It's been over a year since I posted. In that time, Caretaker SIL took FIL to her house to care for him over the winter. They returned in the spring, but it was evident that FIL has been increasingly losing ground. The medications did well away from the ancestral home, but when they returned to the farm, FIL began to be more agitated, to the point that his medication levels have been doubled. He has been reading Eben Alexander's Proof of Heaven repeatedly and exclusively. He wonders if the children are safe. He doesn't recognize his own grandchildren and sometimes his own children. He now uses a walker, which he resolutely refused at first. He doesn't want to travel anywhere anymore, to favorite spots, to visit family, to church, anywhere. He asks after his 94-year-old girlfriend, who died earlier this year after refusing to eat any longer.
Caretaker SIL now treats him like a one-year-old child. His communications are fragmented, bizarre, and confused. She has said this is their last summer here. After this, they will remain at her home, where she has access to closer medical facilities for veterans, and he is more calm than when he is in the house he built for his family.
Since we are no longer living nearby, Caretaker SIL was finding her life isolated--she could not leave FIL even for a short time. She would hire nearby great-grandsons to grandpa-sit so she could go to the grocery store. Eventually another, cheerful SIL, who with her husband had been living in Hawaii, came back and are living with Caretaker SIL while Cheerful SIL's husband takes care of his aging parents not far away. They will live in the farmhouse until they find a place for his parents to stay, and find and buy a home of their own. We are thankful for them. They share the burden of grandpa-sitting, and are a welcome, happy, adult-conversation addition to an otherwise grim and infantile farmhouse.
FIL's last and only activity is gardening. He did not plant the garden in the large back yard--the Mexican hired men did. He thinks it is his. He goes out and hoes and comes back in, exhausted for a couple of days. But it is all he has left of a life that no longer makes sense to him.
When the green tomatoes started coming on, he started picking them without allowing them to ripen. Buckets and buckets of tomatoes. He put them on the floor to ripen, as he did in years past when the green tomatoes were picked at the end of the season so they could ripen inside when the weather got too cold. Eventually he realized somehow that they were not ripening, and spread them all outside on the side of the gravel driveway, in the sun. A few are getting mushy orange.
Then he got the idea that he needed to plant tomatoes in July. So he hoed a row and set water in it, and planted the green tomatoes in it.
He picked so many buckets of green tomatoes that finally Caretaker SIL will not let him back in the garden, at all, so that the tomatoes can ripen for the ones who planted them. It is a sad end to one of the only things he has been good at, in his life.
Caretaker SIL has needed breaks from him, since she oversees every aspect of his life, and he is wearying to care for. She came to our house for five days (when he first began picking buckets of green tomatoes under the care of Cheerful SIL's husband), and she has been gone for a week at the youngest sister's house, resting up before her father's last journey to her home. She had been talking to my husband about the possible need for him to be placed in memory care, especially when he can no longer go to the bathroom by himself. We were looking at memory care facilities in our area and were planning on making applications for the eventuality. But then she dropped the idea, and started talking about arrangements for cremating him when he dies.
Caretaker SIL's daughter took care of my MIL, my husband's mother, when she was dying of cancer. This granddaughter is a worker in geriatric care, and knows the signs of losing grip on life.
The hospice guide she uses is http://www.dignitycare.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/When-Death-is-Near.pdf Although he is physically strong, stroke has felled several of his otherwise-healthy siblings. I believe small strokes have affected him over the last several years. He speaks of "going home," which might mean going back to Caretaker SIL's home, although he lives on the farm more than half the year, and has lived there over 60 years. The hospice guide says that this may be symbolic language, of going home, not anywhere on earth.
Cheerful SIL, after observing the care her sister takes of her father, thinks she should be paid a million dollars after he dies. I do too.
Caretaker SIL now treats him like a one-year-old child. His communications are fragmented, bizarre, and confused. She has said this is their last summer here. After this, they will remain at her home, where she has access to closer medical facilities for veterans, and he is more calm than when he is in the house he built for his family.
Since we are no longer living nearby, Caretaker SIL was finding her life isolated--she could not leave FIL even for a short time. She would hire nearby great-grandsons to grandpa-sit so she could go to the grocery store. Eventually another, cheerful SIL, who with her husband had been living in Hawaii, came back and are living with Caretaker SIL while Cheerful SIL's husband takes care of his aging parents not far away. They will live in the farmhouse until they find a place for his parents to stay, and find and buy a home of their own. We are thankful for them. They share the burden of grandpa-sitting, and are a welcome, happy, adult-conversation addition to an otherwise grim and infantile farmhouse.
FIL's last and only activity is gardening. He did not plant the garden in the large back yard--the Mexican hired men did. He thinks it is his. He goes out and hoes and comes back in, exhausted for a couple of days. But it is all he has left of a life that no longer makes sense to him.
When the green tomatoes started coming on, he started picking them without allowing them to ripen. Buckets and buckets of tomatoes. He put them on the floor to ripen, as he did in years past when the green tomatoes were picked at the end of the season so they could ripen inside when the weather got too cold. Eventually he realized somehow that they were not ripening, and spread them all outside on the side of the gravel driveway, in the sun. A few are getting mushy orange.
Then he got the idea that he needed to plant tomatoes in July. So he hoed a row and set water in it, and planted the green tomatoes in it.
He picked so many buckets of green tomatoes that finally Caretaker SIL will not let him back in the garden, at all, so that the tomatoes can ripen for the ones who planted them. It is a sad end to one of the only things he has been good at, in his life.
Caretaker SIL has needed breaks from him, since she oversees every aspect of his life, and he is wearying to care for. She came to our house for five days (when he first began picking buckets of green tomatoes under the care of Cheerful SIL's husband), and she has been gone for a week at the youngest sister's house, resting up before her father's last journey to her home. She had been talking to my husband about the possible need for him to be placed in memory care, especially when he can no longer go to the bathroom by himself. We were looking at memory care facilities in our area and were planning on making applications for the eventuality. But then she dropped the idea, and started talking about arrangements for cremating him when he dies.
Caretaker SIL's daughter took care of my MIL, my husband's mother, when she was dying of cancer. This granddaughter is a worker in geriatric care, and knows the signs of losing grip on life.
The hospice guide she uses is http://www.dignitycare.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/When-Death-is-Near.pdf Although he is physically strong, stroke has felled several of his otherwise-healthy siblings. I believe small strokes have affected him over the last several years. He speaks of "going home," which might mean going back to Caretaker SIL's home, although he lives on the farm more than half the year, and has lived there over 60 years. The hospice guide says that this may be symbolic language, of going home, not anywhere on earth.
Cheerful SIL, after observing the care her sister takes of her father, thinks she should be paid a million dollars after he dies. I do too.
