Let This Be The Last Battlefield
My dad can be a jerk. Over these last few months since I’ve been blogging his cancer, some of you readers might get the sense that he’s a lovable curmudgeon. Andy isn’t that lovable, he’s a rude, narcissistic, belligerent man with racist leanings and a quick temper.
Yes, underneath all that is a loving guy with a mushy heart. But you pretty much have to be me to see it, I’m the only one left who can see. When you spend your life being belligerent and intolerant, not many people are going to hang around to see how your story ends.
Since my father’s diagnosis in September, I have played by his rules. I’ve done everything his way and done my utmost to make his remaining time as pleasant as possible. But “pleasant” is not a word in my dad’s vocabulary. Pleasant was never a concept he grasped. Andy S. never did pleasant, so there wasn’t anything to fall back on when the cancer started eating his body.
He fell back on rude, narcissistic, belligerent and racist. Now that’s all he is.
I’ve expressed some fairly raw emotions on this blog, but this is the nitty gritty. There is no more strength left for artifice, martyrdom or pleasantries. Since my husband’s suicide attempt last summer, I have been under emotional siege. I have been fighting battles incessantly and I am tired.
I’ve lost my sense of security, my kids and my fucking dog since last summer. There is no respite, no cessation of hostilities. It’s been one big pinball machine of misery and I’m a frenzied silver ball who can’t break the glass, who just keeps getting slammed into bumpers.
Yesterday was supposed to be my day. One of many days I’ve tried to give myself since the cancer started. One of many days that was ripped away from me and I am sick to death of being the one who sacrifices. I am over losing the precious days of my life catering to someone else’s death.
I can’t do it anymore. I fear the next sacrifice will be the one that breaks me, there isn’t anything left to give. No one’s death is more important than my life, my well-being.
The next sacrifice will have to be made by someone who is not me. It grieves me to say this, but my dad has to go into a facility. He won’t allow the hospice nurse in more than once a week, he won’t allow her to take his vitals when she’s there. He’s confused about his medications and not taking them properly. He’s not eating right. He has numerous small medical problems that aren’t getting tended.
He hates hospice because he considers it an intrusion on his life. Well boo-freaking-hoo. There haven’t been anything BUT intrusions on my life. A fair amount of those intrusions were caused by my father’s personality flaws and I was forced to drop everything to fix them.
No more.
The best thing for both of us is that he goes into care. I don’t want this, I hate this. But it’s the only recourse left. I am NOT going to move in there and be subjected to his ongoing hatefulness 24/7. In-home care would just be a nightmare, if anyone does manage to finish a shift with him, they wouldn’t come back for a second.
When the phone rang yesterday, and I knew in my bones that “my” day was once again put on hold, something inside me fractured. I can’t run from this any longer, I can’t pretend, deny or sacrifice.
He has to go into a skilled care and I have to be the one to tell him. One more time, I strap on my armor, trudge my bruised bones into the fray and go get bloody. This is going to be awful, horrible, having to tell him. He’ll be furious, he’ll call me names and tell me I’m worthless, heartless and ungrateful.
The worst part is that I have to do it alone. The decisions fall solely on me, the actions are left solely to me and the battle is fought solely by me. Somehow, I need to summon up enough strength to fight this last battle, to stand my ground and enforce the decision that’s best for both of us.
One of the over-arching themes in my book is free will. We all have to choose, we are all free to choose. I’ve made my choice, it’s either his happiness or mine. It’s him or me.
I choose me.
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