I couldn't say what I really wanted to say to her through facebook, namely that she shouldn't do it. I mean, if her dog can still come up to her, wag her tail and greet her with a warm bark, why kill her?
She's been through a lot, however, including a bad episode just a few days ago where she was in nothing but pain. See, this is the conundrum a lot of owners go through when going through end-of-life decisions for their pets. I couldn't bare seeing her suffer so much. But then she has a good day, and I think that I should keep her around. That's what I feel about my classmate's pet right now -- keep her alive, she has a lot of life left in her. But of course this is not my dog. I don't know how she really is. I can't make an informed opinion about her dog. And yet ... I can't help thinking she's killing her prematurely.
I tie this in with Grandmother. She's old. She's been forgetful for a long time. But, and I think this started to happen when we got back from my sister's wedding in Tuscany, things have gotten worse. She has started to forget to turn the stove and toaster oven off, especially when someone calls her after she's begun to cook something. Grandmother has started this nasty habit of not turning off the water at the kitchen and bathroom sinks; according to Father, she left it on for hours and flooded the basement to the point where he had to rip up the carpet in Mother's office. She has repeated questions she asked me minutes before. Worst of all, she continues to both make and buy food she doesn't eat.
It came to a head Wednesday. Grandmother laid out some pork cutlets she prepared -- disgustingly, according to Father. She put some seasoning on it, then put a plastic wrap over it and put the cutlets, which were on a used-up pie tin, in the fridge, except that the wrap didn't cover the entire tin. (I saw the tin in the fridge and I admit that I didn't care to fix it, I just left it as I saw it.) After he got home, Father motioned to me, while I was standing up behind Grandmother, who was sitting at the dinner table, enraptured by the news on the television set, not to eat it. She frequently lays out stuff that my parents could prepare or eat; almost always do they either put it away or throw it away.
I go back to my room; Father has constantly yelled at Grandmother, and I could tell that another of his eruptions was coming, and so I run to the safety of my bedroom. When I come out (because I have too) he tells me that Grandmother tried to microwave some leftover pieces of chicken in a metal tin. That seemed to push him over the edge, but instead of going off on Grandmother, he just asked me, with Grandmother still at the dining table, to ask the social worker to look into nursing homes for her when she visits home again.
I think that's harsh. Father has had it in for her for a long time. Maybe she is slipping. But I can rationalize most of the things that have made him mad. I've forgotten to turn things off from time to time; I remember once that I left the house without closing the door to the garage. Shit happens. To be honest with you, My Fucking Father has a history of embellishing, if not all-out lying, in order to get what he wants. I wasn't there the times when he accuses Grandmother of not turning off the water or the stove, but I wouldn't put it past him to exaggerate the effects or the number of times it happens. And all the stuff that she does while he's around I can attribute to nerves. I'm afraid of what somebody says or how he or she will react, and so I do stuff that doesn't make sense, or forget that I did something else. I can see Grandmother being that same way. That doesn't necessarily make her old or demented, it just shows she's scared of a bully like Father.
And yet there are some things I can't explain away. The forgetting of things that I told her mere minutes ago is the thing that worries me the most. I think it's happening to the pills she needs to take. Moreover, when I press the issue with her and ask if she is taking the medications she's supposed to take, she says yes in an absentminded and/or defiant way. I don't think she's taking them; worse, I don't know if she knows if she has taken them.
I read one website where there are three conditions under which you should send somebody to a nursing home: Dementia, sleeplessness and bed-wetting. The interviewee of this webpage (I should link to it, but I so disapprove of her recommendations that I won't) thinks it's OK if someone is shipped off to a home as soon as he wets himself for the first time.
There really is only one condition in which I'd throw Grandmother into a home: If her health got so bad that me trying to take care of her would hurt her. I don't have a life right now. Pretty soon, she is going to be my life. I'm prepared for that -- well, I think I'm prepared for that. She was the one I came home to after school when I had a bad day, when my parents were off tending to The Store. She was the one in this family who was there for me, who took care of me, who loved me. I don't know if I have the fortitude or the willingness to, but I know I have the duty to take care of her. To be honest, she has been the great love of my life.
And now, Father wants to get rid of her. How sick and disgusting. We're fucking Chinese, for God's sake. We have a culture where generations live under the same roof. That he would resort to such mean and ... Western ways of dealing with old age shocks me -- until I remember that this is Father we're talking about.
Then again ... could he be right? What if she really is slipping? She has her good days, although they're fewer and farther between, moreso now that many of her friends are getting old and don't visit that often. And do we have the luxury of waiting until she takes a real turn for the worst? The house could be flooded or burned down by then, all because she forgot to turn something off?
These end-of-life issues are things I hate and want to avoid at all costs. When do you pack it all in? When do you decide your pet should die? When do you decide your loved one needs to be taken care of by complete strangers? The options are all dreadful and beyond the control of those it affects the most, and the choices have consequences I can't face. And yet, because I'm hurtling through life, I must. I just hope that this shit with Father blows like it usually does after he threatens to throw me out of the house. Better yet, I need Grandmother to get her shit together and turn things off. Otherwise, there will be more change in my life that I won't be able to handle.
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One other note: I came home late and helped Father fix the modem. Later this evening I started to eat a sandwich on the dining room table. I saw Father turn on the lights and heard him start to go up the stairs. Instinctively, as a defense mechanism, I got up and took my sandwich to my room.
I was scared he was going to ask me questions I could not answer. But now I feel guilty for running away from him. He may not get back at me.
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