Mini stroke

Dad had a mini stroke last week. Mom told me about it today. I am supposed to be their caregiver. The one who asks the doctors the questions and keeps track of the meds and their needs, and I am the last to know of my parents’ distress. I feel helpless at times to be of any service to my parents. They want their independence but they can’t get by alone. They need care but neither wants their end of days to be in a hospital. I understand their fears. I support their desire to remain in their home of 50 years. I can’t imagine the terror they underwent when Dad couldn’t move, couldn’t lift his arms, his head thrown back in spasm. Mom held him from falling from his chair to the floor. She wanted to call an ambulance. Dad said no, just to give him a minute. It was five minutes before this episode passed and Dad was back to normal.  The first thing he said was, “Don’t tell Lisa.”

  

 

My parents were celebrating their anniversary when I was conceived…a baker’s dozen years after my sister, their youngest of three children. My parents were 40 years old when I was born. My sister says I was an accident. Mom says I was a pleasant surprise. I’m sure the unplanned pregnancy of a 40 year old woman back in the early 1960’s was a lot more complicated than I will ever know.

By the time I was 10 years old, my father read the obituary page of the local newspaper out loud to my mother while she cooked dinner and he and I sat at the kitchen table. He concentrated on the listings of men in their 50’s. By the time I was 12 years old, I lived with the daily fear of my parents dying while I was still young…of being an orphan. All my friends had young parents. Most people thought my mom was my grandmother. Her premature grey hair didn’t help either of us.

More than once over the years since I have been helping my parents, my father has stated, with a nod of the head, more to himself than to me, that I was born to take care of them. That was the reason for me coming along so late in their parenting years. I was put on this earth to take care of this man from whom I had walked away. I came back willingly, and offered my help when it was not wanted. My help has now become their godsend. I’ve come to terms with his voice in my head, but I am not a servant of fate. I will miss my father when he is gone. I will cry. I will go on. I will put the bad behind me, and remember the feel of my hand in his, both as a child and as an adult. I will remember his good ways and that he loved me. He named me. And I will go home again, home again…jiggity jig.

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