I'm freaked out, and although I don't want to be jumping the
gun at memorialising someone, I thought I'd lay out a timeline of recent events
here.
On Thursday, October 24th, my father-in-law (Grandpa) took a
dizzy spell while bowling, and since it is a senior's league and he was
surrounded by a bunch of old guys, and despite his protestations, an ambulance
was called and he was brought to the University
hospital. The first we heard of this was when my mother-in-law (Granny)
called in tears to say what had happened and to let us know that she was on her
way to see him. We waited hours for an update, and when Granny called again, she
said that it didn't look like there was a real emergency -- Grandpa had had his
dosage on one of his medications doubled recently and the doctor's best guess
was that he was having a reaction. Great. The most concerning factor: Granny
was so stressed by the situation that she got lost driving the ten or so blocks
home (in the city she's lived in for 55 years…) and she ended up out in the
country and had to pull into a laneway and ask someone how to get back to town.
With a history of Alzheimer's in her family, this made us panic a bit.
We went to see Grandpa on the Saturday and he was himself; all
smiles and anxious to get back home. They were going to keep him in until the
Monday, however, to do some stress tests on his 20 year old bypasses -- as they
said, they normally last about 15 years, and we thought that this was a silver
lining; that he would be getting some tests that might not otherwise have been
available to him. Meanwhile, my own father (Pop) had bought a VW Thing from a local guy on Kijiji and
drove up from Nova Scotia to pick it up, arriving early Monday morning. There
was no news from the hospital until Tuesday, and it came in the form of another
panicked phone call from Granny: Grandpa's bypasses were all disintegrated and
he would be having surgery on Thursday to replace them.
My immediate memory was of a time, nearly twenty years ago,
when Grandpa told me that open heart surgery was so painful and the recovery so
hard that if he had known what it was like, he never would have done it. And
that's when he was in his fifties and had many many healthy years ahead of him.
I couldn't imagine what was going through his mind now.
As it happened, Pop and I had plans to go to Burlington
together to visit my brother and his family on that Tuesday. I was very
distracted as we drove along and, despite the knowledge that my own father
isn't a particularly empathetic man, I told him about the situation. He said a
few variations of, "At 75 years old, maybe the time has come to just
accept what's what and not encourage him to have this major surgery" and
"There's no reason for you to go down the day of the surgery, it's not
like you're a surgeon or
anything". Well, I felt worse for having told him so I stopped talking
about it -- there's no way I was going to shout, "But we need Grandpa in our lives; it is absolutely necessary that he dance at my daughters' weddings!" Then, when
we got back home, Dave called to tell me that his mother had gotten confused
and had the story wrong again -- Thursday was to be an angiogram to get more
information; this wasn't surgery but a small procedure. My father left for home
the next day -- wouldn't want to visit here with all of his kids and grandkids
for more than two days -- and I didn't bother correcting the story. What did he
care? (And that wasn't totally fair because he did text me as soon as he got
home to ask "How's Jim?" I replied that it turned out to be just an
angiogram and that was the end of the exchange.)
Then, late Thursday, Dave called his Dad directly and got
the straight scoop: The angiogram had shown that only one of Grandpa's bypasses was working properly and he
would have two options -- the open heart surgery to put in the new bypasses
that we had been panicking about or medication and a life of zero activity to
maintain the health of the last working artery. After a meeting with the surgical
team Friday -- yesterday -- it was decided that Grandpa will be having the
bypass surgery this coming Thursday. Heaven help him.
During the week, Dave had a conversation with his sister who
said, "Dan and I were talking last night and if anything happens to Dad,
we'll take Mom in." That knocked the wind out of me. Is this what we're
talking about? Yes, my inlaws are in their 70s, but I want them around for a
long time yet; if only because their warmth and caring balances out the chill
and indifference of my own parents. (And to be fair, my mother did text me
yesterday to see how everything is going. And to ask if she should send a
card.)
Off to see Grandpa today.
Update: November 5
The surgery has been confirmed for this Thursday and at least me, Dave and his sister will be going up Wednesday night to be there for both Granny and Grandpa. When we visited on Saturday, Grandpa told Dave that he had seen the EKG of his heart and even the "good" artery is blocked and weak; he said he'd be lucky to make it to the operating table. He must be so scared.
The bigger issue again: Granny called me in tears last night to say she had had the worst day. She had decided to drive herself to the hospital for a visit, and when she was entering the parking garage, she scraped the side of their car against a concrete pole. It was the first accident she had ever had, in sixty years of driving, and she was devastated by the timing. According to Grandpa (in a later conversation with Dave), Granny came into his hospital room in a panic and he had to get her to sit on his bed and put his arm around her and soothe her; let her know that it just didn't matter.
