to treat him the same, and I am hyper-focused on his comfort and can anticipate things well so he doesn't have to ask, because he hates asking, he's always been the one who was there for us for whatever we needed, and hates it being the other way around.
Terrible fucking disease, really. For the first couple of years my dad was saying, thank god I got ALS and not dementia, or cancer, etc, because I won't be in pain and I will have my mind still. Now he says this is the worst way he can imagine because he feels like it's taken away his dignity and manhood and now he's afraid we're all (and by that I think he mostly means my mom) will remember him this way instead of the way he was before the disease, and he feels like a mind trapped in a body. And I totally understand that.
I stand at six foot zero
In the netherlands that's not even tall, iirc we might have the tallest peeps in the world or rank high
why how tall are you guys?
I'm the same height as you.
I'm actually pretty short for my family though (we're mostly Swedish in ancestry). My dad is 6 foot zero also, but my brother is 6'3", and my male cousins range from 6'1" to 6'7".
