I needed a bit of time to write and edit this. This story is not nice, but I think someone who is going through this may find something good from this, or at least learn from my experiences, and i made mistakes too.
If you're very much pro life or extremely religious, I'm sorry if my words and actions hurts you. Please pm me your hate, let's keep it off from this thread.
This is a part of my history, and I would like you all to remember that that makes being objective very hard.
In July 2012 I bought a house next door to my parents so my kids could grow up near my dad. He loved taking my dogs and the kids daily for walks and I thought that it would be easier for me to juggle all the balls I had in the air if my dad was closer. My mom even then was not an option as a baby sitter or as a helper, I honestly didn’t trust her. We rented out that house since I was still designing what I would build on the slot and we lived only two miles away.
In December 4th 2012, my dad got a cold. His throat got so sore I forced him to the doctor after he mentioned it hurt even almost three weeks later. His chest was x-rayed and the file was sent immediately to our nearest cancer unit. He was called immediately to a scan, the biopsy from his lungs was taken on jan 3rd, prognosis and diagnosis were clear straight away to me. The final word came 7th of January. That tells you exactly how slow our universal healthcare system is in a hopeless case.
I kicked out my tenants (and I can say I'm not proud of this, I told them I would pay them back every cent they had paid me if they left in a week, if they wouldn't, the house would burn down. I had to be there, and for a person who always tells others to respect the rights of those who don't have as much as you do, yeah... I rented the house to a low income family when i bought it since i didn't need the money, and i bullied them when i needed the location. I hope this confession makes you understand just how much i was panicking, and i accept the hate for my action for this too. ). My husband spent most of that Christmas and the newyear at work, more about that later.
He went to the palliative care immediately. If someone is not familiar with the word, it means prolonging, life quality upholding treatment, it’s a step before hospice. He got one round of chemo (I think that’s the right word here but I'm too emotional to go through the papers right now). I went to visit him in the hospital 2.5 miles away. Then I drove back to the new house, painted most of the walls (I had horrible memories from that house), I moved our stuff in. I got two parking tickets from the hospital parking lot in between the moving, painting, tearing down a few walls from the prick house, and walking the dogs so I guess I visited in the two days three times, I just honestly don’t remember much of it at all.
My dad wanted to stay home. He was feeling fine, the throat was sore, he had lost about 20 lbs at that point. I prepared to the battle that was coming. My mom refused to be useful, she said she had enough stress with her job and that since I was unemployed, if I supported him staying home I should handle it (I only had kids, one of them still in special watch and always in some doctors office because he had microtia and the youngest used me as his main food source, in between I was trading stocks and building and designing homes but I mean I was unemployed).
I don’t think my mother ever understood what would happen shortly. I was up all night adding insulations to the “new house” and researching and emailing the people who were offering spots for a study they were doing about virus treatments for cancer. Honest to coffee, in the end of January I was so out of it I once went a week in same clothes, since the only time I slept was while they were being washed on a fast program and dried on an even faster program. I hadn't had the time to find my clothes from the moving boxes. That was the point my husband gained a habit of dressing me while I was still asleep basically since 7am I had to go check on my dad, give him his meds, handle his schedule for the day, then go cook for my kids and dress them warmly so they could play on the yard while I was playing my dad's secretary (he was finishing off his work). Then I made him lunch, went home with the kids and fed them, did calls to the few clinics and study groups around the world who were accepting patients for this virus treatment, ran around buying food for my family, for my dad, got him books, talked with his doctors, made dinner, tried to book my friends and everyone else like my mil and fil to take the kids for my dad's doctor appointments, and all that was on a good day, bad days my dad felt bad, and I had to stay with him all the time while running after my kids disinfecting their hands since kids are germ spreading maniacs.
In February my dad turned 60. All of our family gathered to their home to celebrate his birthday and they gave my mom all the credit for being such an awesome caregiver. I'm pretty sure there was alcohol in the party, I never got to know since I sat in a corner, there were three doctors, three nurses and one vet in the room, so I fell asleep in my chair.
My husband carried me home, my kids followed him which is hilarious since the youngest wasn’t even 10 months old.
Three days after his birthday my dad got a fever, the day he was supposed to take the third set of chemo at home. He called me since the fever rose after my morning visit. This marked a new daily order in my life.
I called the palliative care unit, and I was told to take him to the ER since things cancer unit doesn’t take in in no case is people who have a fever. My husband had until this point worked almost around the clock at his office or from home and it had confused me a lot. I mean, I was researching, and my hours were spent elsewhere, i sometimes thought he too wasn't understanding it all. I was wrong.
I called him at work for the first time that day, he told me he had a work conference starting in 20 but that he had already okayed it that our kids would join them and that our kids had security clearance (lol) to be in the office with him if he couldn’t work from home for some reason. Note, that he had ensured our kids would not go to a day care of the office facilty or go near other kids and everyone in his team had apparently been informed he was not shaking anyones hand.
The ambulance crew transporting my dad from the er to an other hospital didn't manage to register a fever with my dad, and some damn fluke ensured the new hospital didn’t even know he had cancer, his oxygen intake was about 65 (you're pretty fucking sick if you hit 95/ 100, I'm sorry I don’t know the term for this in English.
So I got there. I was in the ward for all of 20 minutes when I realized they didn’t have his file, they had relied on the bad fever check. I blew up completely. Turned out he had had a blood clot in his lung, he had pneumonia, and he had been given ibuprofen. Some of you know me well enough just how well that went down, I took him home.
After that all virus treatments were out as an option since the blood clot in the lungs was a reason enough to push the previous estimate of life span went from 6 months to days.
