Taking on the new role
By Ruth SoRelle, M.P.H.
When I was 3 years old, my Dad could fix anything – a squeaky wheel on my tricycle, a broken doll and even a Halloween costume when my very pregnant mother was too ill to come through.
When I was 10, we could talk about everything and anything – cars, politics and even death.
Dad used to measure the value of our boyfriends by having them help him move refrigerators. One who could take his part of the burden was "much a man," a stamp of approval few received. I married the one who could carry the refrigerator by himself. He remains "much a man."
By the time I was in my 20s, Dad was always there when I needed him – comforting my daughter after she had tubes in her ears, replacing the washers on the faucet in my sink, advising us on which car to buy and which job to take – even though he was going through cancer treatment himself. He was there for my son as well and still recounted vividly the day that Richard made his first point in Little League, shortly after he turned 5.
My Dad remained "much a man," despite the health problems that kept him bedridden for the last few months of his life. He published his first poem at the end of May. He followed the travails of the Houston Astros with great acumen. He remembered to thank people who performed personal tasks for him, and he enjoyed life until the end.
However, I went from being the person who received care to caregiver. It was a tough road.
Dad knew. He walked it himself, as my mother's mind became prey to Alzheimer's disease. Her body remained strong while her memories went down some plaque-clogged hole, never to return. We mourned her twice – once when she no longer knew who we were and again when her body failed at the end.
Dad, on the other hand, dwindled physically. His organs failed one by one, often victim to the treatments for cancer and heart disease that were lifesavers when he underwent them.
His mind remained strong and alert. His dentures no longer fit after he lost all the weight, and it became hard to eat. Even though we visited daily and brought him special food he loved – gumbo, potato soup, milk shakes – we could not put a pound on him.
I was not alone in this. My husband pitched in as much or more than I did. My son helped his grandfather get ready for dialysis three days a week and even provided support during other procedures. He is a champion.
And, as I learned from a New York Times blog, we were members of a legion of people whose parents are or were members of the class called the frail elderly. The blog called The New Old Age chronicles the dilemmas of becoming the caregivers for people who once assumed that role for us.
Read the posts at the end of the blog, and you will see what a motley crew we are, lurching from crisis to crisis – feeling alone and overtaxed. Care giving at the end of life is a much different job than it is at the beginning. Each, however, is a passage through which most of us will go.
The only thing worse will be when the care giving is no longer needed. I suffered that as well in July. My son called one Monday to tell me his grandfather no longer wanted to go to dialysis.
Dad and I had talked about this day, but I was not ready. He was.
"I'm not afraid," he said. "This is not living."
By Thursday, we sat in his room at the nursing facility and watched as his breathing slowed. The pain he had experienced in the hours before gave way to the morphine. Then his mouth curved in that big smile we all remembered so well. Inside his chest, his big heart no longer beat but quivered. Then he died.
Last week, I was clearing the messages from my cell phone and there was one from that fateful Monday.
"Scooter, this is your dad," he said, using my childhood nickname. "I don't want to do this any more."
I understand.
