From a friend for further contemplation

I just had a thought. Why do we find it so hard to say we don't like people? So often, it seems like we feel we have to have justification for not getting along with someone else. We decide they're a "drama queen," "passive aggressive," "narcissistic," "fill in the blank," therefore we (and by extension others) should be justified for not liking them because they're a Bad Person.

Wouldn't it be easier to simply say, "Yeah, X. We don't mesh," and move on? What weird masochistic streak makes us get to the point where we have to be supremely irritated and/or angry with someone all the time before we're ready to admit that, perhaps, our personalities just don't cohere? And I do say us because I'm as guilty of this as anyone else.

It's interesting how I can stand back and look at interpersonal relationship problems now with the realization that 99% of them aren't personal, they're personality. If that makes sense. I couldn't see that before.

An unmistakable trait of every true genius, is their persistent awareness of how much more there is to know. And an unmistakable trait of every true sage is their persistent awareness of how much more there is to love.

Dad fell this morning

not bad fall, says he stood up and just fell over. He fell toward the wall, bumped his head and has a pain in the right rib where he tried to stop himself and strained that side. I managed to get him standing (that was a challenge and puts me in mind to weight lift!) and his morning pills in him and now he's back in bed.
Mom is, of course, freaking out. She's now "taking a nap" with him - although laying there and still quietly freaking out...

It is a challenge to choose which parent to focus on when we're in a crisis. Mom is sure she can be helpful (and desperately wants to and I don't blame her) and I need her out of the way in order to deal with dad physically. Then all the attention has to go to mom to calm her down and explanations are so often unhelpful as her cognition is so limited...

What a houseful of frail aging issues I have!

notes for remembance

Understanding the difference between taking time off and actual self care.

the growing reality of more aged than our medical system cn care for or 'hide' in facilities.

needing to live together as multi-dimensional families (perhaps with someone elses parents)

Not waiting for miracles to make the process easier but making your own miracles

finding the joy

linguistic archaeologist

the beige pants incident and sudden inappropriate dress/undress

Recognition

Mom is struggling to recognize familiar things. We had a moment or two of this but two days ago, she took off a pair of pants and proceeded to tell me that she didn't know whose they were but they were not hers and she didn't know where they had come from. I foresaw in that moment the reason why Alz patients occasionally take off clothes or wear inappropriate clothes. No matter how it looks to us 'the normal people' they don't recognize the clothes and who wants to wear something that doesn't belong to them. It's going to be a bit difficult if it happens in a public environment where we can't make a clothing change with ease...

Then yesterday we attempted to go to a movie (sold out) and when we arrived home, mom didn't know where we were and told me this was not our home and it looked weird (or wrong, I can't remember which) every time we came here.

We had company with us and mom spent almost the entire evening being helpful but wondering whose house we were in. I foresee wandering in our immediate future and we are rapidly advancing to the stage of not recognizing people...I am no longer confident that we will make it to the end of the year with mom living with us.

Those impending changes are difficult to contemplate. I know they're coming but the reality of having them here is something else entirely!

Conversation

I went this week back to the VA to finish (I hope) the paperwork for mom and dad's benefits. While I was there, I had an interesting conversation with Glenda Pavey (she rocks!) about how I see my passions converging into a working possibility for my next career.

I have a passion for Liturgy and liturgical studies, I also have a passion for the elderly and the aged and their spirituality. I told Glenda that I envisioned the 'healthy church model' as a coin perfectly balanced on it's edge. What keeps it balanced is the pillars of youth and aged.

I'm concerned with the movement I see of only appealing to the needs of the youth and young people and their responsibility to keep 'life' in the church. The worship media has become loud, fast paced and heavily focused on myriad modes of sensory stimulation. While this may be good for the over-stimulated youth of our society, the aged can not keep up with the fast paced worship nor do they find themselves spiritually 'fed' feeling the presence of the divine.

I have also noticed in the congregations I've visited a severe lack of true accessibility for not only the disabled but the aged. Stairs are not easy to traverse if you have an elder needing to use the platform, entrances are not always wheelchair or walker accessible, bathrooms are woefully ill-equipped to handle the needs of the various populations, etc.

It's no wonder that our elders feel brushed aside and discarded when the essential components of their spiritual lives are not proactively addressing their physical needs to ensure continued involvement.

Growing old with physical impairments should not be an end of life judgment. The opportunity for learning, sharing and contributing to the vitality of a spitirual community belongs to all the members of the community; young, elder, hale and frail.

Ramblings...

Somedays I forget that I'm dealing with two diseases in my family. We seem to spend almost all our time as a family concentrating on mom's alzheimer's and dad's parkinson's is often overlooked. And yet, in the reality of life, he is the one I look at and watch to see how he's doing. His struggle is so physically obvious that all of us, especially mom, spend a lot of energy on him and holding him up with the schear power of our mental wills.

Because mom looks so 'normal' i find that I am often harsh with her or short-tempered or exasperated or, or, or... I know the disease is not her fault and I know that her responses are not personal choices to make life difficult but it is easy to forget. I get lost in the appearance of 'normal'.

Somedays I get lost in the old patterns of my relationship with my mom, especially the patterns that didn't work very well! We engaged in power struggles for the entirety of my teenage years and even with the alzheimer's our pattern for powering over each other still exists. We both love and need to be right about the other. I have always prided myself on 'knowing my mom' and she has always declared her understanding of me even if we hadn't spoken for a year. Two mighty and stubborn women in the same household is an interesting challenge in the best of circumstances and these circumstances create fuel for even more interesting times...

I often wonder what our early relationship was really like as I'm sure my memories are skewed through my childhood understandings and I am unable to 'look back' with anything resembling adult emotions. Every time mom responds in a way that reminds me of my childhood I'm immediately caught in a flood of childhood emotions and often behave in very childish ways.

Ah, so much for an evening's rambling...