The Stay

Unfortunately, the funeral wasn't the hardest thing we had to do last week. We stayed three nights with my husband's parents.

Let me start with the minor irritations of this visit. It's so uncomfortable there physically. They keep their house very hot. The heater was running on a 79 degree day. My hair was a disaster the entire time because I was sweating constantly.

The bed we have to sleep in is a full size. We normally sleep in a king. Two fat people and a minimum of two dogs in a full size bed is just insanity. We sweat and flop around trying to get comfy. I think we were both lucky to get 3 hours of sleep each night. We ran two fans and kept the window open. Not much help since the house is a few blocks from a dairy farm and hospital. Stink and sirens all night. Sirens meant dogs howling and barking. Ugh!

There's no internet service. Seriously! Our phones won't work inside the house. I imagine with the heat and smell, this is a taste of hell.

The place has recently had a lot of remodeling. That hasn't cut down the amount of body odor and cat litter box smells. Have I mentioned that I'm rarely bothered by a weak stomach. The only time I am is when I'm hot and there are disgusting smells.

Ok, so those are the petty things. I'm a bit spoiled by my surroundings.

The time with his parents was equally, if not more, miserable.

His mom is as she has been for more than a year. She has no clue who, what, when, where or why. She's declining physically as she shuffles her feet to walk. She sleeps a lot. She often wants to be taken back to her parents, who are deceased.

I have a growing compassion for her. It'd be easy to be mean to her given how she always treated me, but I'm not that way. I went through a time of living through confusion and it's hard. I have a bit of a soft spot for her. Aside from that, I have a great love and respect for her as she raised the outstanding man I married.

Keep in mind, I have the same love and respect for my husband's dad. But that's as far as it goes these days. I find myself getting more and more frustrated and angry with him.

Despite living with her everyday, he is the least accepting and understanding of her diagnosis. He also has no ability to control his anger and frustration.

I bit my tongue a lot. He treats everyone with great disrespect. Nobody knows how to do anything and he won't listen to anything.

He's so hateful in how he talks to her especially. Last week, he kept harping on her to read her watch. She doesn't know who she is, how do you expect her to read a watch. Let me tell you something, she may not know anything, but she still has emotions. After two days of harping on her, I heard her voice coming from the front room Thursday evening.

She was yelling. 9:11 9:11 9:11 9:11 9:12 9:12 9:12 9:13 9:13

Her husband started complaining that she was talking to the damn cat. I peaked in the room. The cat wasn't there. She was watching the digital clock on the DVD player and her watch, reading the time over and over. She was trying to teach herself to tell time again. It was like a child trying to learn something and avoid punishment.

We saw so much of that. It was all hard.

When we went to dinner, he made her leave her purse at home. Her purse is a security for her. When you take security away, she gets very out of sorts. Let's just say it led to a lot of yelling.

He doesn't know how to pick his battles. He also forgets that she's his wife. I've not forgotten. She's my husband's mother and I wanted to crawl down his throat to remind him of that. How dare he treat my husband's mom like that.

But the way he treats people isn't exclusive to her. He was disrespectful to us too. We fixed lunch for them and left it in the fridge for Friday. It's going to waste cause he's too lazy to heat it up. I tried again to take to him about cutting down sugar for himself and her. I pretty much got told to mind my own business. I begged him to stop giving her pills with juice or milk. Multiple drugs she is on lose effectiveness or cause upset stomach when taken with anything besides water and food. Again, I was told he had it under control.

There's so many examples.

He's getting a bit of dementia himself. He repeats himself constantly.

It's a terrible time. He refuses help and isn't helpful himself. His selfishness and pride is keeping both of them to have any quality of life during their remaining years. I hate that for them. I hate that my mother in laws decline has happened and he hasn't chosen to do all he can for her. He thinks what he does is enough and it's not.

That stay made me all the more content to live over 700 miles away from them. We can't do anything about it and likewise cannot live in the midst of it all.