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I've struggled with this for a while and it's never going to be concise, or 'right', or whatever so it is probably going to be long and disorganized and ranty and ugly. Just so you know what you might be getting into.

I had to make the decision to send my father to inpatient hospice on Saturday. Please hateful universe that poops on good people let him die quickly, because we have nothing else left. It isn't painless, even though there is good pain control, and it's everything he feared and hated about being tortured, helpless, and trapped.

He should have died multiple times before this. He had all the things that people usually use to predict that sort of thing. And then he didn't die. It even got to the point where health professionals would literally say he shouldn't still be upright, we don't get it. He didn't want to be here anymore. He's been done and ready to die for a long time. He said good-bye to people in person, on the phone, in writing. He is done and wants out. But his body won't quit.

I can only speculate that because he is a survivor of childhood trauma that what sometimes happens to people who have experienced such things is that they survive because their body just keeps going. There's even a dissociation between body and will. I think even though he decided to die, his body doesn't know how to stop.

Which leads me to say that it is bullshit that in the Century of the Anchovy we are still clinging to supposedly civil laws 100% rooted in conservatively defined religious dogmas and nothing to do with science. I am sick of a society that imposes rules based in superstitious beliefs on people who don't share those beliefs. I also don't care if you quibble about the terms euthanasia, assisted suicide, or assisted death. Death is part of life and the end of that life should be in the control of the dying person. Of course he was suicidally depressed. So fucking what? He was anything but unclear on exactly what was happening to him and why and he wouldn't have been suicidal if he had had the option to say I am done. Thanks for the mental and emotional, not to mention physical torture. Fuck your rules, society.

My father's condition severely deteriorated late Saturday morning. He suddenly couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't swallow. He was almost unable to respond or function even with assistance. He didn't have a stroke or a heart attack or a seizure. He just finally fell off the energy cliff, which is a real thing. He has had cachexia from the cancer for a long time, which is one of the reasons he should have died already. He ate breakfast Saturday, took his meds, and then he couldn't move, no matter how hard he tried. My brother, sister, and I finally got him from the dining room chair to the living room chair, but that was it.

It took a while, but I eventually got the on-call hospice to send a nurse, who got here around 4:45 pm. After she saw him and we talked we told my dad, who can still hear, and my mom what was going on and that they could turn the living room into a modified hospital room, but we'd have to do most of the care unless we found full time aides (and could pay them). My mother actually started saying she could take care of him and for once in my life I was appropriate. Mind you, the stupid little voice that all girls are raised with, and mine is especially well trained, is still trying to tell me I was mean to my mommy but it can fuck right off.

That aside, I told her fine, I would go lay down on my parents bed and she could try to roll me without assistance because a verbal description of what "dead weight" really means was ineffective. If she could move me, she could take care of my dad. She finally registered and said I can't move you and I said well then you can't move Dad. At which point she abdicated responsibility.

But not authority! If that woman says one more time to one more person that 'she's the wife, she's listed first on the power of attorney and the health care proxy' followed by 'I can't make this decision, ask her', I am going to explode. Among the other mean things I did, I finally pointed out to her (and my stupid brother, who is another fun chapter) that the actual wording of said paperwork says "unwilling or unable", which means that since I am named and a signatory on those documents as her alternate and she is clearly unwilling and de facto unable to make decisions, I am the gods be damned proxy. So I'm the one who had to make a decision that ran directly counter to my dad's wishes.

I will spare you a detailed description of the nurse being aware and she and I deciding to let my mom sign the paperwork, and of my mother and brother's alternately horrible and stupid behavior towards the EMS transport team that came to take Dad to inpatient hospice. Kudos to the head EMS guy, though, who basically said here, you want to help so much? Carry this heavy thing, to my brother at the end. Smooth dude, two thumbs up.

Yes. My brother finally came into town. Because it turns out that he, like my mother, is in deep denial. I had no idea how deep my mom was until this weekend but holey underwear. My brother is not quite as detached from reality but he is still in denial. And the only way to get him to leave town and not lose his job and take care of his own family was for me to play both parent and counselor. Which I fucking hate and resent and christmas crackers will these people PLEASE get professional help and stop creating these stupid situations in which I have to choose between shitty options, one of which is where I do everyone else's emotional work and heavy lifting just to shortcut their need to create or worsen crises. Also DRAMA!!!

Oh, and it's totally appropriate to channel your grief into rage, because you have rage problems that you are probably never going to get enough professional help for and to do it at the inpatient hospice facility. Yeah, that's great. I'm so thrilled that I had to counsel you and wait to see if you were going to control yourself or explode. That was fun.

