Losing a Parent

Nothing can prepare you when you lose a parent. The anniversay of my dads passing is the 11th of April. He was 89 years old, he would have been 90 if he had made it to his birthday on the 21st of June. As my memories are so much different than my siblings I am at a loss to explain how I still feel about his passing. Granted it was a very sad time but I feel he is in a better place. When you are old and you don’t feel very well for several years then your outlook on life is different than those that aren’t that old nor feel as bad as you do. His health hadn’t been good for over 3 years. He went to doctor appointments almost every day sometimes 2 or 3 doctor appointments on the same day. I think they were using him as guinea pig. Lets try this medicine and see how it works. At one point his morning pill count was 18.

Before he passed on it was down to 11 but none of them made him feel any better. He started belching just sitting on the couch. They checked, he didn’t have any interal issues like a Hernia or Ulcer that would make him suffer like that. He couldn’t eat because of the belching, it was embarrassing for him. I kept telling my mother to have them check his medication. He wasn’t belching and then all of a sudden he was. He complained of stomach pain so they thought his Gall Bladder was bad. Wrong, I had an infected Gall Bladder and it never made me belch, it just hurt like something was twisting my stomach in knots. Over a year later they discovered that one of his medicines interacted with another medicine that he was taking that made him belch.

The only other person that I had ever heard belch like that was a friend of mine from high schools, dad. He had an ulcer and drank milk to coat his stomach as was the home remedy to fix the ulcer which we know nowa days is a crock. The worst part of all of this was my dad hadn’t been gone 3 weeks and my mother is wanting all of his clothes gone. What? I wasn’t ready for that so we pushed it back for two weeks, with her bitching the whole time that there was just too much junk and stuff in her house. As my wife put it, my mother is someone who just likes to bitch. If she isn’t bitching about something then she isn’t happy and even at that she still isn’t happy.

Her Cardiologist had to put his practice on hold because of a family issue so she had to find a different Cardiologist. She didn’t like the one my dad had which I wasn’t either as his bed side manner was non existent, but I digress. She is up in arms that no one has checked her Cholesterol in two years. She said her old Cardiologist is the one who put her on it. Well, tell the new doctor that he put you on it and tell him you want it checked. I told her that my primary care physician (actually the APRN) is the one who asked for the blood to be drawn when I went in since I was getting my blood sugar checked at the same time. She just went on and on about how no one had checked her over and all they want to do is talk all the time and no one wants to help her, that she is 82 years old and no one is helping her. No one is helping her because she will not let them help her. I found two family doctors close to her house to call and see if they are taking new patients. One of them my sister uses but no my mother was pissed at my sister at the time so she didn’t want to use him. The other doctor works at a family clinic less than 6 blocks from her house. Then I was told by my mother that she already had an appointment with her new Cardiologist. I said ok, but these are family doctors that can check your out for whatever you want to get checked about. Her reply, which she has done this several times since my dad passed away is just to wave me off and tells me not to worry about it. My wife said that I just have to get to the point of not caring. She is set in her ways and is not going to change no matter what anyone does for her.

One thing I would tell anyone who has aging parents is find out what their finances are like, where all their important papers are, do they have a buriel plan, do they already have a plot layed out and paid for or are they just going to let the surviving spouse and the kids take care of it after they are gone. Evidently my dad did all of the financial stuff and never told my mother anything with regards to money, investments, retirement or where the important papers were. She had no clue. I understand she was under a lot of stress with him just passing away but she has since told me that he never told her anything about the finances etc or where all the important papers were. We found the important papers all over the house. I thought my filing system was bad, holy moly batman. Now that she has made my sister the executor of their trust my sister and her husband take care of all of her bills on the computer for her because she has no idea how to do it. They set up most of her doctor appointments because even with new hearing aids she still has a hard time hearing. As my wife put it, better them than you. I don’t care to be that envolved with my mother. I know that sounds cold but my mother bullied me all the time I lived at home growing up. She hasn’t changed from how she was back then other than getting older. She is a mean spiteful woman and if you don’t do what she wants you to do, she waves you off and tells you don’t worry about it but you know she is mad as hell because you didn’t do whatever it was that she wanted done right then and there.

For the longest time my dad always took care of his yard even if he didn’t feel like it. He paid to have the weeds sprayed often enough that they didn’t spring up all over the yard. Occasionally they would and he would pull them out and go on about his way. He always used a push mower but when the motor burned out for the self-propelled part he never got it fixed just used it like it was. Those mowers are extremely heavy and hard to push with the self-proppelled part doesn’t work espcially since he bagged his grass. When my dad passed away my mother since she didn’t know what bills they actually had or didn’t have she canceled some that had to be reactivated. One of those were the lawn people. She was pulling weeds out yesterday. I told her she needed to call the lawn people to come spray or her back yard was going to turn into one big weed. Just like most of my yard but I don’t care about my yard, just my trees. lol

My wife keeps telling me to let my sister handle everything dealing with my mother. I am not real keen on that idea. My sister and I have different ideas on things sort of like oil & water we don’t mix to well. I don’t want my mother to pass on and find out that my sister has taken all the money out of her accounts and left me holding the bills. I trust her as far as I could throw her and that wouldn’t be very far. My mother keeps telling me that when she passes on that some of her money will be mine and I tell her I don’t want her money. Spend it like you want to spend it. I don’t want your money, I have my own.