Page 38 - Aging Parents - FDCCPublications

PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
discharge following World War II, my father finished college and became a foundry engineer. It was the early 1950s,
and anything to do with iron, steel, and molten alloys ruled the roost in American manufacturing. If precision thinking was critical, Dad was THE guy. As the ’60s rolled into the ’70s, the metals industry moved off-shore, the foundry in the United States withered, and a newfound focus on energy, plastics, and silicates began to dominate manufacturing as hi-tech took root. Dad took early retirement but always maintained his exact nature. Until...
I got a call. From North Carolina. Dad lived in Milwaukee at the time and got into an accident on one of his many driving trips with his late-life companion, Ginny while visiting her extended family. Not just any accident. Somehow, he got his Buick caught between the gate arm and the tracks at a railroad crossing just as a freight train bore down on them. Well, not entirely ‘between.’
The train hit Dad’s car at high speed, passing about an inch in front of the mainframe cross-member support for the bumper assembly. Miraculously, the train neatly sheared the front-end grill assembly and bumper cover off the front of the car. If the train hit an inch rearward, it would have caught the frame, torquing the car into the side of the train, dragging it along, or worse, all with Dad and Ginny inside.
Afterward, my brother Dave and I questioned Dad hard about how this happened. He was unusually confused and vague about how he became trapped by the gate. We attributed it to the trauma of enduring such a crash. Had we known better, we would have seen the signs.
Other signals. For a man who loved technology, he left a gift portable stereo unopened for years. His temper, never easy, flared up at the drop of a hat or a pill. Or at his toddler granddaughter playing behind a hotel room curtain. These were not typical behaviors. Ginny noted he was medicating to help his mental state. Finally, while attending a volleyball game with his seventh-grade granddaughter, he forgot how to return to the stands in the school’s gym after a break. When I found him confused in the atrium, he did not know if he was in our Ohio hometown or in his Wisconsin.
He was 78. A day of testing at the renowned Cleveland Clinic yielded his diagnosis: Dad was already in early- intermediate stage Peripheral Artery Disease-related
dementia, a condition that mimics Alzheimer’s disease. Under a watchful eye, he was still largely functional, but soon, a stroke interrupted his ability to walk.
My brother traveled to Wisconsin with my Maryland-based older sister, Diane, a nurse, and together with Ginny, got him on a plane. Suzy and I met Dad and Diane at Cleveland Hopkins Airport and drove Dad to a pre-arranged facility near my brother’s home in a Cleveland exurb. He professed no memory of Dave, Diane, and Ginnys’ long conversation before leaving Wisconsin about coming to Cleveland. As a result, moving Dad from the car into the Home proved very difficult. Dave stayed over in Wisconsin to begin wrapping up Dad’s affairs there.
Dave took care of Dad in the ensuing years, as I did our mother years earlier. Dad slowly deteriorated. He could not engage in normal functions alone. I would take him for walks outside in his wheelchair, showing him trees and
It remains our responsibility to ease their transition peacefully and not concern ourselves with making ourselves feel better. If one thinks about it, nothing can make us feel better in the face of the loss ahead.
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