In march he had issues with a tooth, I took him to the dentist. We got to the waiting room, I was emailing his doctor about if we could please, please have the option of trying an other load of drugs, he turned to me and said he lost the feeling from his legs. I told him he should see his dentist, and when his time came, I carried him there and went out to call the cancer ward and I called my mom to let him know a hard turn had just happened. They told me to bring him in. I carried him out from there, to the car, from the car to the hospital and some old bat screamed at me for double parking, while I carried my 180lbs dad to the nearest wheelchair. I took him in, and I had to leave to get my kids since my friend was babysitting and his son had ended up in a hospital for a broken arm.
I got my kids, fed them, put them down for their nap, and I ran next door to check my med situation. I found my mom from the couch drinking wine. She decided to do a half day because she had heard about her husband of thirty years losing his legs. “you don’t understand, now he has to be sent to a hospice.”
I can put this kindly if someone needs it, but the truth is I have never hated anyone as much as I hated my mom at that moment. I told her very kindly that I would use every cent I had made in my miserable life to make sure all their properties would be divided, I would make it so horrible to sell anything, I would make sure everything would be marked up so much we all would lose hundreds of thousands in taxes, if she didn’t let me keep dad in their home.
In a week, I got him back home. He was fully with us. I was working as hard as I could to keep my family together, namely seeing my kids at times, driving him around, at the pharmacy, getting him in the home hospice program, making sure his secretary sends us the last things they wanted him to sign, sleeping sometimes for more than an hour and building a snow castle big enough I could stand on top of it and watch over my dad from a window while playing with my kids. I had no time at any time to be with him, if not his doctor visiting. My mom wasn’t helping exactly since she kept sending me out to get ice cream for their guests, she kept texting me gasket models I had to get pricing and my personal favorite was a question on how to ask my dad if he could have a church funeral and how he would feel about being buried to her family grave. In his last days I saw him when I was feeding him meds, or through a window. In the March 28th he lost consciousness and I called it. I called his doctor, and informed her I am stopping the antibiotics after I told my mother and my brother that that was the only humane thing to do. The doctor and my mother, and my brother agreed, temporarily. After they understood that the last few days means diapers, sitting and waiting, they wanted him back on them. More about this later.
On April first he died. I went to fetch a neighbor (doctor) to declare him dead. I was shaking. After that I went home, told my husband who was, and I shit you not, enjoying his morning ritual of a porcelain and a paper and he started laughing, since it was april fools day. I know thats a stupid thing to tell you, but the moment was unreal. I still laugh at the memory of that shitty moment, on a shitty morning.
I was so out of it, I walked back to the house, got all his meds, most of them opioids, and drove to my usual pharmacy to hand them over, flushing those down is illegal here. I drove back and I was told that our family members would be visiting the grieving widow and his son so I should go home.
My uncle, my dad's brother and others didn’t want to see me since before I killed my dad, I also had left him alone to die and I didn’t care to help my poor mom and my brother in caring for him.
I went home. I don’t think I cried at any point.
About a week later I got a parking ticket. They had moved from physical tickets to mail parking tickets at the hospital areas while he was ill and they were fast to issue them. In a few weeks I got about 25 tickets (I never had the time to fill in for an invalid parking space permit, and I never had the time to get a permit for the five minute stay permits. After I was told by my extended family I deserve no pity because I deserted my dad, the month I got physical mail, in the form of tickets felt so fucking good. I saved every damn ticket. I paid them all (and they later returned me the money, not because I asked, but because I sent them a letter to thank them for issuing them).
In the funeral, and in the reception, it is a custom that the widow and the kids, and the grandkids walk and sit in the first table. In our case, I and my kids, his only grandkids were shoved to a corner. I didn’t actually at that point give a shit about anything else but my husband had been under fire from every angle for months. He realized at the same time I did that this was bad so he made sure he could be there for me. He never complained, not even once. Later, months later, I realized he did this on me too.
It was playing on repeat in my car every morning while I was trying to pick myself up enough to get the car warm enough I could take my dad in it.
So I killed my dad. There is no nice way to put it, I did it.
The thing I want you all to know is that all of that was horrible. I mean, come the fuck on, parking tickets as a way to know you were there? So fucking pathetic. My ties to my extended family are dead, my mother might be a bit mad at me, I don’t know how my brother feels since we don’t talk.
A few months after his death, we moved to USA. A few months after that I bought Peter (an F82, ay, manual, I added this just so some of you understand what a joy my road trips were). I had been in some time warp it felt like. I couldn’t get rid of the hate I felt towards my mom and my brother, and towards me. I felt worthless. A murderer walking free. Basically I felt the few parking tickets kept me sane (I brought them over, I somehow needed them near, those could've been fun to explain in customs btw), at that point I was working with a few shelters and with drug abusers there in my free time, but the first moment of true peace came when I saw a sign pointing towards The Little Big Horn. I was in pieces when I got to the battle ground. I was so fucking broken I was changing clothes in the parking lot since I didn't know if I was in a funeral, in a historic site, or what was so hard for me.
http://m4trip.blogspot.fi/2014/08/th...-horn.html?m=1
That’s what I wrote then. After that the flood gates opened and I let go of the last few monts, and I learned to love the good memories that all had been buried under the hurt, the bitterness, the hate.
I am honored that I was there. For sure, from most days only gained ticket is a proof of it, but you know what guys? I fucking loved him. I would do it all again.
*I edited this post, and it was a lot longer originally. I honest to god think i tried to be honest here. My story is not nice but if you read it through, you understand how hard it can be but the good memories will push through. Loving those close to you is always worth the sacrifices it takes.