About Your Parents Thread

That's happening to me now with my kids not caring about turning off lights. They get up early for school, have the lights on in their bedrooms and the bathroom, and then go downstairs, eat, and catch their buses. Meanwhile, I'm grumbling about all the lights left on.

My dad, when I was a kid, was the same way. Grumbling about lights and complaining about the electric bill. He and my mom would have some big arguments over the utility bill because she likes to stay up to watch TV and fall asleep on the couch (she once fell asleep during a show, and woke up to find late-night pro wrestling on; needless to say, I had fun with her on that), and Dad doesn't like how much electricity she wastes.

 

I get stuff like this from my grandma all the time. I keep telling her one of my sisters will have kids before I do at this rate. My mom knows it ain't happening with me, so she's pretty much stopped bringing it up.

I'm worried about my mom when my stepdad goes. He's 10 or so years older than she is and a lifelong smoker, and he had a stroke about a year and a half ago and then was diagnosed with testicular cancer last year.

I really do not know what she's going to do when we reach that point, but hopefully that's a ways down the road.

 

I had the same thought, but some people refuse even then. The excuse is that they are old and don't have much time left, so why not enjoy what they have left?

My father finally quit when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He never accepted the terminal part. Literally up to the point of his final words, he refused to admit he was dying.

Sorry if that goes in multiple directions. I keep trying to post on this thread and failing. My mother died last year, but my first birthday without her just passed. I always wished her a happy giving-birth day. It was something I started as a kid. I even started making cards to send her a few years ago. I've mentioned this on the board before, but my thinking was the mother did the work that day, so we should be celebrating her, not the baby that was born.

My father was the emotional one. Mom was tough. I didn't even see her cry when her parents died. I know she did, but she didn't let us see it. My mantra through the grieving process has been to remind myself to be more like her and less like dad, who was very emotional.

Most of the time, I manage it. Not so much on my birthday.

The other day I told my daughter some silly thing my mother did when I was a kid. If we were walking and something came between us, she would say, "Bread and butter." I was supposed to reply with "Butter and bread." She explained it was just a reminder not to let things keep us apart.

My daughter told me that I should tell her more things like that. She liked hearing me talk about things her grandmother did. Gotta love when kids say stuff like that.

 

As with many or most people born in the inter-war years, my parents both started smoking in their early-mid teens. Smoking was the cool thing to do in the 30s-40s.
Throughout the 1960s-70s-80s doctors told them to quit. My mother especially developed symptoms of respiratory problems.
In the mid-80s they both had serious health crises at the same time: dad, cancer and mom, the onset of COPD.
So finally, after 40-some years smoking, they quit. Cold turkey. Chucked em all out.
And they made it stick. Mom lived almost another decade and dad got almost 20. Although they both died of probably smoking related causes, the doctors were unanimous: quitting got them extra years.
Whatever other bad habits I have (which are plenty), smoking is not one of them. I tried to start back when I was 16-17, and after a month or so, coughed up a bunch of black crap, so I said "fuck that," and that was the end of it with me and smoking forever.

 

When any of you have to put your Mom's pants BACK ON HER for the third time today... and it's only 3 p.m.... get back to me. Alzheimer's sucks.

 

Welp

 

Yes it does. I have an uncle in the mid-stages. He's still lucid part time, but he has bad moments. It's a struggle for my cousins.

 

Four! Thought I had reasoned with her after number three. "Mom, you don't need to take your pants off when you go to the bathroom, just pull them down. You don't take your underwear off, you just pull them down, right? Do the same thing with your pants!"

She reacted like it was an epiphany. "Oh! That's right! Okay."

And here I was thinking "Take that, Alzheimer's! I kicked your ass!"

Then, 10 minutes ago, she waddled back into the living room with no pants AND no underwear.

Fuck you, Alzheimer's.

 

I had that same thought a few weeks ago when, after cleaning and taking care of her all day, she asked what was for dinner. Nice piece of fish, rice and broccoli, I said.

"Fish? Yeeeeeech!" was her reply and my initial reaction — fueled by exhaustion — was to retort "Well, then make your own fucking dinner!" Until I remembered all the times the roles were reversed and I was bitching about dinner as a kid.

 

I wish I could say he has, Moddy.