Meatloaf Tonight
Fri., September 2, 10:29 AM
September 2 – 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. It’s our wedding anniversary, and every year I try to write something. At least this year is better than last, when Husband was still in the hospital. He is at home now, even though he isn’t much better and probably will never be. On the other hand, he could go on this way for years.
He is perhaps the world’s worst patient, even though he is not bedridden. Everything is a contest, an argument. Even when I can get him to take his medications – when he decides it’s okay to take them, when they won’t wake him up – he must be watched, because he will try to throw away the water pill. (Last time, I caught him spitting it into a tissue.) Taking meds is not something he does for his health; it’s something I make him do because I’m out to get him, and he has to try to outmaneuver me.
His personal care is not an issue, not because I don’t have to do it, but because he won’t let anyone help him. (He was downright rude to the nurse’s aide we had, simply sitting and ignoring her rather than allowing her to help him bathe…) I buy products that will make it easier to help himself, but using them means he’s “giving in” to me.
I provide food for him, but there’s no guarantee he’ll eat it. Or he’ll just let it get cold while I’m there, and microwave it later. (Please explain to me why I thought it was important to supply a hot meal.) I expend a lot of energy just taking stuff out of his way before he does something dumb, much like trying to baby-proof a house. No, even the visiting nurse agreed that he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, so there’s no state aid on that condition.
I need to change the dynamic here. (Here come the what-ifs.) If I keep letting him wear me down, nothing will improve for either of us. If I were to put him into a nursing home, he would just feel abandoned; I can’t do that. If I try for in-home care, we’ll be back where we were ten months ago; not only will he ignore them as he ignored the visiting nurses, Medicare won’t help this time. (Their reasons, quite logical: they only pay as long as he’s improving. He didn’t even try to do the exercises the therapists taught him.)
And so we come to…assisted living? I am capable of taking care of myself pretty well, but if I accompany him into an assisted living facility, he’s not being abandoned. If we go into an apartment with elevators, with conveniences within the building, he can go to the ATM, go to the barber, without having to ask me to take him. It might dispel some of the anger he doesn’t even know he’s feeling.
From time to time U.D. asks me, “why are you rewarding him when he’s not cooperating?” The best explanation I can give is that you have to look at the totality of a marriage, not just what irritated you yesterday. The past thirty-seven years have included more good than bad. I continue to be grateful.
I find myself trying to draw parallels, even when they don’t really exist. My dad, for example was a lot sicker than my husband, but he was a more cooperative patient. After all their years together, he and my mother were still working toward common goals.
In December, 1977, my parents and my family went to my sister’s house for dinner. For dessert, there was a cake with a big 39 on it, celebrating my parents’ thirty-ninth anniversary. It’s a good thing we didn’t wait for the milestone fortieth, because a few months later my dad passed away, a few days short of his sixty-ninth birthday. My mother became a widow when she was younger than I am now. Husband is approaching his seventy-eighth birthday. We seem to have accomplished something, even if he doesn’t know it.
Anyhow, I have to make meatloaf for dinner tonight. It’s Husband’s favorite dish of anything I ever cooked. No reason to plan anything with it, because he’ll just make a sandwich. It’s easier to eat than managing a fork.
Cathy had it right last week. 
The other three grew up.
