Lola Update 5/26/2012

Am I caught out?

Okay, I have to admit that I'm going through a period of having a hard time dealing with Lola. Some of it is my continued dismay at the deterioration of an intelligent human being. Some of it is trying to figure out if it's her diminishment or if it's her being passive aggressive. Some of it is anger at my parents' oblivion as to what would happen at the end of their lives. What the hell did they expect to happen?

Some of it is anger at their demands of dying in their own home, though most of that is over because it's a totally unrealistic expectation that can't be met, and they were just stupid for demanding it. A lot of it is anger that if I don't continue this total disruption of my life, their incompetence will be the loss of my inheritance. Selfish sounding, ain't it? So?

For my whole life, I was told that as their only child everything they had would be mine. It's not like I expected a trust fund of a mind-boggling amount. It's not like their land was a castle on a hill with thousands of acres. But my inheritance is a few acres with a nice home that is debt free. That is - if I can avoid losing everything to Medicare for the care of my last parent.

Quite frankly, I expected the end of their lives to be far different from how it's been. I expected stroke, heart attack, cancer, despair from the loss of the first to go. I expected anything  except the slow fall into mindlessness that both have done.

Yesterday Lola asked me where Joe was. I've gotten over feeling sad as I tell her that Joe died 6 months ago. I have to admit that I figured whichever parent went first, they would be followed quickly by the other. That may hold true for some, but for my parents their minds were so far compromised that it made no difference in their lives whatsoever.

Okay. I'll relax. I've been caught throwing everything
on the floor. I've taken all the photos out of the
albums. I've thrown the only important ones, from 1950
or earlier on the floor. Oh, and all the little shiny bits
are the wrappers from Hershey Kisses which I know
my daughter loves picking up from the floor.

The last week has seen Lola fall back into a pattern of sleeping continually if I let her. The month before this she was up and at it every day sometime between 9 and 10 every morning. This last week I have to force her to get up. She will stay in bed until 3, 4, 5, or however long I go without forcing her to get up.

She won't go anywhere in the house except from her bed to the TV. She will go to the bathroom if I force her and tell her where it is. She won't join me in any room. She won't instigate conversation at all. She barely pays attention if I talk to her. Everything has to be repeated before she realizes the outside world is impinging on her inner world.

On one hand, it seems disrespectful to post these kinds of things. On the other hand, how respectful of me was it to disregard what effect their  denial of end-of-life issues would have on me?  Additionally, this blog is out in the universe and maybe seeing what someone else has lived through will help another person live through the same thing.