Coping

 My dad was convinced he was not long for the world when Ryan met my dad back in 2001. Life was not easy for him and he struggled with it. From snippets dropped here and there, he and his older brother were the result of an affair. His parents did eventually marry, and then divorced. His mom remarried a couple times after that. His father was an alcoholic. They were poor and lived in some very rough conditions. My dad grew up using his step-dad's last name and eventually went back to his biological father's name, while his brother kept the step-dad's last name. And thus is the beginning and ending of my knowledge of his family life.

During the last 10 years or so, my dad had 3 or 4 heart attacks. He didn't say anything about them at the time they happened, and when he did decide to share- it was to Ryan with the directive to not tell me. He had COVID pretty bad at one point, to the point where he was struggling to breathe. He kept saying by this point that he didn't want to live and didn't want any life-saving measures taken to preserve his life. But I think when faced with his mortality he would always make the choice to have medical interventions. I would too, but it was just another one of those odd quirks of his to say one thing and do another. In early 2023 he had something growing on his bladder, making him unable to relieve himself. He would never definitively say if it was cancerous or not. Sometimes yes and sometimes it was something else. He had to have a catheter put in, and he had to wear it all the time. It was both comical and disgusting to see his pee bag hanging from his belt. Then he said he was going to need it for the rest of his life, and then he no longer needed it.

As his financial life imploded in November 2023, his health took the brunt of his stress. He realized he was losing his sight and so drove himself to an urgent care center (where his car stayed for weeks). They weren't sure what was causing it. He lost all vision in one eye, and his hearing was going. He was transferred to Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, and then later to a rehabilitation center. I, of course, knew nothing about any of it until late November when he was in the St. Luke's rehab. The medical staff ruled out a stroke, but a diagnosis was not found yet. When Ryan and I went to visit him, my dad confessed to "seeing dead people." I laughed it off at first because I couldn't always tell when he was trying to be funny. But no. In his blind eye, he was seeing people and objects that weren't really there. He was pretty confused about what was real and what wasn't. But kept looking at us with the "side eye" due to only using the one eye to see. He looked continually skeptical.  I don't know if he really thought he was seeing dead people or not. The doctor said his brain was likely trying to make up for the sudden lack of stimulation on the one side by filling it in with... stuff. Animals. People. Who knows. My dad also was really weak, and his legs weren't working well and were painful. The rehab staff were committed to getting him back on his feet and functioning again, but my dad was resistant. He just wanted to sleep and stop with the pestering. 

A week or so later St. Luke's called me with my dad's discharge plan and told me all of the help he was going to need. I panicked. My dad could not live with me. I know family is supposed to step in when older family members are going through health challenges. I know this. I didn't need the lecture. I promise I am not some selfish pig refusing a reasonable ask. How could I make them understand that I just couldn't? I prayed hard that I would not have to be subjected to living with him again. He needed help getting up and moving around. Using the bathroom. All of the basic functions.

His health worsened and he was sent back to another hospital- Sacred Heart this time. I got a call from the hospital that he had been admitted to the ER and wasn't looking good. His sight was almost all gone, his hearing worse, and his kidneys were a mess and they weren't sure what was going on. Instead of improving at rehab, he had gone steadily downhill.

He spent a day and a half in the ER. We drove up and spent time with him. He looked really frail. Dad was adamant that he only wanted comfort measures. Give him pain meds and let him die. The doctors were pretty sure he was treatable. They ran all kinds of tests on him, and finally, eventually got him a room that was not in the loud ER.

He eventually got a diagnosis. He had what was formerly known as Wegener's Disease, and now called Granulomatosis with polyangiitis.  It's an autoimmune disease that attacks the blood vessels and causes inflammation. All of those delicate blood vessels that go to organs will swell and cut off blood flow and can cause organ failure if not treated quickly. It checked off most of his list of symptoms. Hearing and sight loss, fever, fatigue, kidney problems, bloody nose, chest pain and shortness of breath. It didn't necessarily explain the pain in his lower legs and feet.

This was treatable. Some of the hearing and sight loss could be reversible. He could go on to live a decent life with some accommodations. Between the doctors, Ryan and I, we thought treatment was worth pursing. The doctors said my dad could hang on for a couple of years with no intervention and just be miserable. Or they could treat him. My dad gave his permission for treatment.

