As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
A number of subjects appear on this blog, honestly more important than by God's Grace producing the time line to put Donald Trump into the White House and having saved rich people's portfolios for four years.......and their not showing appreciation in donating like the fortune I saved them.
One of the things which come up are the reality of people growing old and helpless. We have become kind of experts in this, as I was there for my beloved Uncle, was around when my dad was dying, were the only caregivers for the Mother and spent the past 6 months once again being the primary caregiver for the Uncle.
I can honestly tell you that except for my beloved Uncle, who in many ways was an absolute sweetheart like the Viking's Mom is, we experienced the worst of people in our experience. There are times when even being Geezer Deaf is not going to fix things, in pretending not to hear them bitching, just leaving and taking it up another day.
We reached that point with the Uncle this past week, as he has been manipulating and game playing for most of the time here. The deal agreed to was 2 weeks and if he survived, it would be to Labor Day, and then he would return with the children who brought him.
Instead he manipulated me, into speaking up for him, in needing special transportation, which he had no intention of using, but it allowed a window for a further time to get into winter, where he thought he would be snowed in and no one would get him out.......of course that meant us busting snow drifts and trying to deal with him from 5 miles away each day.
I informed them before winter set in, that things had to change as we only had a two wheel drive vehicle and that was not an emergency vehicle. The solution was to use his 4 wheel drive pickup. His daughter graciously approached him on the subject, and has been very considerate and understanding in our problems dealing with him, that I marvel at her, as most people would get extremely clannish in no one can say bad things about my family.
The net result was something I suspected in Uncle was maneuvering to marginalize us. He has a pattern of verbal abuse and psychological manipulation to make people not want to confront him. The short of it, he never mentioned a thing about transportation, but instead condescendingly attacked TL on another matter, and with that, I said, "Enough, we are leaving", as he was still harping at us in laying down his law, and informed us that we did not need to show up for a bit as he had someone else.
Short version of the soap opera, I notified his family that we had been marginalized, the browbeating and that we would not be returning. They were understanding and I have no idea if he still has figured out that we are not coming back.
What galls me is a simple thing as of late he has been sucking on a toothpick like Diamond Jack playing poker surveying his world. It just adds to the hurt and disappointment, as all of this was about helping him survive another year, to have his family heal from all of their problems. Instead that looks like all that work is gone as others interested in Uncle's money are getting in the way of family concerns, as Uncle reminds me of a guy who robbed a bank in El Paso, jumped the Rio, and thought he would find safety with the Mexican mafia. The very people who were his best allies are now in the part of cutting him loose.
His children 2 who are absent, probably because he has browbeat them too much. 2 who want him institutionalized. 2 who bent over backwards to help him, and 1 who is kind to him, but is not going to be burdened by him. In all of those children, only one opened her home up to him graciously and has been underwriting him. The problem in that is, after what he did to us, she is extremely humiliated and hurt, and is rethinking about wanting him around, as he has hurt her before, and he has been manipulating her trust the past year.
The further problem is in this is she is the lawyer power with her brother who wants him institutionalized, not by him as he would have to go see him, but here where he would not have to deal with the drama.
I had thought that Uncle had picked his daughter as she would protect him. The reason I became involved is I knew like with the mother, there were people trying to railroad him into a home, which would have killed him, So for the family to heal, and for his sake, I decided to take the risk of dealing with the situation. All was going pretty good, save I did not expect his end run on breaking his word, and his keeping these replacements around to try and keep his children and myself in line, as it would prove he would not need me.
He is old, so he has made mistakes and his replacements have not been good for him. One example was they fed him bad food, which gave him the shits, and I ended up having to wash all that shit. Another example was they engaged in repairs after I had set up a reputable carpenter, and it was a horrid job, where I ended up having to fix things again. Taxing on our time, which was short already.
I am posting this not as gossip, but as a warning for others in the dynamics of things in caring for old people, as even if you have it in writing, someone is going to manipulate them for their own interests and make you look like the bad person. Because the fact is, no one wants to care for old people, and that is why no one does, and they dump them into institutions to be tortured to death and die.
