No, not the Peter Gabriel album. Good album though.I’m just trying to find a good intro into this long-overdue update.
Here goes.
About A month before I moved to Pittsburgh, father started showing signs of… well, completely falling apart! He would squat down but then was unable to stand back up, to the point that I had to call 911 for a lift assist a couple of times. He would slur his words and completely forget how to do simple things; routines he had done thousands of times before. Things like writing a check, taking his meds, and even making tea!
Father improved a bit for a few days, and I dismissed it all to old age. I wish I hadn’t. After I left for Pittsburgh, his friends found him outside one night in his apartment’s parking lot, confused and in very bad shape. They called 911, and my father was about to be pronounced dead as he arrived in the hospital when he was revived. After two weeks in the hospital, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and is now in a long-term care facility, where he will live out the rest of his days… however long it may be.
Since I moved to Pittsburgh, I’ve had to coordinate father’s paperwork for his stay at the nursing home, and assist his friends and neighbors the best I can to empty his apartment and re-home Mozart, Julie, Pacca, and Mr. Birb to new homes, where they can be happy and live their lives. Those poor pets; I feel so guilty about taking their daddy away from them, and taking them out of their home where they had lived for so many years. Heck, Julie was born in that apartment!
Worse yet, I feel guilty about father. It’s true there was no live lost between us, but I still can’t help but feel like an asshole for leaving him on his own when I did. The last month I was there, I did my best to take care of him but I was pushed to my physical limit, and he hadn’t even hit his worst yet. The constant worry and the responsibility for everything also took an emotional toll on me, so I know full and well I wouldn’t have been useful if I had been there.
Still… I can’t help it. Father’s life has been turned upside down, and I feel horribly guilty about it. Had the situation been reversed, father probably wouldn’t have cared one whit, if his past performance as my father is anything to go by. But I’m not him. I feel bad about it all. It may be because I had to make all the arrangements for him; coordinate the removals and discharge of all his things. I don’t know why I feel guilty.
It’s just how I feel.