Does anyone else have certain days of the week they absolutely dread? Mine is Thursdays. The day I take dad's full weekly pillbox to him on my lunch break and visit for a little bit. I dread it because it's always the same thing. I feel more like an employee in a business meeting rather than a daughter visiting her dad. Every week he tells me he hasn't seen a bank statement for a while. Even though I take one to him every month so he can see how much money he has. Not that it matters...because he forgets that I bring it and it gets lost in his house. I never know what to expect on our Thursday visits. The reason I go on my lunch break is so my time is limited. An hour is about all I can take. Horrible...but true...
Hugs 🤗
Then look on the bright side. You only have to do this once a week for less than an hour. Think of all of us who live in worse than you get from your father 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and for years at a time.
Yes, you feel like an "employee" when you go to visit because in a sense you are like an employee to him now. Elders are among the most selfish and narcissistic groups of people on earth. They often are demanding and petty and domineering because they think that reaching an old age entitles them to be such a way.
It doesn't, but it happens.
Count your blessings that you feel like an employee for an hour once a week. Many of us here are living in slavery because of the elders in our lives. The flip side of that cruel coin is that many of us were also abused the elder we are now a nanny-slave to.
Keep this mind when you visit your father once a week for an hour and I guarantee you will feel a lot better about those visits.
then there were daily calls about insurance refusing to cover this or that.
STRESS!
Pounding in my chest started at the door & I knew I had to make changes.
It wasn't any particular task, mess or even an emergency. It was the unseen pressure - the gravity of the slippey slope I was on, the pull from the quicksand at the bottom. The growing needs & dependency.
Is it just the pillbox & the bank statement? Or more?
It’s like we have advance notice that we will be walking into trauma. Week in, week out.
…advance warning that a hammer will come down and hit us in the head.
Then, we steal ourselves for next week’s visit and another hammer, and more trauma.
One upside from this major surgery I just had. I have had to avoid the visits.
Hugs from here! I get ya!