When she went to leave the hospital, Granny was sure she had parked on the sixth level of the parking garage, but no matter how long she walked around, trying to get the car to honk with her remote, she couldn't find it. Eventually, a man (bless his heart) offered to drive her around until they found it, eventually going up and down all of the levels twice until successful.
In the middle of this conversation, Granny lowered her voice even though she was home alone, and asked me, "You wouldn't happen to know what day the operation is, would you? Sandy from across the street asked me a while ago and I just couldn't remember."
I had offered to stay down in London with Granny -- I am the only one not needed at some kind of employment -- but while I may have been of help to her yesterday, it's been deemed unnecessary at this point: Sandy from across the street has offered to make sure Granny has a drive back and forth to the hospital until we get there.
When it rains, it pours, and it is pouring.
Update: November 17
Boy, I hate not having my laptop with me -- this is a late update.
Grandpa went in on the 7th to have his bypass surgery. We got to the hospital at 7:30 am and were able to hang out with him in his room and then accompany him down to the surgical floor, waiting with him until just before they took him away. As we were saying goodbye and good luck, I noticed that my lovely sister-in-law was bawling and this made me start to panic -- am I really so dumb that I don't recognise the danger? Granny was at the bedside, gripping Grandpa's hand, and bawling, and Dave, seeing his sister and not wanting it to upset their father, took a step forward to block her from the old guy's view, and I saw that Dave had tears in his eyes, too.
This begs the question: Is there something fundamentally wrong with me that seeing someone off to major surgery doesn't make me want to cry? Is my heart a shrivelled bean or did I marry into a family where the hearts are overly, wonderfully, large?
We were advised that the surgery would take 7 or 8 hours and were encouraged to leave the hospital and come back later. Reluctantly, we went out for breakfast and then hung out at the inlaws' house, returning to the hospital after 6 hours; surely enough time to be back before there was any news. When we arrived at the ICU waiting room, the Reverend Bill White was sitting there and gave us a big smile and a thumb's up.
Bill White is a former school teacher and principal who, upon retirement, decided to attend seminary and become an Anglican priest. He has been a friend and barber client of Grandpa's for 30 years, and following an invitation from the reverend, the inlaws have been sporadically attending Sunday services at his small church; the Anglican mass being a satisfactory compromise between her Baptist upbringing and his Catholic one. White renewed the inlaws' wedding vows on their 50th anniversary this year and Dave, his sister and I found him to be pompous and phony and in love with the sound of his own voice. We are not fans. But...the Rev. White has been a source of comfort during this health emergency and has been visiting Grandpa and phoning Granny, and while we might not like him, he has been the very example of a pastor and a friend.
So while it grated on me and Dave and his sister that, because he is a minister, the surgeon gave White the post-surgical update in our absence, Granny was relieved not to have to wait for news, and seeing him there gave her much joy. The update was: When the surgeon opened up Grandpa's chest and surveyed the anatomy of his heart (this was explained to us beforehand -- because he has had two bypass operations already, the doctors wouldn't know exactly what the heart would look like until they got in there; there were four or five veins hanging off the heart and the complete picture needed to be seen in person, not through the MRI or whatever, to really appreciate the landscape) it was decided that the connections were too small to do more than two bypasses this time. (And that's why the surgery took only 6 hours and we weren't present for the news.) White explained that the surgeon believes this will allow Grandpa to live a normal life but his days of shovelling snow and cutting grass are behind him. He repeated, in that smug and knowing voice, "This isn't the result we wanted for Dad, but it's not bad. Not good news, but not bad." This is comfort?
White proceeded to hang around, mostly telling lame jokes, and as Dave noted later, trying to be the cool reverend who'll say damn and hell. As an example: "Hey, we can't tell the future, only Gypsies can and that's why they make such caring, gentle lovers -- because they have crystal balls." Har dee har har. I did my best to not show my annoyance, but the following story is where I stopped pretending to smile:
That's Christian charity? Some old woman is spending the night before Christmas Eve at the ER and she can't be forgiven her biases? Wouldn't "your Pope isn't a real Pope" be a crappy thing to say to an old Catholic under any circumstances? I pretty much started ignoring the Rev. White at that point, but Dave, seeing what a comfort it was to his mother, was man enough to remain polite and chuckle at the jokes.
After we spoke to the surgeon ourselves and were told that we wouldn't be able to see Grandpa until later, we left the cellphone-banned area and began texting and emailing and calling people to let them know everything went well. My exchange with my own mother:
I know that my parents and my inlaws are friendly without exactly being friends -- they don't live anywhere near each other but our mothers do chat on the phone sometimes; mostly about their shared granddaughters -- but even if I was talking about the surgery of someone she didn't know at all, wouldn't a normal mother care enough about my feelings to respond more than a "K" when I sent this message?