It was interesting in I had two people this week, tell me, "Maybe he came back here to die in his house". If that is the case, then he is certainly dragging, as under our care he added about 8 years to his life again. I do not expect that to last as Grace is a measure of God, but there is a vast difference in a two year old being helped to walk by their parents and a two year old driving a car.
I know the factors as I know human psychology. The replacements are not going to do the hard work. They abandoned their parents, so they are not going to do what we did. So that is working against Uncle.
Fortunately, we stocked him up on food the day he blew up, but he has had problems with digestion, actually swallowing food in things swelled up, and bowel movements. I suspect something is wrong with him as he seemed to be back to an ice cream and gruel diet, Having storage full of food that you can not eat is not being in the dealer's chair.
He can shower and everything else, but has Parkinson's advancing, so he has real problems doing certain things. He can basically go in and out of the house, but that is a situation in 20 below weather that becomes a life and death situation, and with people wanting his money, and not wanting the work, normal activities are life and death, and again, we were moved out of the equation which was a power move, but a move in which he outplayed his hand..
I know how this works as no one can change the hand dealt. He just threw away the safety net of the daughter who was going beyond what was necessary. It reminds me in God recording things, such as, "I bought him a nice button shirt which was XL and he could have worn it." He instead rejected it, and said he could not wear it. Well now he is not wearing any button shirts as his hands quit working. His rejecting his daughter's open home is now a moot point as that home is closed. With the economy the way it is, and so many Veterans in dire straights with their spouses, the VA care is full and they can not get help. That means the nice care facilities which will take all his money and possessions, are all he has, or being stuck in some abusive rat hole. It has come down to it, that the very thing his daughter and I tried to save him from, is now the destiny he is going to be put into.
He will lose all control, will have assets seized, and I doubt he will ever see his children again as they live far away, and when it is known he has nothing left, the replacements will disappear and all he will have is strangers or people he knew gawking at him to give reports on how soon he will die.
I have heard the horror stories of children getting power of attorney and stealing everything. I heard that story this past week from a nice woman at the store, who was in a home, she offered to come see her, but was told she did not want to see her, as the brother was there and she was hung up on. There are many hard feelings involved and old people have a knack at creating the most hurtful memories that people have a hard time getting over.
My brother was complaining that his last memory of the mother was her being rude to him. We thought, "Our last memory was 5 years of that daily, her stealing from us, her lying to us, he being a complete ass in trying to ruin my reputation to get her way, and my last memory of my mother is yelling at her on a walk, as she had to walk for her health, but had stomped her feet going out of the house in anger, so her feet were sore.
Her words had literally sentenced her to be an invalid, as that is how she thought she could control me. That did not work, and in the end she became what she said she was. One of the last things I reminded her of was that she was not so mart now in the game she had played. She never said a word as she never did in admitting she was not as smart as she thought she was.
To the last though, I was asking her about the mail that came as we stood there, trying to stimulate her mind and make her involved in life. She was answering and then said she thought she was going to faint, and with that she died in my arms.
I know in her condition as she was deteriorating that she would have been put into a home, as it would have been too much for us, as I was already doing the bathroom things for her and not sleeping as she was up all the time claiming she had to pee, which she did not, as that was part of her manipulations, that she would have died in the next 4 months. I have been around enough sick and old animals that I know time windows on health conditions. God was good in He took her in a most peaceful way which she did not deserve.
TL and I joke or I should say I joke as I have a morbid sense of humor, "That dead people are not supposed to look that good". She honestly looked better dead than alive. Her skin was pink and nothing of the bloodshot color of heart attacks.
I was there for both of my parents dying. Odd thing when you think about it, as my siblings were not for either. I performed CPR on my dad to no avail, and did not on the mother, for the medical reason, she was a DNR, Do Not Resuscitate. It is complete folly to revive anyone if they are going to die, and that dying would be suffering.
