Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

I have found that for me the toughest part of taking care of my parents is sleeping. My mother needs constant attention and during the night needs to sometimes get up to visit the ladies room. We have come full circle, in that I now have to listen for them, much like we listened for our newborns when they first were on this earth. It means you don’t sleep very deep or very long. It also means you are more tired than normal. It is worth it though.

The weather this fall has been so nice. However, all of this nice weather and the golden leaves and the change of the season has been tempered by human winter. I have been, for the last two months, witnessing the death of a parent. In a way, this is a blessing because it prepares me for that inevitable transition to winter in my life.

However, it also makes me sad to know that I am now, at 60, moving to the twilight of my life. I can see that I am less useful, less vital, then I have been before. Those in their middle years look at me as a has been and not able to contribute as I did. I see them overlooking me.

Finally, I know that I am probably never going to be this good again. There is a slow but undeniable move down that long slippery slope to old age and inevitably to death. It is a hard to thing to face sometimes, but a necessary thing. I hope I measure up to that.

My heart was broken today. With my mom’s terminal illness and increasing weakness and inability to take care of herself has come a huge number of new experiences, none of which I have ever wanted to experience. We spend our entire lives acquiring earthly things and establishing a home. We identify ourselves with a location of a building on the face of the planet earth. We make that location into a home, personalizing it with things that identify who we are. We establish relationships with family and people around us. This gives us a feeling of permanency and at times weighs us down because we also drag all of those materialize things with us.

However, it is these relationships and things which help us to cope with the daily fight that challenges us as we live in this world. This home gives us a sense of permanency and defines who we are. Then comes along old age, illness, and the loss of cognitive function. The ability of the family to cope with illness is stretched to the limit. We become unable to care for ourselves because our strength, resolve, and abilities weaken. Sickness overwhelm our wills and the will and abilities of our families, and we fall upon outside medical assistance for help. Care becomes a 24 hour a day requirement. This new required level of care begins to define our home for us.

Because of the limitations of the family to deal with this health crisis, we have called on nursing institutions to help us out. With that comes living where those nursing institutions can play a part in providing care that the family is no longer able to provide. My dad, who has challenges of his own wants to return home with my mother. My dad is not able to provide the 24 hour type of care that will be required. He mentioned to me today, and my mother that he wanted to go home. My mother, probably understanding more than my dad the limitations of the care that he or the family can provide, turned to him and said, “We Have No Home Anymore”. She realizes that she may play out the end of her days in a place that is not really their home. This comment tore my heart. I am looking for alternatives to institutionalized care. I am not sure I will find it.

Today I have a “minor” surgery. There was a day when I had never had surgery. Now, it seems like it is a regular occurrence. This one is minor (my finger) why I have a possible major (knee). My, life and what we experience changes with age. Another sign of my aging.

I am beginning to really feel my years. It doesn’t help that I am carrying around extra weight again, and I must lose that. However, my back, my legs, my feet, my hips, all hurt to some extent or other. I feel like I have old bones and an old body. I am really starting to realize that I am getting older. I hate it when you seem to hurt everywhere. Surely, there is some cure for advancing age, and I don’t mean death. Someone should invent something.

As I get older, some things have become clearer, and clearer, at least when I can remember. When I was young, I wanted to experience new things. I listened to new music, I read new books, I learned new things.

Now, I look back on what new music I have had interest in during the last 10 to 20 years and I can’t think of a whole lot of new music that I care for. The same goes for a number of other things. When I do try some new music, it is rare and then only after I have thoroughly checked it out.

I call that the Law of Diminishing Returns. I am narrowing my focus. I am shying away from new things and new experiences. Yes, I do love to travel. That is probably the luxury that I have now, is learning about new places and seeing new things. I recently had been to the Caribbean, some place that I never had ever thought I would get to. I think as you get more stuffed with things and thoughts, and memories, you tend to try and make the focus and scope of the new things you do become smaller so you don’t suffer overload.

I sometimes think that the best thing that could happen on an ongoing basis is to stay at home every night, watch a little TV, and try to stay out of trouble. That sure is the reflection of someone growing old. It must be proof positive of the law of diminishing returns.

Sometimes when you visit a bigger city you have an opportunity to run into what my wife calls “Scary People”. These are usually individuals who because of some reason or another have been cast out of mental institutions, or they have broken down and no longer are able to function as a normal person in society.

In Las Vegas, we saw one such man. He was at a corner cross walk, dirty, disheveled, and he didn’t seem very coherent. He was pushing buttons, obviously talking to someone or somebody who wasn’t there. He was pointing at someone or somewhere, and didn’t appear to be talking to anyone is particular. I felt sorry for him. He was the kind of person that I am not sure we would want to approach on our own, but somehow we should be able to help these type of people.

I took a walk this summer that made me realized that at one time I was an actual, honest to goodness, outdoorsman. I was walking up a trail in Yosemite National Park, smelling the Pine
Trees, seeing the green all around you. I was in the great outdoors. I loved it. Long ago, I did that all of the time, then I got married and had a family, and somehow I lost that practice and that dream. I am no longer the Outdoorsman. I miss that.

Why is it that I just am getting more and more tired all of the time. I am sure that has something to do with my health situation, but I also fear that old age is creeping up on me. I was in a family get together the other night. It was pretty late, and while I was enjoying the people we were talking with, I found myself nodding off and out of the conversation all together. I could not keep my eyes open at all. It was embarrassing for me because I really wanted to listen in and be part of the conversation. Instead, I gave up and went to bed. More and more, if I am just sitting rather than moving, I am falling asleep. That is what I have seen my parents doing a lot of. Now, I am becoming my parents.

Yesterday afternoon at about 5pm I was finally fighting my way back to consciousness. Well, maybe fighting is not the right word. Maybe it was more like slowly coming back to reality. I know that I was in a kind of sleep for a while. The last thing I remembered before that was laying on a table.

They were putting a mask over my face, telling me that they had given me a dose of the good stuff. It sure didn’t take long for a dose of the good stuff to put me to sleep. I was kind of just there, when I finally heard people talking to me and trying to get me to wake up. It was a long slow climb out of the dark into the light.

I finally regained consciousness, to find that they had been in my heart and cauterized one nerve in one location that they felt was the offending nerve. I am hoping that took care of the problem, though my heart has been beating a little strangely in the last 24 hours. I sure hope so, because I don’t want to do this again. The catheter was the worst part.