Love and War, and Peace
This is what I know: My mom wants to be my dad’s caregiver; she has always chosen to do it. She doesn’t want to send my dad away, even if I think it’s better for him—and for her. It’s her choice. But there is something I can do, as her own body ages and mental strength wanes: I can bring the nursing home to us.
This puts me into motion and gives me the purpose I’ve been scrambling to find. I make a list of things that my mom needs to take care of my dad, as well as a list of things that she needs removed from her day-to-day life that will just give her anxiety—things like finances.
I also decide to give up all my contract work, which I didn’t actually need the money from and caused me a lot more stress than I thought it would (or, I just couldn’t handle much more after a long day with my parents). My brain needs to be focused on my parents full-time, or on doing things to help me recover from being on full-time caregiving duty.
A final thought enters my mind: Maybe once all of this is done, then maybe, I can actually move out again.
I never wanted coming home to feel like putting my life on hold, or like a pit stop en route to the next part of the journey, but that’s exactly what it’s started to feel like. It’s hard to know what specific circumstances make it impossible to both live my life and be my parents’ caregiver at the same time, but maybe it doesn’t really matter either. I just can’t do it.
I also wonder if my mom knows what she’s really getting herself into by committing to being my dad’s caregiver.
I ask as much, one day. “Mom, are you sure you want to do this?”
She looks at me blankly. “I’m his wife. I don’t have a choice.”
“I think you do,” I mean this in an empowering way.
“No…”
Among the many things my mom and I have never agreed upon is cause and effect. She sees herself as doing the thing you’re supposed to do. I guess I believe that making a choice because it’s the choice you’re supposed to make, is still making the choice.
“Whatever you choose, we’ll support you,” I say. I think she’s going to need that support.
My dad has been getting better, but getting better also means he’s back to his grumpy self.
“Are you done with lunch?” a nurse asks cheerfully, on one of our visits.
She reaches out to grab the tray that rests just above my dad’s legs on one of those hospital tables that swing over the bed. Right when her hands touch the tray, my dad reacts.
“Hey!” my dad almost sneers.
“Not done yet?”
My dad makes some sort of wailing sound, like he’s a big baby. She looks confounded.
He points at the tray, or something specific on it. It’s hard to tell, when his lack of physical dexterity means he’s pointing at the dead space between objects.
“Do you want me to come back?” the nurse asks.
“Coffee!” my dad yells.
I really wish my dad would just open his mouth and use his words, and not jumbled baby talk and jerky hand gestures. It’s not like he’s incapable of it. It’s just, ‘too much work,’ as he once put it.
I jump in. “I think he wants to keep the coffee.”
“Okay then,” she smiles, lifts the coffee off the tray and places it on the table, and then walks away with my dad’s leftovers.
The hardest part about all of this so far, is that I tend to gaslight myself—to ask if maybe I’m the crazy one. Maybe my dad is just fine. There are moments when he seems to be. Where all of a sudden moments of lucidity gather together into a bolt of lightning, and strike my dad so that he’s suddenly twenty years younger. They are rare, and there’s no logic to it. Except that even a broken clock is still right, twice a day.
“Dad,” I say to him, “we’re going to go home now.”
He nods back.
My mom says her usual prayer. Help him get better. Help him come to know you, and accept you as his savior. Please bless the nurses.
And then she asks for a paper bowl that’s also on the table in front of him. It’s a bowl we’ve been using to bring some fruit from home. Sometimes cherries. Sometimes blueberries.
My dad reaches out for it and grabs hold.
“John, I’m going to take it home,” my mom says.
“Does it bother you!?” he growls. This makes no sense in the conversation, but, whatever.
Again, I jump in. “Dad, do you like the fruit we bring you?” I ask sternly.
He nods.
“Then you have to let mom have the bowl. We don’t have any other bowls at home. She needs this one.”
He lets go of the bowl, letting my mom take it and stash it in her purse.
This is, of course, a lie. We have plenty of bowls at home. Plenty of paper bowls, in fact. But telling the truth, and caring, are not always one and the same. It’s hard to know when they aren’t, and you’re the only person who can judge you.
“Bye, Dad.” I say.
At home, I take a survey of what things need to be changed; both physical objects in our actual house, as well as what poor habits should be removed and what good ones I should help instill.
Just like how I bought a coffee maker to habituate my dad to making coffee at home instead of going to McDonald’s, I pick up a print subscription to the Wall Street Journal so that my dad can read it at home instead of going to the library.
I start researching in-home care, and take notes on the equipment used at the care center to see what things I should buy for my parents as well.
