Aging Parents

When I was a teenager, my father and stepmom moved down to Louisiana, where my stepmom was from, to be near to her aging parents. My father had aging parents of his own, but they were a good decade behind stepmom's and in great health and going great guns.

My dad always thought somehow that I would emigrate to the States to be near them, but that never materialized. I had my own life up here - school, work, marriage, jobs - and I stayed here. Every year daddy and stepmom would drive up from Louisiana to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks, and every year my grandparents would drive down to Louisiana to see them. I only went once, that was enough for me as a teenager. When I heard my stepbrother telling a story about a cop setting a black person down on an anthill, him laughing his head off as he told the story, oh and using the "n" word while he was at it, that just turned me off quite completely. The South gives me the shivers, point finale.

Well stepmom's parents passed away, and my grandparents passed away. My dad and stepmom came up one final visit the year after grandpa was gone, and that was it for the yearly visits.

I went down once again, with Hubby, oh, over a decade ago now. My dad was starting to look thinner than I remembered him being. We had a good visit, but it was overshadowed by the feeling I had that I was seeing them for the last time.

My father has been slipping lately. He's had a couple of bank problems when he needed some assistance to get his Canadian pension re-sent to him because the bank had changed its transit number. It became apparent to me during that crisis that daddy was losing his nouns. He was very nearly unable to make a coherent sentence, he'd reach for a word and lapse into silence, floored by the lack of words. I would coax him on and offer suggestions, and somehow we'd make it through the conversation.

He's in his 80th year right now, and stepmom is 82 and hasn't been really well for some time. He spends all his time looking after her. But being cantankerous, he tends to get into spats with service providers and friends alike. I heard him talk about people coming in to help, and how he'd sent them all away. And he was always fighting with AT&T. Once he even went out and bought himself a cell phone, thinking that would be cheaper than paying the phone company. That didn't work out of course, but the biggest problem was the cell phone just didn't work, or he didn't know how to work it. He has big fingers, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the reason he had trouble working the phone.

Well, today I tried to call him and his line has been disconnected. So the phone company is having a go this round. I fired off an email to my stepbrother asking him to check what's going on, but in my heart I know perfectly well what's going on. Daddy has been cantankerous and is denying he owes what they say he does and they've cut him off, and I have precious little hope of service being restored any time soon. And now I can't even have the reassurance of hearing his voice on the phone complaining of this and that.

I already fear his home looks like an episode of "hoarders" and shudder to think of what he's like behind the wheel of his car. And I fear that soon the inevitable will come knocking and he'll have to go into some kind of facility, and I'm not there to help him or reassure him or even know how he's doing. I'm out of the loop, unable to do anything for him.

Disconnected.