So my father is dying. It happens once in everyone's life, dying does. And in most people's lives, they have to deal with one or both parents dying. He's worn out, worn down and worn through, and it's probably time for him to die, but he's only seventy years old. Tracy Chapman singing in my head..."Body's too old for working...body's too young to look like his. Somebody's got to take care of him..." and that's as far as I get. It can't be me. It has to be him, and he's not willing, so I guess I just step back and let him die?
I considered having him declared incompetent, force him into a hospital. My husband says it can be done. What would happen if my will intervened? If I forced him to prolong his life? I don't even know what could be forced upon him. I know he's killing my mother, who's ten years older and twenty years healthier than he is. We used to say that meanness kept him alive. It was a joke. I wonder now if it didn't hold a grain of truth. Alive by stubbornness.
I have all this rolling around in my brain, trying to be tough and detached about it, but the fact is, my daddy is dying and he doesn't seem to care. I can't make him care. My son, whom my mother thinks should be stepping in, my sixteen year old, to force my father's hand, and he can't make him care, regardless of what Ma thinks. And I won't try to make him. Wrong place for him to be. I've lived with that guilt. I've been told that what I do and say can make a difference, and when it turned out bad, I carried it. When it turned out good, I carried that, too, and thought I had something that wasn't mine. Sixteen years old...he doesn't know yet that he can channel it, but he can't create it, and he doesn't know what belongs to him and what is just not his to carry. So, he's out of it.
I just needed to rant awhile.
Till later...
I considered having him declared incompetent, force him into a hospital. My husband says it can be done. What would happen if my will intervened? If I forced him to prolong his life? I don't even know what could be forced upon him. I know he's killing my mother, who's ten years older and twenty years healthier than he is. We used to say that meanness kept him alive. It was a joke. I wonder now if it didn't hold a grain of truth. Alive by stubbornness.
I have all this rolling around in my brain, trying to be tough and detached about it, but the fact is, my daddy is dying and he doesn't seem to care. I can't make him care. My son, whom my mother thinks should be stepping in, my sixteen year old, to force my father's hand, and he can't make him care, regardless of what Ma thinks. And I won't try to make him. Wrong place for him to be. I've lived with that guilt. I've been told that what I do and say can make a difference, and when it turned out bad, I carried it. When it turned out good, I carried that, too, and thought I had something that wasn't mine. Sixteen years old...he doesn't know yet that he can channel it, but he can't create it, and he doesn't know what belongs to him and what is just not his to carry. So, he's out of it.
I just needed to rant awhile.
Till later...
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