EPT
Some background:
My father and I have never been particularly close, but we have never had too much animosity either. He is a man of few words and when he does speak, it is not always clear and he gets confused a lot. At age 49 he suffered a stroke. That was 7 years ago and since then his memory is fading and his dementia is getting worse, so, it is even harder to talk to him without him getting confused. He is a good man, led a decent life, and was always hard working. He did not teach me much stuff directly, but more through example. The main lesson that I take from him is work ethic. He was a farmer for years and worked his butt off to barely scrape by. He is happiest when he is out on our family ranch working on the land and building with his tools.
This being said, we always had rather different interests. I love baseball, video and board games, and just interacting with other people. He loves the quite solitude of work and watching television.
He was recently diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. If you are unaware, this is an auto-immune disease where your immune system attacks your lungs slowly over years and scars them, making more and more of them unusable for breathing. They do not know what causes it yet and the only real treatment is a complete lung transplant. Basically this is your lungs dying on you. My father’s side of the family has had many medical problems. His brother died of this same disease. I was there with him when he went. His sisters have a variety of issues between cancer, which one sister and their mother died from, to lupus, which my aunt and sister have. I am sort of lucky in that I do not have much of my father’s genes and got most of my looks and my immune system from my mother’s side of the family where we are all healthy as horses.
So now that the background is out of the way, I am in this state where I knew that my father’s health has been failing and I myself have not had too much trouble facing the death of friends and family in the past, but this time I am more worried about my wife, my mother, and my sister. It is hard being the family rock, but I know that this state being comfort to others in my family.
My mother has been stressed out for years now at my father’s failing health. Since getting the confirmation from his doctor of fibrosis though, she is really having a hard time with it all. She has been a registered nurse her entire life and knows disease and death very well. When we were kids she was always there to explain health issues or injuries in a way that was calming. She never worried about too much because she knew exactly the best and worst outcomes. This is part of my nervousness now because she knows what this disease does and she knows there is really no way out of it. They have been married for over 30 years. She has not really known much life without him. Not only that, she is worried about my sister and me and how we are taking things. I have talked to my sister and although she is upset, she knows that my mother is who we need to look after in this time.
My wife and I have made some huge personal decisions in the past that were hard, but we chose to work situations that kept us about as close to them as we can within our company and now I am glad that we did. My mom and dad are scraping by as it is, being one of the many victims of the housing bust, and now they know that my dad will not be able to work much longer at all. This means that they will lose their house, but they do not care about that. The plan is to move up with us and give them as much time as possible with our son which is their grandson.
My paternal grandfather died when I was 4 years old. I always wish that I knew him better. My mother describes his as the nicest, most generous, most caring man that she ever met. He was a farmer his whole life, never learned to read, and raised 8 kids while doing everything that he could to take care of them all. I hear stories about him and I feel this deep kinship even though I personally only have a few vague memories of him from my life. I want my son to know his grandfather as much as possible while he is still around. The prognosis is about a max of 5 years for my father, so my son, who is 2 now, may be able to know him well still. This is a ray of hope for me.
Overall, I am just using this as a forum to write this all down. I live in an area where people are not interested in making friends and having moved here only a few years ago and always working a weird schedule, it has been hard to make friends. I do not have many people to talk to anymore outside of my immediate family and a few close friends that I have grown up with. Really, I think, I just needed to write this down and get my thoughts together. I am not looking for sympathy, but just some understanding or insight into human life from others in this community that I respect so much. Thank you TL community for always being here in times of great fun and pleasure as well as times of sorrow and despair.