We visited my dad a couple more times in December. I got updates from his doctor of the week fairly often. I was on the phone quite a bit handling his other affairs. We had some interesting visits. I don't know if it was the disease or just my dad's paranoia coming out, but my dad was pretty sure there were Chinese people coming in and watching him at night. And the Russians. He said he could hear them talking in his room. He also saw cats wandering in the hospital. Since his vision only allowed him to see lights and shadows at that point... well, who knows what was going on. We made sure we told his doctor since he wasn't likely to volunteer that information. My favorite was the time he had a nose bleed that wouldn't stop so he had a tampon hanging out of his nose. They wouldn't remove it until it had been 24 hours. 

The hospital released my dad around December 30th. My dad had an iPhone by then and was learning how to get Siri to read and send text messages and make calls using his voice. My dad got a friend to take him back to his basement apartment. The hospital released him without telling me. Since I'd had a conversation with him just a couple days prior about how he kept thinking about going up to the top of the hospital and throwing himself off, I got a little upset and told them they were pretty irresponsible. They countered with they had set him up with a whole lot of medications, info for meals on wheels, his instructions printed on paper, and a follow up doctor's appointment. Having talked with my dad's friend who said he had to pretty much drag my dad up the steps up from the garage and then down to the basement, I wasn't sure this was going to work out. As he also couldn't read anymore... Those discharge papers were just not helpful.

I started getting texts from the owners of the house where my dad lived. The owners traveled a lot, so the set up where my dad fed their dog and lived in their basement worked just fine for the first couple of months. My dad didn't leave the house. He didn't take the right medication (because he couldn't read the labels....). Ryan drove up to Spokane to check on him and get his various bottles of medicine (much of it pain meds) set up in order and try to get him to remember how much and when. We didn't want my dad to stay with us and he said he was fine, so... it was going to be what it would be I guess. Eventually his mind wandered enough that it was bothering his housemates. He kept waking them up saying some mother had a left a baby in his bed and he was looking for the mom. He would fall down the stairs. He thought he could drive himself as long as he drove during the daylight hours (that would have been so bad). He wasn't really eating. He said he was seeing rats in his room. The homeowners were ADAMANT that my dad needed to get out of their house. When we resisted and said he had rights and couldn't be thrown out because they didn't like him anymore because he was still paying rent, they had their bishop call us and say that we were his family and we needed to step up and do the right thing. No one would be bothered to take him to the hospital even though he very clearly needed medical help. Well you are just going to have to wait for the weekend.

Ryan took one for the team again, drove up to Spokane again, and took my dad to the ER to be admitted. We prayed they would admit him. When Ryan arrived, my dad fully thought Ryan and I had been there for a couple of days helping him get ready to move. My dad thought there were rats, nasty insects, and drug paraphernalia all over the basement. There were not. My dad had packed some of his belongings into boxes very clearly around the rats that he saw. There were empty spaces in the boxes. Ryan waited in the ER waiting room with my dad for 6 hours. My dad told off a lady there also waiting. He said her daughter kept taking his cane. She didn't have a daughter and dad had put his own cane on the floor. My dad held whole conversations with people who were not there. Ryan would just explain to the people around them in a normal voice that this was why they were there, and he was sorry. Then in a louder voice to my dad that there was no girl hiding under the table. My dad had resisted believing Ryan, and it was tricky getting him to the hospital and to stay there waiting. My dad had a little vision and enough imagination to keep things lively. He had shouted "watch out!" while Ryan was driving on the freeway over nothing that was visible to Ryan. But still Ryan slammed on his brakes before realizing what was going on. Finally my dad was admitted and Ryan could drive the 3 hours home again.

The following weekend, Ryan and I were back in Spokane and packed up all of my dad's stuff from the basement apartment and put it in his storage unit. It's tricky to go through a fully furnished bedroom, bathroom, and a closet half filled with the owners' belongings and try to pick out the ones that belong to a person. Some things were obvious, and others less so. It was a pain. But we got him out, and that's when we brought his car to our house. We had previously -ahem- borrowed his keys and kept beeping his key fob at the urgent care center where we thought he had left the car, until we finally found it and drove it to the house he'd been living at.  If it had been a smaller urgent care center and not snowy, it would have been easy enough to pick out the compact grey Toyota Yaris with the blankets covering the seats. But it wasn't, and we were tired.

So my dad was homeless and his only residence was Sacred Heart Hospital. I worked with his case worker to find a place for him to go and that would be able to take care of his many needs. Living alone hadn't worked well. I wouldn't take him, and my sister wouldn't either. He did ask many times. But places like that are expensive and he didn't have any money. The ironic bit of this whole thing was my dad never, ever, ever wanted to use government assistance for anything. Those were socialist programs and he would not use them. But that looked to be his best option. Getting him on Medicaid/Medicare meant declaring him poor, those hospital bills kept stacking up, and those crypto-currency investments weren't becoming any more real. 

