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Apr. 2nd, 2003 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lawnrrdTiVo is transformative. After a while, you set it up with the shows you watch--and even the shows you wouldn't watch if they entailed the slightest inconvenience--then it records them when they're on, and you watch them when you watch them. A side effect is that sometimes we get a few episodes behind and catch up all at once.
This has happened recently with HBO's Six Feet Under, which we finally caught up on tonight. This season they've been covering a lot of issues related to love, family, and relationships, and choices they entail and the prices we pay. These are issues I've been stuggling with a great deal lately, so it's been especially meaningful.
I marvel sometimes at how much I am my parents, and how much of the rest of me is in reaction to them. It's so easy to be trapped by that, and to some extent I would be even more so. And while I absolutely believe I can change a lot of that, it's strange, even now, how little I noticed the connection or believed I had alternatives.
All of which brings me to my father, who hasn't been doing well. He's also been morose and absentminded, which we have attributed to depression. As I mentioned, his wife is his savior, which is great for him, but must be rather draining for her.
Well, my stepbrother does rather well, and he and his wife and son have gone to Florida for a week. Figuring as well that his mother could use a break, he invited her to join them, ostensibly to help look after their very young son.
They did not invite my father. He did not take this well: rather than recognize that his wife needed a break from her duties as his nurse, he was offended and angered. He was also, it seems, panicked at the prospect of having to take care of himself.
Tonight, he had dinner with one of their friends. Near the end of the meal, he excused himself and stepped outside for some air. He fell down, hit his head, and now has no memory of it or of going out for dinner in the first place. His short-term memory seems shot. He is scared, confused, upset that his wife is not there, and currently in the emergency room at Chestnut Hill hospital, where my brother took him. He had been scheduled for an MRI this week anyway, but tonight they are giving him a CAT scan, and my brother has yet to call me with the results.
I hope it's just depression combined with a panic attack. I keep trying to think of reasons to believe it's not Alzheimer's--he's only 64 years old, Alzheimer's isn't this sudden, and such--but that's what killed his mother.
I feel I should come down, but I don't know what I'd do if I did aside from disrupt my brother's effort to deal with my father. For his part, my brother thinks I should wait until they hear something. We're supposed to go to Chicago this weekend, and my wife would still go, even if I can't.
In any case, I think I'm dreading Passover this year even more than usual.
Finally, I suppose it's kind of fucked up to start out talking about prime-time cable TV before talking about my father's condition, but the only way I can deal with things at this moment is to try to put it in some kind of perspective. The alternative is to just curl up into a little ball.
This has happened recently with HBO's Six Feet Under, which we finally caught up on tonight. This season they've been covering a lot of issues related to love, family, and relationships, and choices they entail and the prices we pay. These are issues I've been stuggling with a great deal lately, so it's been especially meaningful.
I marvel sometimes at how much I am my parents, and how much of the rest of me is in reaction to them. It's so easy to be trapped by that, and to some extent I would be even more so. And while I absolutely believe I can change a lot of that, it's strange, even now, how little I noticed the connection or believed I had alternatives.
All of which brings me to my father, who hasn't been doing well. He's also been morose and absentminded, which we have attributed to depression. As I mentioned, his wife is his savior, which is great for him, but must be rather draining for her.
Well, my stepbrother does rather well, and he and his wife and son have gone to Florida for a week. Figuring as well that his mother could use a break, he invited her to join them, ostensibly to help look after their very young son.
They did not invite my father. He did not take this well: rather than recognize that his wife needed a break from her duties as his nurse, he was offended and angered. He was also, it seems, panicked at the prospect of having to take care of himself.
Tonight, he had dinner with one of their friends. Near the end of the meal, he excused himself and stepped outside for some air. He fell down, hit his head, and now has no memory of it or of going out for dinner in the first place. His short-term memory seems shot. He is scared, confused, upset that his wife is not there, and currently in the emergency room at Chestnut Hill hospital, where my brother took him. He had been scheduled for an MRI this week anyway, but tonight they are giving him a CAT scan, and my brother has yet to call me with the results.
I hope it's just depression combined with a panic attack. I keep trying to think of reasons to believe it's not Alzheimer's--he's only 64 years old, Alzheimer's isn't this sudden, and such--but that's what killed his mother.
I feel I should come down, but I don't know what I'd do if I did aside from disrupt my brother's effort to deal with my father. For his part, my brother thinks I should wait until they hear something. We're supposed to go to Chicago this weekend, and my wife would still go, even if I can't.
In any case, I think I'm dreading Passover this year even more than usual.
Finally, I suppose it's kind of fucked up to start out talking about prime-time cable TV before talking about my father's condition, but the only way I can deal with things at this moment is to try to put it in some kind of perspective. The alternative is to just curl up into a little ball.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 09:47 pm (UTC)i think you should wait until they know something. let your brother get the momentary things resolved. offer to help in whatever capacity it would be useful but hold back from leaping into the fray just yet.
and do keep me informed of details. i'll be thinking of you.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 04:52 am (UTC)And no, it's not messed to talk about television andyour dad in the same paragraph. You wouldn't believe some of the goofy things that trigger memories of my mom.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-02 02:34 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-04-02 06:07 pm (UTC)