Death of a parent

Meanwhile, back at Sky Garden Ranch…

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment
So, after the worst year of my life (by far!), I have some good news to share!

You may remember we lost our Rasta Temple Dog last July after 14 wonderful years of puppy love. That was the harbinger of a very BAD year to come. Mike had two serious surgeries, my brother went into hospice, and my Mom died this past March. I have also been sick a lot, but on Monday I said to Mike I might be ready to get a new dog after I feel better. By Tuesday we had contacted a puppy rescue around here. We picked up Annie on Wednesday.

Annie is a very sweet five year old who has been abused by a puppy mill in Missouri, so as you might guess, she is as meek and timid as she can possibly be. When you put her down she just sits there, not moving around or exploring anything. She didn’t even drink water or eat anything for over 24 hours after we got her. I now understand this is not unusual for a rescue dog.

With Mike and I’s tender loving care, she is now coming in through her dog door and slowly checking out her new home. Still not enough courage to go out the dog door. We have to be so patient with her. She was super tired when she got here. She slept for a couple days. She has been vigilant her whole life and must now learn how to trust someone. No easy feat teaching her to trust in us, but we are up to the challenge!

Where does my grief belong? Private vs. Public

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

My sister and I have been dealing with this question for the past few years, as our father died and then our mother and brother’s health continued to fail. In addition, we have both lost companion animals this past year. Is it better to share with others your inner feelings which are dominating your time and energy, or is it best to keep quiet?

In a world where most feelings are now allowed to be shared with those around you, those who supposedly care about you, when someone asks how you are, is it OK to say:

“Well my mom is despondent since she broke her hip and had to be moved to a nursing home, my brother just entered hospice care, and my husband suffers greatly from the major surgery he had this month. Did I mention that my dog died in my arms in July?”

Mostly my sister and I cry together on the phone and then go on. She tells me about how it breaks her heart to watch our Mom’s health and will to live fail. I tell her about our brother’s lonely, sad existence as his lungs and brain fail him. Throw in nearly a month at a hospital two hours north of here for Mike’s surgery, and you will see the sum total of our pain and grief.

Our family Christmas 2021

I know most will say, at least you still have your sister to talk to, and that is such a blessing, but Diane and I can’t help but feel that others don’t want to be brought down by our family’s grief. So many people just cannot handle the pain and grief of others. I have witnessed this personally. Everyone will have their own time of great grief, no matter how hard they try to deny it.

Having someone special to share your grief really does help…

What do we ‘owe’ our parents & ancestors?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

As we age and our parents pass away, we may be stumped with questions about our parents’ lives, the choices they made, and how our existence may have affected them. I know I am. I sometimes wonder why my siblings and I were so disappointing to my parents, and what ancestors further back might have thought of the choices we made in our lives.

The Carter Family in 1966

My siblings and I were raised to feel that we owed quite a bit to our parents. My father, the first to go to college in his family, gave us the best educational opportunities to prepare us to become “something great.” The pressure was on to get a superior education and become exemplary in our chosen field. In response my sister excelled and become a role model in the areas of nursing, gerontology and long-term care. I had a career as an academic librarian and writer, and my brother John resisted Dad’s pressure as best he could. We all knew in the end John was a great disappointment to Dad, and I wasn’t exactly his star child either. I think he always wondered what happened to us. Why weren’t we as driven and successful as him.

The real question is, did we owe our lives to our parents? Historically I believe the answer is a resounding yes. Many believe the primary job of children is to be successful, make a lot of money and take care of their parents when they get elderly. That wasn’t the expectation in my family, thank goodness. I think my Dad believed that the success of his children reflected on him, and vice versa. He always wondered what happened to me and especially John.

John building my garden here in 2019…

As a psychologist I think I now understand what happened. Children naturally resist being told what to do. They may respond by doing the opposite, or in John’s case, doing exactly what he wanted to do. My siblings and I were plenty intelligent to do whatever we chose to do in life, but our self-esteem was irrevocable damaged by our parents belief that continually blaming and shaming children helps to toughen them up for the “real world.” Big mistake, but the damage was already done by our teenage years. That’s when my brother John told Dad to “fuck off” and left home for good. We rarely saw him after that.

Parents please listen, damaging your child’s self-esteem is a terrible way to prepare them for any world. It can easily destroy their lives. My sister and I were able to find good counseling over the years to remedy the destructiveness of our parents. That was the only way we could recover from such a tough childhood. John never did.

