Thinking about all this... Stuff.

People make a lot of assumptions about my life. Most folks don't ask questions about why I am living with my parents or what kind of tasks I have taken on since moving back. They don't ask how I feel or if I am stressed out. They assume that I am busy and that my stress level is maxed out but they are wrong. I do what everyone else does to maintain a home, whether they live alone or with a spouse or significant other or with their children. I clean. I cook. I work in the yard and maintain a garden.

My parents are not yet in a place where they need help bathing or getting dressed or eating. They even do the stairs alone most of the time. But my mom's Alzheimer's has reached a stage in which she struggles to make decisions. It is time-consuming and stressful FOR HER to decide what to wear and what to eat and to remember if she already took a bath or took her pills or ate breakfast. And my dad is not very mobile. He uses a walker. He basically moves from his chair in the family room to a spot on the couch in the living room to his "puzzle room" where he watches sports and puts together puzzles. So I am here to do the day to day. It is different than living alone in my own house but I am no busier than I was before. Maybe people say they know how busy I am as an excuse for no longer asking me to hang out or go out on the weekends. And that's fine. My home is priority right now. That and walking my mean dog. :)

While my to do list is not much different than "before," my worries are very different. Every morning I get up and check on my parents. I worry that one day I will wake up and one of them will have died. That might sound morbid but that's what I worry about. I worry that they will fall down the steps or up the steps or that my mom will not make it to the bathroom in time when she is out in public. I worry that something will happen to my dad and that I will have to get help with my mom. And, I worry that something will happen to my mom and that my dad will slip into an oblivion of sadness. I worry about whether or not they are eating enough or eating well. And on the rare occasion that I do go out, I know they are sitting at home eating cheese and crackers and that makes me feel terrible.

I also worry that I will eventually end up alone, never having found a life-long love, never having had or adopted children, never having found the kind of happinesses that I dreamed about growing up. I worry that I won't be able to handle whatever comes next and I know that I don't want to handle it alone. I worry that when I am in their place, there will be nobody to take care of me. But honestly, that is the LEAST of my worries.

This is a pretty lonely life. I don't regret it now and I never will. I do miss having more personal space and shelves for all of my books and I miss having lots of friends. I miss going out every weekend and catching a ball game a couple of times a week. I miss playing ball. I miss having the kind of job that involved lots of social interaction and celebrity sightings and parties and generally fun and talented people. I suppose all of that is my own fault. But there is not a lot of time to think about all of this... stuff. Because time is short. So I shove the sadness and the loneliness to the side so I can enjoy another Hallmark movie with mom or a baseball game (on TV) with dad or just a sit on the porch for an hour. This is what we are supposed to do, right? I just wish I would have done all the other things I was supposed to do first so I wasn't doing this by myself.

Father's Day

My dad wears many hats. He owns about 25 baseball caps. Five of them are random hats bought by his kids as souvenirs from various trips. The rest of them are hats representing the St. Louis Cardinals, Bass Pro Fishing, and St. Mary's High School (his alma mater). Others wear their hearts on their sleeves. My dad wears his on his head.

He has other interests, of course. He is crazy about my nephew, his only grand child (thanks to me-- the one who has yet to reproduce). If he could have my nephew around 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, he would. He doles out cash every time the kid walks in the door and says, "that's what grandpas are supposed to do." He also gets excited when my nephew calls or when my sister calls. He never used to be a phone guy.

My dad is also a music connoisseur. Most people don't know that he loves opera, big band, and most of all, The Beach Boys. His album collection is RIDICULOUS.

As dad gets older, it is harder for him to do the things he loves and it's kind of up to me to make things happen for him. There is not enough time in the day some times. I wish he had a fishing buddy who would pick him and his walker up at the house and take him to a shady spot at the lake once a week. I also wish he had a friend who would swing by and get him to his monthly luncheons with his high school classmates. Many days, I feel like I fail the man who worked so hard to make sure I had the best education and that I could play ball instead of having a job as a teenager. He guaranteed a childhood for his children because his ended at eleven when he had to go to work in his family's grocery store. I have to do better.

But today, I rolled out the gas grill and seasoned some delightful ribs. I whipped up his favorite twice baked potatoes and I baked a three-layer chocolate cake. All of this to say, "thank you and I love you." My dad is a pretty neat guy. And I am a pretty lucky gal.