That is in the plus minus what I know is the future of the Uncle. As my beloved Uncle once said, "You just do not die that easy". Uncle may want to die there, but that is not how it works. We revived him far too much for that. He will though deteriorate swiftly without attentive care. He has ankle swelling, so that means heart problems are in the offing. Digestion problems, urinary tract infection, balance issues, onset of Parkinsons and joint issues. He is old. It is winter. One bad thing and it is over. He refuses to get medic alert as his daughter has pleaded this the past 6 months. So as I stated I know the score in this, he is going to have problems and not say anything, because he knows he will be institutionalized. I have no idea if his replacements would phone for help or let him languish to exploit the situation, and loot his place.
That adds up to 3 days to 7 that he would be needing help and not getting it. That would mean pissing and shitting himself in that invalid state, perhaps hypothermia if he was on the floor, but it tracks to EMT's being called in whoever would find him or it would track to the coroner in removing a bloated winter heated body and the stench of that.
As I have stated, he could be living like a king with his daughter, ruling that house as they are gone most of the day, and not die alone, not die suffering, not end up decomposed in the chair in a most undignified end, but you can not tell old people a thing, and they are clever at playing things to the last breath to their great hurt.
This time, I was fortunate in I could walk away, as this is not my responsibility, no more than a nurse in hospital. The family has the authority, because if my name was on that deed, I would have told him that his daughter was coming on the holidays, to get his goddamn bags packed, as he was leaving with her, or the sheriff would be moving his ass out. Believe me that old man is scared of me, as I have seen it, when I get pissed off, and he thought I figured out his duplicity.
These are impossible situations, and no decent child should have to be put into these types of situations, and yet they are. The problem is numbers of good old people have shitty children who dump them into the home as they do not want to deal with them.
In a perfect world is my old Auntie, she is going to be 100 soon. She is at home, all alone, but her retired sons check on her daily, and that old girl is caring for herself, with diabetes and blood clot situations, and her mind is sharp as a tack, when we visited her. Most situations are not like that though, at least in my experience in people vanish, the elderly are unpleasant and your emotions are ripped apart in you in trying to figure out how to be a Christian and to deal with impossible costs.
I honestly thank God the mother is dead, usually several times a week yet, as it was hell, and God saved us from something I think would have probably killed me in the stress of her dying and dealing with her in a nursing home. The thing is I do not have the answers. I can alert you to what life is like. I can warn you of people who manipulate old people for their own interests. I can warn you that old people are crafty bastards who you have to keep an eye on. You can do your best, but it will not be enough, and it will leave you feeling empty and in shock, and you still will not be able to let it go, as you are stuck with it as a Christian in trying to deal with the impossible.
I fully plan on being there for his family, and if it needs be, I will not shirk having to deal with him, if they can not make contact and has to be checked in what condition he is in. I will do this, because I have been there as others have been and are, and I will try to protect his daughter and her siblings from what I experienced. If I can lessen it in any way, I will, because my concern is the guilty they may have later, and no one needs that, in being abused by a parent and then wondering daily if you did the right thing and how guilty you feel for loathing them after they are dead.
This time there are no answers and no solutions. There is just being prepared for the bad things which will happen in all of this.
It is why people who have gone through this, just look at the dolts out there unprepared and thanking God that they will never have to do this again.
Then it occurs to me in beloved Uncle, who did everything he could to make his dying not hard on us. It was a wonderful experience in the horridness of brain cancer that he actually healed us of our sorrows by being the man he was.
Perhaps I just got the worst people, because I am one of the few people who could deal with things that my brother was drunk on the couch this summer, upset over how mother and father had treated him. Again, we had years of this, and the old man tried to run me through a baler for insurance money, so I think my brother had a pretty easy time of it.
Damn thing is, is that all I wanted out of this to recover, was to sit on the porch over there with TL, have a few warm fall days, have a beer and just cleanse ourselves from the tension of it all, and instead we got the worst of it. That is life and it is a pisser at times, that all you can do is laugh at it.
Me? I am ready to do it again.........written contract and escape clause, as I am learning too, but by God's Grace, here am I, good at this awful job. That amazes me.
Nuff Said
agtG
