Deconstructing My Father – Part Eight
Deconstructing My Father is a linear narrative about a weird point in my life – late 2018 / early 2019 (I’m not entirely sure) – where my estranged father developed dementia and I had to take over running his life and the lives of both of my little brothers. I started documenting it in a weird journal using pseudonyms for my brothers and family. It was probably the most stressful time of my life.
You should probably start with part one if you want this to make any sort of sense.
Naughty Boys Don’t Get Toys
“Can you please go to his room and get his phone for me?”
This was, in retrospect, a terrible oversight on my part. When my father was moved into this facility he came with everything that he had at the hospital which included, among other things, his cell phone. I should have predicted that, at some point, that he would attempt to contact the outside world.
“To be clear,” I ask the social worker, “he can’t leave here, with anyone, without my authorization; correct?” I don’t know whose number my father has. Could he stage a jailbreak? Does he have any friends left that would be willing to drive up into the hills to rescue him from the prison that his son and the doctors have locked him in?
“Correct. He can’t leave without your authorization.”
“No matter who shows up and what they say.”
“Right.”
My father used to know some very powerful and influential people. Persuasive people who might be able to talk their way around the safeguards a place like this might have. Once I actually get my hands on his phone I’ll realize that a floating concern of his vet friends showing up to liberate him really shouldn’t have been a worry.
There are fifteen contacts in his phone.
Most of them are people I know won’t talk to him anymore.
“Do you want to go to his room and get the phone yourself?”
“No. No I don’t”
“It’s Jane. Your dad’s old neighbor. What hospital is he in?”
Surprise text messages of this nature are something that I do not enjoy; but I have a feeling it is something I’ll need to get used to.
I wish I could find out who else he gave my fucking number to.
I have known Jane since my brothers and her kids were all in elementary school together. She lived next door to my dad and, as he declined, would consider herself his caretaker on occasion. Though how she managed the empathy for this task is beyond me. He would call her at all hours and expect her to act like some sort of cross between a doting daughter and nursemaid. Though she was neither and was not treated, by my father, as anything other than an obedient servant. And she, for some reason, would always answer that call.
She’s clearly a better person than I am.
I answered that call, and others like it, many times. The last one I answered would be the last time my father personally called me for help. It was a Friday night and my father called me at 9pm.
“I need you to come over.” My father never asked. He demanded and expected acquiescence.
“Why?”
“I fell off the bed and can’t up.”
“So call 911.”
“No, I need you to come over and help me up.”
“Dad. It’s 9pm on a Friday. My kids are finally in bed, I’ve had a few beers, and I am not driving 20 minutes to your house.”
“I’ll just wait for Jane to get home then.”
My father. The sixty year old man with the victim complex of an attention starved teenage girl. Willing to wait on the floor instead of trying to solve the problem himself.
“Sounds good. Let me know when she gets home.” And with that I hung up, called 911, and had the fire department sent to his house to pick him up off the floor.
I don’t accept this kind of passive aggressive behavior from my children, let alone my father.
Twenty minutes later Jane called me.
“Did you call the fire department?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“Because he refused to, I can’t come over there and it’s stupid of you to wait on him like this.”
“He’s pissed.”
“And?”
“Did get to see some hot firemen though.”
I get off the phone with Jane. My father in a dementia induced delusion texted her to bring him some cigarettes on the way home. When she got to the house she saw his walker in the living room through the front window, where Patrick and I left it, and only thought the worst: my father had fallen somewhere and was dying.
“Tell Patrick I’m sorry,” she says on the phone, “I had to break into the house through his bedroom window.”
As she was sleuthing her way through the house my father was texting her that he was in his bedroom. He was 30 miles away under lock and key. As the beginning of a horror movie began to play out on her phone she called me for answers and I laid it all out for her.
Dementia.
Poor health.
Probably never coming home.
I think there was a part of her that sounded relieved at that last one.
Now that I have his cellphone I have access to one of his email accounts. I can see some of the alerts to bills that he has.
Bills that I have to start paying.
Part of the mystery becomes clearer and, with access to his default email address, I can start resetting the emails on all of his accounts to a regular email that I can access on my computer and phone.
Bit by bit this will start to make more sense.
Jane says that she wants to go up and visit him. I tell her I’m not going to stop her; but she doesn’t have to. This isn’t a burden that she needs to bear.