This was also our last text exchange. Ma called me last Monday, here at home, to ask how things were going and I told her that I was packing to go back and spend the week with Granny and Ma's phone made a weird noise and disconnected; she didn't call back; that's our last conversation. She said at that time that she knew my mother-in-law must be overwhelmed with calls and visits so she wouldn't be adding to the pressure, and I was able to tell Granny that that's why my mother hasn't called her at all, but I can't help but feel that this indifference reflects poorly on me. I suppose this post might also be titled A Tale of Two Moms.
Although I have more to say about our post-surgical adventure, this is nearly all I have to say on the topic of my parents vs. my inlaws.
I say "nearly" because I want to tell one last story, related to that text conversation with my mother and that first message about Dave's cousin's wife coming out of a coma (which my mother didn't even respond to?). The short version of that is that Jenn was giving birth and the placenta didn't detach and they had to do an emergency hysterectomy and she lost so much blood that they kept her in a coma for a couple of days while rushing her back and forth to the OR for emergency procedures. This was happening the same week that Grandpa was waiting for his surgery, so although we're not super-close with Jenn, it did add to the overall stress. (And her story has a happy ending, too.)
So last night, my first night back home in nearly a week (because I have been staying with Granny to keep her company and keep her focussed while the Alzheimer's starts to scramble her memory), Ken came over to ask us how we are and how the inlaws are. He made some offhand comment about, "Has Aunt Susie been to visit?" (Aunt Susie is Granny's sister and Jenn's mother-in-law; Susan has spent the week helping out her son and worrying that his wife was going to die.) So I started to say, "Susie's daughter-in-law nearly died in childbirth..." And Ken says, "I don't care about all that." And, trying to explain how it did affect us, the people he's asking about, I said, "Yeah, but, when she was in the hospital..." And he cut me off again with, "I don't give a shit about those people. I care about you and I care about Dave. I care about your kids. I care about Jim and Bev. Rudy. Dan. That's about it."
That's exactly the way our Dad talks about people, and the older Ken gets, the more he affects our father's mannerisms. What a rude and stupid way to talk to me -- especially when it feels like an affectation -- and then I'm supposed to sit here and listen while he tells some stupid story about how he's buying a trailer from our cousin and flipping it for profit to a friend of his? On what planet is that a more interesting story than the near loss of a human being; even one you don't know; even someone you "don't give a shit about"?
It's easy to say that our lack of empathy comes from our father's aggressive misanthropy but the fact that my mother's compassion ends at the tip of her own nose has also affected the people that my brothers and I have become. I may not always have the appropriate emotional responses but I do try to act with the compassion that I'm not truly feeling. Here's hoping my own girls have their father's heart.
*****
Update: November 5
The surgery has been confirmed for this Thursday and at least me, Dave and his sister will be going up Wednesday night to be there for both Granny and Grandpa. When we visited on Saturday, Grandpa told Dave that he had seen the EKG of his heart and even the "good" artery is blocked and weak; he said he'd be lucky to make it to the operating table. He must be so scared.
The bigger issue again: Granny called me in tears last night to say she had had the worst day. She had decided to drive herself to the hospital for a visit, and when she was entering the parking garage, she scraped the side of their car against a concrete pole. It was the first accident she had ever had, in sixty years of driving, and she was devastated by the timing. According to Grandpa (in a later conversation with Dave), Granny came into his hospital room in a panic and he had to get her to sit on his bed and put his arm around her and soothe her; let her know that it just didn't matter.
When she went to leave the hospital, Granny was sure she had parked on the sixth level of the parking garage, but no matter how long she walked around, trying to get the car to honk with her remote, she couldn't find it. Eventually, a man (bless his heart) offered to drive her around until they found it, eventually going up and down all of the levels twice until successful.
In the middle of this conversation, Granny lowered her voice even though she was home alone, and asked me, "You wouldn't happen to know what day the operation is, would you? Sandy from across the street asked me a while ago and I just couldn't remember."
I had offered to stay down in London with Granny -- I am the only one not needed at some kind of employment -- but while I may have been of help to her yesterday, it's been deemed unnecessary at this point: Sandy from across the street has offered to make sure Granny has a drive back and forth to the hospital until we get there.
When it rains, it pours, and it is pouring.
*****
Boy, I hate not having my laptop with me -- this is a late update.
Grandpa went in on the 7th to have his bypass surgery. We got to the hospital at 7:30 am and were able to hang out with him in his room and then accompany him down to the surgical floor, waiting with him until just before they took him away. As we were saying goodbye and good luck, I noticed that my lovely sister-in-law was bawling and this made me start to panic -- am I really so dumb that I don't recognise the danger? Granny was at the bedside, gripping Grandpa's hand, and bawling, and Dave, seeing his sister and not wanting it to upset their father, took a step forward to block her from the old guy's view, and I saw that Dave had tears in his eyes, too.