Not to mention that my mother and brother are a terrible combination. He's the only one of the three kids who is still reflexively unable to recognize and not get suckered by her co-opting and manipulation. Their synergy is suboptimal. It's like water and metallic sodium, or potassium permanganate and glycerin, or mentos and pepsi.

My sister, who did have the option, asked her boss if she could leave Monday rather than Sunday since dad had just gotten sent to inpatient and her boss was super decent and said yes. That helped me a lot because she and I debriefed enough that I have made it a couple more days. We also discussed some stuff that I may or may not run by you guys at some point, as well. And we made her boss a berry pie that she is taking him tomorrow as a thank you.

My brother is supposed to come back this weekend. Or maybe his wife. Or maybe both of them. I will need tranquilizers. And it's more complicated because my niece, for whom my father is more of a father than a grandfather was also supposed to be here this weekend. Before my brother decided he would be here. Or his wife. Or both of them. My sister and I are aware of what this is for my niece, but my mother and brother are not.

So we tried to see if there was any way we could get her here when my brother and crew were not, but my niece just started a new job in Massachusetts and they are giving her this long weekend per prior arrangement and that is all she's got. So I've already told her I am too overwhelmed to be a support to her because I have to deal with the other crap. She is trying to be prepared to deal with my mom and brother and maybe use her mom/my sister via phone or facetime or whatever as a support as needed. There's also the issue of where people stay and my mom is totally not dealing with any of this.

Why is my family such a disaster?

Since Saturday night, I have had to make multiple care decisions, most of which straight up suck and are not what my dad wanted but choices are few, here. And fuck my mom for being such a bitch to him and on top of it dumping all responsibility. She's really good at being the grieving spouse when it plays well to her audience. Also telling everyone she's his caregiver and I'm her "co-caregiver". Fuck you. Even though you like to tell everyone you're his primary caregiver, you are not. I am.

Last week, he was in pain and feeling like shit and she literally brought him to the point of begging her to just give him a back rub (because it helps with the pain that sometimes breaks through the meds). And then she said, and I quote, and in the nastiest tone of voice you can imagine, "Fine. I'll give you your fucking backrub." And then had the unmitigated gall to say to me, after he said something in response to that thoughtful comment, "Gee, I didn't think he'd hear me." Really? When you said it standing right next to him?

Now, she's insisting that someone sleep with him at hospice every night, mostly her. And per what the nurses and aides have told me, she sits up all night holding his hand and being bossy. My sister and I are now well aware that she has what we refer to as territory marking behaviors, or, if you like, prey guarding behaviors. Thus, we are not charitably inclined in our opinions of this because we know at least half and probably more has to do with her issues about control and possession and so forth, as well as her performing a role for others as she believes they expect. This isn't charitable and I'd really like to believe there's some tiny part of her that isn't all dysfunction and bitterness and facade. It's a little difficult. No, it's very difficult. I believe her constant spontaneous crying is genuine, I just don't think it's all about my dad. I'm not sure any of it is about my dad.

When he was in the hospital back in August, she had to leave his room in tears. Later, she was in a quiet room for families and I went to see if she was ok. She burst into tears and I was trying to comfort her and then for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend she asked me if I knew why she was so upset and I said not specifically but assumed it had to do with my dad. And she said no, it was because "today is the anniversary of my brother's death." We're in the cancer center hospital, her husband is in uncontrolled pain, and she's crying over her brother. I assure you her brother was not someone worthy of such grief, but that's not even the point. Her husband is in the hospital, he's going to die, he's in pain, but she's not bothered nearly as much about that as about somebody who's already dead.

So my sister and I are just not charitably inclined because to do so we'd have to be deaf, blind, and stupid. Also in denial of repeated actual things that have happened. Not to mention compassion fatigued. In fact, I'm pretty sure we're in some kind of compassion deficit territory on the negative axis.

And I can't be angry, or sad, because not only do I have to continue to be functional because my mother is not, but she and others like my brother and SIL will co-opt any normal, obvious grieving like crying as a weakness and opportunity to get their hooks in and fuck with you. Frex, my brother thinks I'm real manly 'cuz I haven't burst into tears.

Lastly, I am also constrained in my grief because, frankly, my mother is on the verge of being actively dangerous to me. Again. But I'll document that to some of you for the record another time. This morning was not fun and the woman clearly actually hates me.

And, um, that's a little of what's going on. Just since Saturday. I may have digressed a bit for background, but yeah. Something like 72 hours and that's not everything in the 72 hours.