Parents getting old

[Anders]

I will buy your ancestral fjord house, Anders

Nice.

[Malloy]

really sorry len. that must be brutal for both of you. i hope she gets better right quick

[lennytheweedwhacker]

really sorry len. that must be brutal for both of you. i hope she gets better right quick

Thanks. It will be more brutal on my dad than anybody other than my mom.

[Malloy]

really sorry len. that must be brutal for both of you. i hope she gets better right quick

Thanks. It will be more brutal on my dad than anybody other than my mom.

im glad she’s got him

[lennytheweedwhacker]

really sorry len. that must be brutal for both of you. i hope she gets better right quick

Thanks. It will be more brutal on my dad than anybody other than my mom.

im glad she’s got him

He’s a great guy with a kind heart.

[Malloy]

really sorry len. that must be brutal for both of you. i hope she gets better right quick

Thanks. It will be more brutal on my dad than anybody other than my mom.

im glad she’s got him

He’s a great guy with a kind heart.

no surprise there

[lennytheweedwhacker]

really sorry len. that must be brutal for both of you. i hope she gets better right quick

Thanks. It will be more brutal on my dad than anybody other than my mom.

im glad she’s got him

He’s a great guy with a kind heart.

no surprise there

Just like u!

[Chris_H_2]

Are you two done?

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Are you two done?

Go freak yourself.

[dad]

chris might need to be held. sounds like he's feeling left out.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

chris might need to be held. sounds like he's feeling left out.

It's probably because he's a mean, rude man.

[dad]

chris might need to be held. sounds like he's feeling left out.

It's probably because he's a mean, rude man.

chris, your retort?

[Chris_H_2]

chris might need to be held. sounds like he's feeling left out.

It's probably because he's a mean, rude man.

chris, your retort?

I’m not rude

[B]

My mom is a Type 1 Diabetic with Alzheimer's. If it didn't feel creepy, I'd post pictures of her from 5 years ago and now. She has taken a total nose dive from 65-70. Once her Alzheimer's took hold, her fluctuating blood sugar just sped it up in such a frightening way.

She went from needing minor support from her cousins on a trip to New York without my dad in 2017 to being checked into a nursing home this year.

The lurches forward, have been really abrupt. First COVID-isolation tanked her, then moving into the nursing home tanked her again. Her current place specializes in memory care, but she's going to need to drop that and go into a skilled nursing facility, which is going to tank her again.

My dad is in really good health for 72, but his emotional health through all of this has never been great. He's had to mourn the loss of his wife, but he visits her shell every night. Even had to celebrate their 50th anniversary in the nursing home.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

That’s rough.

[tragabigzanda]

There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

[wease]

Sorry to hear B. Alzheimer’s is just no way to go. My grandmother had it and was in a nursing home for the last 3 years of her life.

[Anders]

Sorry to hear that B.

[BurtReynolds]

One weird thing about having divorced parents is that when one gets sick, you don't really have that shared experience of possibly losing a loved one with the other parent. To them, the other parent is basically just an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend, not someone who is a fundamental part of their lives.

[BurtReynolds]

oh and my dad almost died this week. Had emergency bypass heart surgery. He's doing surprising well today, considering he was nearly a goner a few days ago.