My dad died a few weeks ago. Particularly horrible death at the end of three long years with dementia, the last two in a care home. It’s just me, only family so I’ve had to fight every step of the way for him. I am exhausted from it. I sat next to him for his last three days/nights and was with him when he died.
My mum died when I was a young child and he met a woman when I was 14, she absolutely hated me and was just vile. They never lived together or married but were friends for 30 odd years. I left home at 16 and never had anything to do with her again really.
Two years ago when it was apparent that my dad, who was then 84 was getting ill (she is 20 years younger than him, for context, so not an elderly lady herself). I called her begged her for Help with him. There is no one else. No other family or friends. She refused. And she told me all sorts of horrible things, about how much he hated me, all the awful things he had said about me since I was young, how over the last few years he had been saying what an evil person I am. I ended up having to hang up. I’d already been though a year of hell begging HCP and social care for help, I couldn’t take being told how terrible I am on top of all that.
I was so upset, I hung up. She doesn’t have my contact details and my dad was too far gone to use his phone anymore and went into a care home the next week. we had tried him living with us, but my youngest child was a baby and it was too dangerous, we had a couple of close calls and I had to put my children’s safety first.
When he died, I had to call a couple of other friends that he’d left instructions to call. The same thing. They told me that he was always saying what a terrible person I am, how horrible I was to him, that I never bothered with him, how I never saw him (we saw him every week, I nursed him though cancer, he stayed with me during recovery from cancer ops, he told people I hadn’t bothered with him).
Why these people felt the need to tell me those things when I was calling them to tell them my father had died two days previously and I was crying, I’ll never know. It wasn’t true.
I don’t blame him though. From reading things he’d written over the last decade, I think the dementia had been present for a long time. He just hid it well. And I have learned no one would have cared anyway. I took him to his GP in desperation, he was sat there saying what a nice cruise ship it was and the GP kept insisting he was fine, just depressed. He ended up in hospital, hallucinating that aliens had taken the place over and social workers kept telling me he was fine and they had no concerns. So this was a long time coming. I think he was telling people I hated him so they would look after him on the days I couldn’t.
Anyway, I need to tell that woman. He would have wanted me to. He asked me to in a letter he wrote a few years ago.
I just can’t face the barrage of shit I know she will unleash. I don’t need to hear yet again how much my dad hated me. I’ve been though hell for him over the last few years. I’ve missed half my toddlers life dealing with everything (he was abused in one care home, I had to deal with it all, again, no one really cared).
Dh said he would do it. But part of me wants to scream how much I’ve been though. not just the last few years, but looking after him my whole bloody life.
Sorry this is so long.
If I was this awful person who hated him, believe me, I would have had a much easier life. I loved him so much.
I have to believe he was saying all that for attention (he’s been saying awful things about me since I was a teenager, according to all these dickheads who thought it was appropriate to tell me that), and it got worse when dementia started.