When my mom asks me to help her change some of the sheets on her bed, I find another item to ‘fix.’ My parents’ bed has some wooden boards on top of the mattress, to make it extra firm for my mom’s back. But there are also wooden boards beneath the mattress, for some reason, with bed sheets covering them, also, for some reason.
Changing these are a pain, and my mom doesn’t have the physical strength to do this on her own, and I know having me help her out isn’t sustainable.
“How about we buy another mattress?” I suggest.
“I need to have one that’s very firm,” she says.
“They make mattresses that are firm, mom,” I tell her, listing off all the different technologies that people put into mattresses these days.
“No, it’s too much trouble.”
“And this isn’t too much trouble?” I ask, pointing at all the heavy wooden board lifting we’re doing.
We repeat the same conversation multiple times. Sometimes my mom relents, and agrees to at least come with me to visit a mattress store and try some mattresses. Sometimes, she just puts her foot down.
“No, this bed is fine.”
Part of me wonders why this has to be so hard, and if I’m going about it the wrong way. But what else can I do? If she wants to take care of my dad, she needs to be able to do it without me there everyday. Without having to have me come home to just change the sheets on her bed.
“You can’t keep living like this,” I say, nearly out of breath, and entirely out of energy. “What are you going to do if I’m not here?”
My mom asks me a little later. “Can you stay here?”
“How long?”
“Until dad goes to heaven?”
I close my eyes and something in my heart sinks. I can’t do that. For many years, I have wondered if ‘this is the end’ for my dad, or my mom, and it never is. I started thinking that at least ten years ago. And here we are, with my parents potentially living another five. Maybe another ten. I can’t stay home for that long.
So I ask her. “And how long will that be?”
I don’t remember how she answered, or if she even answered.
The care center calls me a while later. Apparently my dad is refusing to walk and do therapy of any kind. They ask if I happen to be swinging by, and if I can help encourage him.
I muster a laugh. I’m like a parent, and my kid is misbehaving at school.
“I don’t want to do it, okay!?” my dad continues his cornered, angry stance when I, my mom, and the therapist all return to his room. Different day, same dad.
“John, we just want you to get better,” the therapist says very softly, and very kindly, “it’ll only take a few minutes.”
“This is for me! Not, you!” my dad hisses.
The therapist reaches out her hands for a ‘come here’ gesture. He tries to shoo her away and he jerks his hand so hard it looks like he might slap her.
“Come on, John,” she smiles.
I turn away and face the patio. It’s so sunny outside. So bright. But my dad won’t get up to enjoy it and instead growls about how no one listens to him. I really don’t want to be here anymore.
And then, something I’ve always feared happens.
“Hey!” a voice exclaims. It’s not my dad. It’s the therapist. “John. You hit me.”
I spin around. Her words echo in my eardrums.
You hit me.
My dad, hit her. My dad, hit, someone. I'm sure he didn't do it intentionally. Not that that matters anymore.
“John. That actually hurt a little bit. I’m just here to help you get well.”
“You don't understand,” my dad rages back. “You just want to do your duty. You don't care about me. No one here has any understanding!”
There are only two people who can have this kind of mentality. Those who genuinely have felt that everyone in life hates them, and those who simply perceive that everyone in life hates them. It’s hard to tell the difference, and hard to know which camp you belong to.
My mom tries to persuade him one last time.
“John, don’t be so ngok,” she pleads, a Cantonese word that is some mixture of angry, rude, mean. It’s a word whose definition I’ve forever linked to my dad. “Please, do it for us.”
“I already said my point!” my dad’s fury continues.
“Okay, John,” the therapist jumps back in. “We can’t force you. Maybe we’ll try another time.”
I apologize to her and she nods in understanding before leaving.
And once she does, something gets unleashed, something that’s always felt chained inside me. I’ve always told people that I hate getting angry, because once I get angry, I become very, very, very angry. And I do not cool off very quickly.
But now, I, am, pissed. I look my dad straight in the face and do not break eye contact.
“Dad.” I start, my voice extremely cold. My body may be trembling, but there isn’t a hint of fear in me. You know when I'm truly mad, not when I explode, but when I go cold, and when fire leaks from my body’s seams. When I enunciate every, single, word. “Do you want to go home or not? Because if you do, then you actually have to do the therapy. The therapist came this morning, and you said ‘come back later.’ So she did. This is the fifth time she’s here, and now she has to leave. You don’t want to do it? We can’t make you. But then you won’t get better. Do you want to get well?”
I pause, searching for a response. There isn’t one. But I know, I know, the answer is ‘yes.’
“So guess what, Dad? This is about you. It is for you. Everything everyone here is doing is for you. And if you don’t want to get better, fine. But they’re not gonna let you go until you can prove that you can walk. So it is for you, Dad. Get over it.”
