"Worry"

I love my parents, and I'm glad they're still around.

I guess they're happy to still be around, too, although that old 'quality of life' thing can't be very good. Both of them are falling apart, have been for a LONG time. Like 30 years. No, I'm not exaggerating. I wish I were.

One of the first things that started them down their current path was Dad being diagnosed with high blood pressure, a thing he refused to take medication for. It didn't get better. (Duh).

During that time, Mom had a fall.

Several falls, I guess, in quick succession. She  started having issues with her balance and lack of physical condition at the same time.

But she had a particularly damaging fall over the railing of their deck. The deck was only 2 feet off the ground, but the railing was 5 feet above dirt level. She was deadheading the flowers that grew along the railing, but instead of standing on the ground, she was leaning over the railing from the deck and reaching out. She over-extended and flipped over the railing and landed with her upper half in the grass and lower half on the flagstones. I suppose she was fortunate, had her head landed on the rocks, the outcome would probably have been worse.

She was proud of that fall, telling me during the next few phone conversations in an enthusiastic tone that she was, "Bruised from head to toe! I'm just black and blue all over!"

We (my brothers and I) tried to get her to go see a doctor. Maybe get an xray.
She wasn't willing to listen. Brushed us off.
It took a couple months for all the bruises to fade and for her to feel better.
 
She got a lot of mileage out of that story around town, I'm sure. In John Day, exciting things like that make a person the story of the day... everyone calls everyone else to share under the guise of the 'prayer chain' and the story gets more lurid with every telling.

I could wander away from the topic here and tell you stories about the things I heard while I was growing up. The phone would ring, my mom would be really, really amped up while she wrung every detail out of the caller and even more animated as she rang the next person in the gossip machine and passed the story on.

So Mom fell. And fell and fell and fell. She fell while getting into the shower. She fell while getting out of the shower, although not necessarily on the same day. She fell while gardening.  While doing the laundry, vacuuming the floor, getting out of her car.

But the original big fall she'd had apparently broke or cracked three vertebrae. How do we know? About five years after that big fall she (FINALLY) got some xrays. They pinpointed THE fall as the event that caused it.

She started having some issues with pain. Her hips and back (gee, wonder why??) hurt quite often. Her doctor prescribed pain medication for her so she could sleep at night and she refused to take it because she didn't want to be a drug addict. I attempted to reason with her, "Mom, even if you develop a chemical dependence, so what? If it helps you and you are able to feel better and rest, why is that an issue?"

With a little more discussion, the real reason surfaced, "Oh your dad is a worrier.  He doesn't want me to be like your grandma was."

Worrier is a euphemism for asshole, I am sorry to say. Whenever he is mean to Mom, which is quite often, that's what she uses.

"Oh, he's such a worrier."

There have been scores of incidents over the years. One of the more recent was the refrigerator debacle. For whatever reason(s) a LOT of people have read that post, not sure why. It explains a bit about my dad and his meanness, mostly directed at my mom now that it's just the two of them.

He's always been mean. I know it's mental illness. I know he can't help it. But I also know that he's been enabled and allowed to be that way, that Mom was never willing or able to stand up to him. One of the results of that kind of thinking was the lack of protection/buffer between him and us when we were kids.

I never doubted he loved us, but it was very obvious he didn't like me once I had the nerve to grow from a child into a woman. There's more about our relationship here on my blog, actually. I'm not going to link any more, it just makes me weary to read it.

I've tried to mend our relationship before. Even though I WAS A CHILD and it wasn't my fault, I still tried. I left home because I couldn't stand it anymore. I'm glad I did, it saved my sanity. It was the right thing for me to do. But he's just gotten meaner and more out of control through the years.

Once he retired, he no longer had to maintain a sane facade for the general public. And he really let it go.

So tonight I was doing the usual online chat session via messenger with Mom. And she told me Dad has a medical appointment in Bend tomorrow at 11 AM. It's a little over two hours for them to drive there. But Dad insisted they be ON THE ROAD at 6 AM. When I asked Mom why so early, she repeated the same phrase, "Oh your dad is a worrier."

He hasn't recovered from the anesthesia's effects, although he was already starting to lose it a bit, and they're getting ready to anesthetize him again. I asked Mom why they can't find another way to remove the stent, and she said, "Well the doctor says they have to do it this way."

Here's the thing, though. If he had a medical condition that precluded general anesthesia, they would find another way. But because my parents ALWAYS do the medical equivalent of 'yes dear' with every doctor they encounter, my dad's going to come out of the surgery an even bigger worrier than he is now. My mom will bear the brunt of it, half the time I don't think she even notices. She turns off her hearing aids or buries her face in her phone and ignores him.

But the downside of her tuning him out is this. The last time he got really sick and needed to be hospitalized, Mom didn't even notice how much his condition had deteriorated, their house keeper was the one who suggested that he might need to be seen as he was, 'sort of gray'.

Meanwhile, he will be a worrier.

You might think that it's not my problem, and you'd be right, it really isn't. He can be shitty and mean all day long (and usually is) and it won't affect me. I just feel really bad that the effect of his meanness/anger is all dumped on Mom.