Part 158 Flashing back


One day my phone rings, and it’s my brother Craig. He has big concerns about my dad’s rapidly deteriorating condition. We discuss this at length, considering nursing homes, assisted care, things that we so often have avoided facing as we cling to the unrealistic hope that our once invincible father can manage his basic life support needs.

Late in the afternoon on a Monday Becah and I get into an argument about money to be spent on groceries which abruptly lurches into a shower of angry words regarding all my time in the hospital and the burden that placed on our family. Becah admits she struggles with flashbacks of the trauma induced by my illness. She has not worked through this obstacle, and here it is before me. She leaves for the store upset. I stew awhile, frustrated that even though I have come so far my past haunts our relationship. And there is nothing I can do to change all that.

Becah eventually returns and we make up. We talk in bed that night (after she has watches an episode of “Castle”, the mystery TV crime series that always entertains her). I am unable to get to sleep until midnight.

Morning comes too early, and work cannot be put off. In the evening we dine at Berryhill (becoming our Tuesday standard?). After, my brother calls again to inform me that my dad has fallen again and has been taken via ambulance to a nursing home. My mother was unable to lift him off the floor, and even the stocky neighbor nearby could do little. My dad did not get rehab clearance, though, which could have entitled him to a much needed monitored hospital stay for a month.

I am slapped with the reality that he may never go home again to stay.