But the shaky tethers keeping our relationship functioning came apart spectacularly (see a previous post). Dad was not willing to admit to any wrong doing ever, and I washed my hands of the whole thing. Dad dug himself into this pit and he could deal with the fallout.

To convince his sister to let him live with them, he told them he needed a warmer climate to help him deal with his pain. I don't know if that was true or not. I heard through the grape vine that he had been in the hospital again after his discharge from Spokane sometime in March. He had been on a lot of pain medication. We had seen his list of medications. He had been in rehab once a few years ago for being addicted to pain medication. I think this was his coping strategy, where his dad had used alcohol. Maybe the disease had flared up again. Maybe his body had just had enough. Maybe the comfort measures in Texas had been morphine. It seems as though sometimes morphine can take a very sick and tired body and help the soul into the next world. I don't know. It was a sad end for a tough life. 

In putting all of these experiences into words, I feel like I failed somehow. I don't know what I could or should have done differently. I did try to help him. But when my help did not align with his wishes, I was of no further use to him. He had some dumb, enabling friends. His naturopathic friend who he was living with said he could fix him up better than the specialists could. Ha!

I was hoping I would feel better as I type all of this out and sort through all of the experiences. I was hoping for some clarity. Mostly I just want the anguish to go away. The feeling that I was somehow not good enough. 

It's a work in progress.

Processing Emotions

Processing big emotions is exhausting, and I am exhausted. My brain has decided that I need to relive all of the horrible memories and awful feelings in an effort to come to terms with the death of my father. It doesn't help that every time I have to deal with the physical aspects of him dying leave me less than happy either. My dad said the arrangements had been all taken care of for when he passed. LIES. He was piggy-backing off someone else's funeral plot purchases, and put a whole $100 in trust for.... I'm not sure what that would cover. Not cremation. Not a nice urn (those start at $150). Not picking up his body and refrigerating it if he had been within 50 miles. Not opening and closing the gravesite.  Not a headstone. He always said he didn't need much when he went. Hopefully he's ok with the basic $12 urn I ok'd him to be mailed in. He's going to be lucky if I don't just stick it in the yard and use it for target practice with Ryan's pellet gun. I may just settle for leaving him in the garage until arrangements are made. 

I feel so lonely. Ryan looks at me and doesn't know how to help. I don't know how to help me. The people who probably best understand are the people I don't want to talk to. They are all mixed up in that painful history, and talking to them now doesn't leave me feeling any better. Usually worse. My kids don't know what happened to their mom. I don't recognize myself. I've decided its probably better to be a mute today than the raging, crazy lady. I know we don't get everything right as parents, but I'm pretty sure my kids got a better shake than I did. They won't understand the confusing cocktail of grief/anger/sadness/bitterness/guilt/pain/self-pity/self-loathing that is swirling inside me. They barely knew my dad, and it was better that way. Ryan says he doesn't feel much except relief at my dad's passing. He said he felt more sad when the music teacher at his school building passed away from cancer than he does for my dad. That feels telling.

I turned my emotional cocktail into decluttering today. I think we got rid of probably 9 trash bags of stuff, plus a couple of boxes. Some into the garbage and some to the Goodwill. My kids aren't sure they like this version of me. I have a lot more I'd like to do, but as stated in the beginning of this post- I am beyond tired and decision making is way harder than it should be.

I'm trying to decide how I feel about my dad. Yes, I am hurt and angry and so stinking mad at him. It's probably best I don't get any say in how much pain the afterlife might bring. I want to find forgiveness. What if that was his best effort? Our theology teaches you are only accountable to what you know and what you can be held accountable for. Hence, young children don't need to be baptized because they don't understand yet. What if how he lived was the best he could do with his upbringing and brain chemistry? I am trying to make room in my heart for love and mercy and forgiveness. There is a part of me that is hoping for some fiery retribution right now, and for that I obviously need a loving Savior to help me make it past that. I am no where near good enough to return to my Heavenly Father so I need a merciful Savior. And if I need one, that same courtesy needs to be extended to everyone trying to muddle through this life.