Observing two different dementia experiences

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I just realized yesterday that in the past few years my sister and I have been witnessing two different dementia experiences up-close and personal. Since my father’s death in March 2020, both our mother and our brother have been slowly losing touch with reality. While my sister has taken care of our mother in a “quality” assisted living facility in Denver, Mike and I have been doing our best to assist my brother in a small rural town in southern Colorado. Another aspect of these different experiences is that my mother has retirement funds to spend on her care, while my brother receives all of his care through us, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Our brother John, Christmas 2021

The experience I am most familiar with is that of my brother. He came here at the end 2020 from a lean-to he had been living in near Oak Creek north of Sedona for a number of years. He knew he could no longer live that life with no assistance if he needed it. He had a few health problems then, but he was generally doing well. Since then he has started on supplemental oxygen and various other drugs and supplements. Only in the past year of so has he begun complaining constantly of “total brain fog” and terrible memory lapses.

Our mother (on right) at my father’s 90th birthday party, February 2019

Since our Dad died in 2020, right before the “COVID years,” Mom was forced to live alone for a while. She entered assisted living two years ago as her memory continued to fail her. Hers seems to be more like classic Alzheimer’s disease with gradual memory loss. She no longer cares how she looks or what she wears, and only occasionally reflects on her many losses. However, she is still quite aware that her memory is failing her. This really is the long goodbye for us…

Luckily my sister and I have each other and our husbands to share our concerns and losses, but it is still quite a challenge to watch our family fall apart before our eyes. As my sister says, with her decades of experience in the fields of long term care and gerontology,

“Everyone tells you that aging is tough, but you don’t really get it until it happens to you…”

“A Man Called Otto” my very personal review

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

My family has been falling apart…literally, in the past few years. We are a family of elders with no children or grandchildren around us. I am the youngest at age 68.

First my Dad died in 2020 leaving my Mom bereaved, in great need of companionship, and beginning to experience dementia and yet forced to live alone for a couple years, because of the COVID pandemic. In the meantime, my brother John finally left his lean-to tent near Oak Creek outside of Sedona AZ to move up near Mike and I. He needed more help to live. Since 2020 my sister and her husband have been taking care of our Mom in Denver while Mike and I have been helping John access affordable housing, medical care and food assistance here.

As John and Mom’s memory and mental status continued to fail, our Mom went into assisted living in Denver. Today my sister and I do what we can to keep everyone going in spite of our own health challenges. We also commiserate often over what is happening to our family. This can be quite depressing at times.

I spent most of my life trying to “go it alone.” After a traumatic betrayal in my early 20s I decided, “Who needs all those others who can be so disloyal, undependable and will only abandon me in the end?” When I was in counseling in my 30s my counselor assigned me the duty of inviting others to share a hike or a meal with me. I have spent most of my life alone.

This is why I can highly recommend the 2022 film “A Man Called Otto.” This story does not minimize the difficulties of life, especially as we enter our 60s and 70s. The writer acknowledges the “systems” we put in place to retain some sense of order in an otherwise lonely, messy and chaotic world. Yes, life can be so unfair at times. Yes, it is almost impossible to go it alone. Yes, suicide is always an option. Yes, some of us must be forced into caring for others, but that can also be our saving grace.

That is why I so joyfully welcomed Mike into my life at age 49. I changed. I finally found somebody worth my trust and was forced to acknowledge that life would not be worth living without the love and support of my best friend.

We Carters have never been a close family, but now we are finally bound together to face the end of us all. Mike has joined us in this process, as his own brother and sisters face their own demise. I guess this must be a common boomer process we face, especially if we don’t have children or grandchildren that care.

We all face the future as it comes, crying together when we need to, and laughing at it all when we can; knowing that all of humanity has come before us facing very similar situations and consequences. In the process, the love of others is such a plus.

Still codependent but working on it at age 67!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

As a lifelong co-dependent and apparent sucker for abuse, it took me FOREVER to arrive at this simple answer to all who have taken advantage of my kindness and understanding:

Don’t be afraid to lose someone who is not grateful to have you.

As I head towards 70 years old I find that I have taken abuse from far too many in my life, first from a supremely judgmental family and then just about everyone else I met along the way. From the beginning, when I felt like I must take care of my mother’s emotional needs, I tried to comfort, mediate with and please others instead of standing up for my own needs. In fact, I hadn’t the slightest idea what my own needs were. After years of counseling, I still sometimes struggle with that…

The main sign of codependency is consistently elevating the needs of others above your own. Other signs include controlling behaviors, self-sacrifice, and fear of rejection.

Yes, gigantic fears of rejection and abandonment! And I was certain that if I was honest and truly myself, no one would want to be around me. I learned this behavior from my mother, who worshipped my father, but was also super angry at him most of the time. She thought having her own opinion or interests would be far too selfish, so she took on my father’s interests instead for most of her life, doing things she has no real interest in to please and be with him. After my father’s death she seemed lost. She had lost her leader.

What a shame and a waste of her unique personality and charm. Years of counseling and reading have helped me wake up to my own personality and charm, but also I find now I have a very low tolerance for abusive people. A number of people who used to be in my life are no longer welcome, because I have such a low tolerance for abuse and nastiness. But why should I fear losing them if they were never grateful to have me in their life?

I know it seems late in life to come to these conclusions, but at least I finally got it.