Out loud I have a hard time saying most of this. Even thinking about it sometimes it’s hard to breath. So saying it out loud, having the words leave my body even when I’ve tried with Mel, my throat closes and I stop. I can’t do it.
I know I did what needed to be done. I know it was the right thing to do under the circumstance, but.
It will be a very long time, if ever before I will get past feeling what I felt that day I helped Dad pack a suitcase, drove him to the building for lunch so that after they could take him to his/their new room. That feeling will be with me for a very long time. No matter how often someone says or even I say it to myself, it was the right thing to do, I had to do it. I had to take what at that time he knew as his life, his freedom. Then to explain where the car keys were, then where the car was. More than once.
There is nothing anyone can say or will be able to say ever that will make that right on my heart. I didn’t want to do it, never wanted to have to do it, yet I did. I had to be the one to walk him out of his house with a small suitcase to deliver him to a room with a chair and then a few pictures. As scary or dangerous as it might have been, would he still be here because he had the muscle memory to do his daily routine of see Mom, get lunch, go home and watch sports.
Regardless of others around it was a feeling of complete isolation and what for me, while certainly less than some, my own trauma that turned me upside down and inside out.
That feeling, I’m not sure will ever leave no matter what you or anyone says, period. In fact someone saying you did the right thing, is just irritating.
Mom was different, I think she was more resigned and maybe had enough reality then to know it had to happen. She didn’t fight it or question it. While it does nothing to help me, my hope is that Dad more often didn’t remember rather than remembering.
Then everything that came with that. A new job, full time job and a full time job just trying to do right for them and at every turn someone saying no. Someone questioning every single action or attempt to get for them what was rightfully theirs. Like I was just trying to scam everyone.
Then I had to be happy and on for work 40 hours a week, with that mixed in the middle since all of those agencies for Mom and Dad only have regular hours 9-5 Mon – Friday, eastern time. Like everyone lives in the time zone and has ALL the time in the world to sit on hold then answer all the security questions like you are new every time. Even when they called me on my number that I GAVE them…please verify and confirm who you are. FU was what I wanted to say.
Yes, I am mad. Mad that I had to do it all with no help. Moral support fails and through this, was no help. Words to rally on fueled the anger. More emotions I had to bury, keep to myself. Why should anyone else have to feel what I was feeling?
Then work, a phone call with a candidate. Smile on my face, be nice and act like I actually give a fuck that they might be the perfect person for the job we are talking about. A call with Long Term Care robots asking the same damn questions they did the week before, questioning every dime. Then a phone call with a candidate, always on video, so smile on my face….I am exhausted.
It seemed that it all then trickled into me just trying to do simple things. Nothing could just be done, it had to have some level of complication, question or just plain, no you can’t do it that way. No straight line from A to B, it was all over the alphabet. A few times I even bucked up and went into a call saying as the phone rang, this will go well, this will be easy, this will work in my favor. And no. There was no escape of the can’t (sorry Grandma) and the ridiculous.