And then I turn to my mom and tell her that I’ll be outside and she can stay however long she wants. I’m leaving.
Which is what I do. Walk away. I almost never believe in walking away from a personal fight, that to walk away or shut down is one of the biggest breaches of commitment. But right now to engage at all is to invite more irrational attacks on me, my mom, the rest of the staff here. And I can’t handle it anymore. Maybe it’s the weak choice. I don’t really know. Maybe I’ve just been bottling up every emotion I’ve had over the past few months and it’s all just flooding out now. But for once in a blue moon, it feels good to be angry, and so that’s what I’m going to go with.
When we go back the next day, I quickly say ‘hi’ to my dad and then immediately go wait in the lobby. I doubt my dad remembers anything that happened the day before. But I do. My nerves do. My body is a heap of smoldering coals.
A woman walks up to me later while I’m still in the lobby. It’s the head of the therapy department. My mom had asked for her because she wanted to have my dad try therapy again. I declined to go watch.
“You know, I think she makes it worse, to be honest,” she says bluntly, taking a seat next to me.
She means my mom, and her "encouraging" of my dad. I nod; I know this woman is right, and it’s funny that within fifteen minutes of just watching my mom and dad interact, she’s pinpointed this core conflict between the two of them.
My dad hates being bossed around, as if no one cares about what he thinks, even if this is something he perpetuates himself. My mom, she wants him to change, to be something maybe he never was. She finds her meaning through taking care of him and wanting him to be better.
Which means her stubbornness, is always on a direct collision course with his.
I think this is the trap I’ve learned from my mom, and is why I’m suspicious of anyone lauding her for “how nice it is of her to take care of others.” Yes. It is kind to take care of people. But if taking care of them is why you like them, if you do it to find meaning and purpose and to derive value out of yourself, that’s ultimately some twisted form of self-deprecation. It’s not healthy. And it’s taken me more than thirty years to even get started on undoing it.
It’s also who my mom is, though. And like my dad, I don’t think there’s any changing that. Not anymore.
“You’ve seen this before, huh?” I ask.
“I’ve been in this industry for twenty or so years. I’ve seen it all.”
Somehow this comforts me, I don’t know why. I want to ask if my dad is the worst she’s seen, as if that would make me feel better about how hard the experience has been. But I also know that she’s probably seen worse. I’ve heard of worse. And I know she’d probably just say that it’s not about better or worse or comparing at all. It all just sucks.
And so I ask her if she has any advice based on her experiences. She mulls it over for a few minutes, lists off a few practical things, but I wonder if she senses that practicality isn’t what I’m looking for. And so she says one more thing.
“Acceptance,” she says. “There’s a certain way things are going to go, and you just have to wash your hands of it. If you feel guilt and responsibility, it’ll only hurt you. There’s a way things will work, with or without you.”
We briefly discuss the advantages of my mom’s choice to have my dad stay at home. It’s familiar, tends to be cheaper, and is simply the “nicer” thing for the elderly to experience when possible.
“You have your work cut out for you, though,” she adds.
I always wondered what exactly I came home to do, and now I know. It wasn't to take care of my parents. It was to help my mom be able to do what she always wanted: take care of my dad. I don't really wish for my mom to do this. I objectively think that it’d be better for both my parents if we found an assisted living facility for my dad. But it’s not my choice.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about love and acceptance, maybe with the elderly but maybe with everyone, is that it’s simply about being with them. Literally and figuratively. That to love and accept my mom is to honor her choices, because they are her choices. This isn’t one of those times where I need to step in and force her to change course.
When I was finalizing plans to move back home, I told people that I wanted to help my parents transition into their next stage of life. But I could never put my finger on what that next stage would actually look like. Now, I think I know.
My dad needs a full-time caregiver. My mom wants to be that caregiver. She can’t do that on her own anymore, but I can help her get to a place so that she can do just that—or at least believe that she’s doing that. Where she doesn’t have to worry about bills, taxes, how to hire other in-home help, or other things she just doesn’t have the mental capacity to handle anymore.
And once she’s there, then I can leave. That’s my ticket. I think I have to take it; I probably won’t last much longer if I don’t. My mom made her choice, and now it’s time to make mine.
I reiterate later the same point I made a few days back. There are options of what to do with my dad. But it’s my mom’s choice. Not my dad’s, not my brother’s, not mine.
“Whatever you choose,” I say again, “we’ll support you.”
And I also tell her that at some point, I’m going to move out. I don’t tell her when, or where I’ll be going. I can’t, because I don’t know myself.