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Brother has been seen off at the airport, which means less than five hours of sleep for me. Need to take the van for an oil change and do grocery shopping - tea is on.
Visiting with Dad went as well as could be expected - Hawk's plan of staying at a motel, driving Dad everywhere ourselves and going out to eat a lot was a good one. However, Dad didn't do a lot of talking and stated several times that he's completely lost interest in everything. He's only 73, this seems a little young to be checking out. At the same time, I can understand it - his younger brother has six months, maybe, to live, and doing anything has been an uphill struggle for Dad for a while now, both physically and also because he gets confused. I was going to say 'gets confused easily,' but then I realized it's beyond just 'easily.' There doesn't have to be anything in particular going on to derail him, he just gets derailed. When he was leaving Seattle last year after a visit, Hawk got him all the way to the gate in the airport, and yet somehow he still managed to miss the plane. His wife assured us she has everything set up for his trip to Texas, that he probably won't even have to get off the plane at all and that the airline knows to keep an eye on him, but it's still worrysome.
I guess I should consider the possibility of trying to get him and his wife into some kind of assisted living situation. She's still holding down a job and all, but it would be much better for her if she knew someone was checking up on him during the day. OTOH her 22 yr old grandson seems to be living there as well*, so maybe she feels he'll help Dad out if there's a problem? I don't know. And even though I feel as though nobody should have to live in that pit of a house - I would be depressed to the point of not wanting to live just being there, which is why I left as soon as I graduated high school - possibly he'd feel upset to be taken out of it.
I got so depressed talking to Eor about this, this morning, that I changed the subject to talking about how outgoing my cousin's youngest boy is. He's pretty much the opposite of where Dad is right now - he's interested in all kinds of things. He loves birds; he says he wants to be a chicken farmer and proudly states that he spends at least twenty minutes sitting with his chickens every morning. He also wants to learn to nurse injured birds of prey back to health. He once caught a young mourning dove in his hand, but he tried to put it in with his chickens, and they wouldn't accept it and killed it. And if my Dad wants to go canoeing this summer he wants to be invited! He wasn't shy at all about making sure my father knew that. :) (But still my Dad is not interested... which is just sad. He's always loved boats of any sort.)
His older brothers are rather shy, obviously adore the hell out of Hawk and think he's totally THE man, because he's visited several times before when I couldn't go along and he listens to them and talks with them and makes much of them. I just want to hug these kids. One just started college and the other is still a junior in high school, and I know they haven't had the best time with their step family at all. I wish I could have made more of a connection with them... and hope I can get past my shyness and theirs and do so in the future. I promised the oldest I was looking him up on Facebook. :)
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*All I saw her grandson do was lay on the couch and watch Dragonball and snuggle with his apparently mentally challenged girlfriend. He says McDonald's might take him on in six months, after he's completed some sort of training program. I'm fairly certain he's not running quite up to spec.
Visiting with Dad went as well as could be expected - Hawk's plan of staying at a motel, driving Dad everywhere ourselves and going out to eat a lot was a good one. However, Dad didn't do a lot of talking and stated several times that he's completely lost interest in everything. He's only 73, this seems a little young to be checking out. At the same time, I can understand it - his younger brother has six months, maybe, to live, and doing anything has been an uphill struggle for Dad for a while now, both physically and also because he gets confused. I was going to say 'gets confused easily,' but then I realized it's beyond just 'easily.' There doesn't have to be anything in particular going on to derail him, he just gets derailed. When he was leaving Seattle last year after a visit, Hawk got him all the way to the gate in the airport, and yet somehow he still managed to miss the plane. His wife assured us she has everything set up for his trip to Texas, that he probably won't even have to get off the plane at all and that the airline knows to keep an eye on him, but it's still worrysome.
I guess I should consider the possibility of trying to get him and his wife into some kind of assisted living situation. She's still holding down a job and all, but it would be much better for her if she knew someone was checking up on him during the day. OTOH her 22 yr old grandson seems to be living there as well*, so maybe she feels he'll help Dad out if there's a problem? I don't know. And even though I feel as though nobody should have to live in that pit of a house - I would be depressed to the point of not wanting to live just being there, which is why I left as soon as I graduated high school - possibly he'd feel upset to be taken out of it.
I got so depressed talking to Eor about this, this morning, that I changed the subject to talking about how outgoing my cousin's youngest boy is. He's pretty much the opposite of where Dad is right now - he's interested in all kinds of things. He loves birds; he says he wants to be a chicken farmer and proudly states that he spends at least twenty minutes sitting with his chickens every morning. He also wants to learn to nurse injured birds of prey back to health. He once caught a young mourning dove in his hand, but he tried to put it in with his chickens, and they wouldn't accept it and killed it. And if my Dad wants to go canoeing this summer he wants to be invited! He wasn't shy at all about making sure my father knew that. :) (But still my Dad is not interested... which is just sad. He's always loved boats of any sort.)
His older brothers are rather shy, obviously adore the hell out of Hawk and think he's totally THE man, because he's visited several times before when I couldn't go along and he listens to them and talks with them and makes much of them. I just want to hug these kids. One just started college and the other is still a junior in high school, and I know they haven't had the best time with their step family at all. I wish I could have made more of a connection with them... and hope I can get past my shyness and theirs and do so in the future. I promised the oldest I was looking him up on Facebook. :)
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*All I saw her grandson do was lay on the couch and watch Dragonball and snuggle with his apparently mentally challenged girlfriend. He says McDonald's might take him on in six months, after he's completed some sort of training program. I'm fairly certain he's not running quite up to spec.
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