The Scam

This morning I was lying in bed awake feeling like I have more to share. It's like I have a case of a verbal stomach flu and I won't feel better until I have gotten it all out. So much has been hidden for so long. I feel a little like this is flipping my dad off when he's no longer around to be angry at me. He hated people knowing his business and here I am sharing in a very public forum. But all of these memories and emotions are clawing at me and needing to be let out. I read back over what I've written and I go back and forth in my brain: "That wasn't so bad. There are kids out there that have it way worse than I did. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?" To, "Gosh, what was I thinking letting him have any part of my life as an adult? I should have just cut him out and not let him continue to hurt me." Where does forgiveness, mercy, and love meet the line of keeping myself and my family safe? I clearly don't know.

I don't even know what I want to share here. I figure there is an explanation of the last year or so of his life with his health, and another with the romance scam. The two were interconnected but telling all of it all at once is makes for a convoluted story. Maybe I will start with his relationships.

My dad, for all of his unhealthy and solitary ways, didn't want to be alone. He wanted someone to take care of him, and in his way, someone to take care of. He was married once before mom. He was married to my mom for 26 years. They were sealed to each other when I was 3 months old. They tried to cram me into my white blessing dress for the sealing but it couldn't be zipped up over my baby chub. He married another lady after my mom who was a whopping 12 years older than me, and she had a couple of kids at home. They were sealed in the temple and that lasted a few years. I think I met her once. They moved to Wyoming after a couple of months living in my dad's one room basement apartment in Renton. According to my mom, this one reached out to my mom when they broke up and asked how my mom had put up with him for so long. Then the last wife lasted maybe two years? This one I think I saw twice. He said she scratched the glass stovetop in his kitchen leaving an awful long mark. He was also engaged once in between my mom and wife #3. Ryan and I took his honeymoon trip to Portland after it fell through. The bed and breakfast was non-refundable.

After all of that, you would think my dad might have felt it best not to pursue another romantic relationship. But hope springs eternal.

In August 2023 my family took a trip up to see my dad in Spokane and go to Silverwood. There was a reward good behavior (mine- visiting my dad then we could go have fun). My dad pulled Ryan and me aside to say that he had met someone very special online. She reached out to him on Twitter. She was so good and sweet and conservative, with "old world values" (meaning men give permission blah blah blah). She says she was from Greece I think, so her English wasn't great and she was self conscious about it so they really only texted. She would "ask his permission" and let him know she was going out with friends or some such nonsense. She was also a financial genius and was helping him make investments. Then he showed us a picture of Giorgia. She was everything young, hot, and sexy. Her age was unclear, but she was heavily made up, wearing sunglasses, shorts, and a midriff bearing furry sweatshirt thing. She was blonde and tan and skinny and we all could see it. I rolled my eyes at this. My dad was an average looking man in his mid 60s. There was no way this was real. But my dad insisted she would be coming to visit him the end of September or early October and could he bring her by to meet us? He had a great feeling about this one. She was his true soul mate and it was sad it had taken him this long to find her.

Whatever. It was his life.

In September 2023 my dad abruptly sold his condo in Spokane. He sold it to a realtor because he wanted the money that fast. Ryan and I dropped everything one weekend because he asked and helped him move his stuff into a storage unit. Giorgia was coming soon and they were going to travel the world. Her investment accumen in online crypto-currency had helped all of his money grow to huge amounts and now dad could afford to retire and enjoy life. He was going to live in a hotel until Giorgia came and then they would be off to maybe Florida. Somewhere warm and nice. 

October 2023 Giorgia had put off coming again. He found a bedroom in someone's basement to live in. Dad was also in need of financial help. His investments needed money up front to pay the taxes and then he could have access to his investment money. He called Ryan and asked for $300,000, telling us to take a 2nd mortgage out on our house. He had signed a "Smart Contract" so everything was on the up and up, I guess due to its great sounding name? Our money would be safe, but he needed it to access his money again. He had sunk everything into it. Money from the sale of his condo, savings, other investments, everything he'd had. He could not understand how we could just turn our backs on family in need. That's not what the Savior would do. He taught me better than that.

Sorry, no.

The amount he needed went down. $200,000. $150,000. $60,000. $30,000. Anything. How could we be so unfeeling? So uncaring? So unChristlike?

We were firm in our refusal. But oh, the anguish that came with that guilt trip. I am ever the sucker for it.

November came and Giorgia still hadn't come. Dad's health took a sharp downhill turn, and he ended up in the hospital, losing much of his vision and hearing. But more on that later.

He was frantic and upset about his money, and I think the stress of all of it took its toll on dad's health. We went and visited dad in a rehabilitation hospital. They must have taken that as my affirmation that I would take care of him, because they called and tried to set up his discharge to live with me. 

