Over the last eighteen months I have discovered that I missed the chapter about caring for your parents. I am blessed in that I have lots of help, and that one of my parents is healthy as a horse at 83...
But, here is my father. Here is what is left of my war torn father. No, he didn't serve in any battles where medals were given. But here he is. As his father once said to me, "heels stuck in the mud" - for being wheel chair bound. My grandfather didn't know who I was but he was able to carry on a wonderful conversation with me. My father may know who I am - I think he still does, but he is increasingly robbed of the words he loved so much. I still get glimpses into the man I grew up loving so much - "I have no data on that," or "Great".
I know that my father hated the idea of Jack Kevorkian, and assisted suicide, but I often wonder if he knew where he would be a 85 if he would still feel the same way. It's hard to believe that anyone would chose this.
The trouble is that the road to here is filled with tiny steps and all of a sudden you don't know how you got here.
Every week, this is the hardest thing I do. I go as stare at my future, and watch my father crumble away in pieces. I don't know if he is still in there or not.
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This week I listened to a piece on NPR about mice and sleep. If you are a mouse, sleeping is dangerous - cats and all. What is the evolutionary advantage to sleeping? It turns out that at night the cells in mouse brains get small and flat while they sleep. This allows the fluid in their brains to wash out all the gunk. Wow. They have not found this to be true in humans yet, but I just can't help wondering if sleep might not turn out to be a bigger deal than we might realize...
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