Cue the panic.

Dad needed more care due to worse health, so back to the regular hospital he went. Through it all, he was firm that Giorgia was only acting in his best interests. But strangely, through all of his health struggles, she never showed up. 

I had a list of people to email and call. Set up emergency health insurance with his work, the kind when you can no longer work but they cover you for a year anyway. Figure out what was next with HR. Follow up with the lawyer about banking issues. Fill out paperwork for Medicaid and Medicare and Disability. Take care of all of these problems that kept popping up. Move him out of his bedroom apartment. Make multiple trips to Spokane over December, January, and February to visit him.

We explained multiple times to different people associated with the hospital and all of his paperwork that he was being scammed. As we explained what was happening, there was not a single person who thought any of his "investments" sounded legit. They all had those pitying looks on their faces.

At the end of February 2024 we came to the climax. No one was lending him money. He wanted his car back. We had driven it to our house because A- he couldn't see well enough to drive anymore and B- he didn't have any place besides the hospital to live. There just wasn't a good place to store the car in Spokane. But he was going to sell his car, and get a couple of people he knew through his Karate group to go through his safe in his storage unit and get out the last of his gold and silver coins. He was going to scrape just as much money as he could together. We told the hospital staff what was going on, and they socially quarantined him. The staff found him trying to sell his coins and stuff in his hospital room. So they moved him and gave a safe word. No one could go see him without it, basically without my permission. My dad had assigned me as his medical and financial power of attorney and I was doing my best to keep him safe. He was not happy with me. He wanted those papers back.

The last straw was the phone call that he asked me to PERSONALLY deliver the last of his gathered money to Giorgia at a bank in Spokane. She was going to Spokane but not seeing him? Was anyone else confused and suspicious? My brain immediately imagined all of the various ways that could go badly. Would I be mugged, beaten and left for dead? Why did she ask for me personally and to go alone? Dad hadn't even met her in person. Surely this sounds off. I refused and told him why. It was a scam and I would not be a part of it. Everyone knew it but him. It's a romance scam and bears all the hallmarks of one. He had lost all of his money and I would not help him lose the last of his money. He has major bills to pay- months of living in a hospital. He launched into his tired tirade saying how much better he understood these things. He was going to leave the hospital, and all of my hours of work would be for nothing. I had people at the hospital helping with getting him a facility to live in that would be able to take care of his needs. So much stupid paperwork had gone into proving his financial losses and medical needs. Once he checked himself out of the hospital, it was over and they could no longer help. He was under a case worker's care as long as he was in the hospital and he clearly wasn't competent to take care of himself. But oh ho, he always knows better than everyone else. I laid into him about all of the ways he hurt me as a child and an adult and he didn't know what he was talking about. That's when the swearing started. He didn't usually swear at me, but I had him pretty worked up I guess. I was shaking pretty hard and decided it was time to be done. I hate conflict. And conflict with him is so hard for me. I told him I loved him but I was done helping him. And I hung up.

We had alerted Adult Protective Services a couple of times about my dad. We filed a police report about the scam. Ryan even called the FBI once we learned that this lady was supposed to be at a Spokane bank on a particular day. It is surprisingly difficult to alert the FBI about scams. I guess there are too many to deal with them all. All of these government agencies, and no real help.

I got my father-in-law to meet me in Spokane. I drove my dad's car to the hospital. I had strict instructions to park his car where it wouldn't get scraped or bumped in the parking garage. I was not in a compliant frame of mind and parked his little Yaris next to a Hummer. I gave my father-in-law the car keys and the estate binder with my power of attorney and he gave it to my dad, and then he drove me home.

What happened to my dad after that is fuzzy. I know from a friend of my dad's that he got ex-wife #4 to take him away from the hospital and I think he lived with another friend until possibly his sister and her husband picked him up in November and took him to Texas. I don't really know. The friend my dad was living with is a condescending jerk (they get along so well) and I really don't need to know badly enough to ask.

Anyway, this was a photo of Giorgia we found on my dad's phone. Yes we snooped right in front of him and took advantage of his blindness. This is exactly the sort of photo a "sweet, conservative" women takes, right? Ryan did the snooping. He said it was best that I did not subject my eyeballs and brain to the texts they were exchanging.

Ryan sent the imagine to his uncle. His uncle and several computer science students at San Jose State University thought they were able to track this image to a creepy looking 30-ish foreign dude with a goatee. That's likely who he was talking to romantically all this time.