This begs the question: Is there something fundamentally wrong with me that seeing someone off to major surgery doesn't make me want to cry? Is my heart a shrivelled bean or did I marry into a family where the hearts are overly, wonderfully, large?
We were advised that the surgery would take 7 or 8 hours and were encouraged to leave the hospital and come back later. Reluctantly, we went out for breakfast and then hung out at the inlaws' house, returning to the hospital after 6 hours; surely enough time to be back before there was any news. When we arrived at the ICU waiting room, the Reverend Bill White was sitting there and gave us a big smile and a thumb's up.
Bill White is a former school teacher and principal who, upon retirement, decided to attend seminary and become an Anglican priest. He has been a friend and barber client of Grandpa's for 30 years, and following an invitation from the reverend, the inlaws have been sporadically attending Sunday services at his small church; the Anglican mass being a satisfactory compromise between her Baptist upbringing and his Catholic one. White renewed the inlaws' wedding vows on their 50th anniversary this year and Dave, his sister and I found him to be pompous and phony and in love with the sound of his own voice. We are not fans. But...the Rev. White has been a source of comfort during this health emergency and has been visiting Grandpa and phoning Granny, and while we might not like him, he has been the very example of a pastor and a friend.
So while it grated on me and Dave and his sister that, because he is a minister, the surgeon gave White the post-surgical update in our absence, Granny was relieved not to have to wait for news, and seeing him there gave her much joy. The update was: When the surgeon opened up Grandpa's chest and surveyed the anatomy of his heart (this was explained to us beforehand -- because he has had two bypass operations already, the doctors wouldn't know exactly what the heart would look like until they got in there; there were four or five veins hanging off the heart and the complete picture needed to be seen in person, not through the MRI or whatever, to really appreciate the landscape) it was decided that the connections were too small to do more than two bypasses this time. (And that's why the surgery took only 6 hours and we weren't present for the news.) White explained that the surgeon believes this will allow Grandpa to live a normal life but his days of shovelling snow and cutting grass are behind him. He repeated, in that smug and knowing voice, "This isn't the result we wanted for Dad, but it's not bad. Not good news, but not bad." This is comfort?
White proceeded to hang around, mostly telling lame jokes, and as Dave noted later, trying to be the cool reverend who'll say damn and hell. As an example: "Hey, we can't tell the future, only Gypsies can and that's why they make such caring, gentle lovers -- because they have crystal balls." Har dee har har. I did my best to not show my annoyance, but the following story is where I stopped pretending to smile:
Wearing this collar gets me a lot of attention, especially at hospitals. If I'm in an emergency room I can hardly walk from one end to the other without someone asking me to pray with them. One night, it was the day before Christmas Eve, I was in an ER and I spent two and a half hours putting this old guy back together. When I went to leave, his wife came and thanked me, but when it came up that I'm not Catholic, she said, "Oh, you're not a real priest." I thought, "I just spent two and half hours putting your husband back together and you're going to say I'm not a real priest?" So I looked at her and said, "Well, plenty of people I know would say your Pope isn't a real Pope."
That's Christian charity? Some old woman is spending the night before Christmas Eve at the ER and she can't be forgiven her biases? Wouldn't "your Pope isn't a real Pope" be a crappy thing to say to an old Catholic under any circumstances? I pretty much started ignoring the Rev. White at that point, but Dave, seeing what a comfort it was to his mother, was man enough to remain polite and chuckle at the jokes.
After we spoke to the surgeon ourselves and were told that we wouldn't be able to see Grandpa until later, we left the cellphone-banned area and began texting and emailing and calling people to let them know everything went well. My exchange with my own mother:
I know that my parents and my inlaws are friendly without exactly being friends -- they don't live anywhere near each other but our mothers do chat on the phone sometimes; mostly about their shared granddaughters -- but even if I was talking about the surgery of someone she didn't know at all, wouldn't a normal mother care enough about my feelings to respond more than a "K" when I sent this message?
This was also our last text exchange. Ma called me last Monday, here at home, to ask how things were going and I told her that I was packing to go back and spend the week with Granny and Ma's phone made a weird noise and disconnected; she didn't call back; that's our last conversation. She said at that time that she knew my mother-in-law must be overwhelmed with calls and visits so she wouldn't be adding to the pressure, and I was able to tell Granny that that's why my mother hasn't called her at all, but I can't help but feel that this indifference reflects poorly on me. I suppose this post might also be titled A Tale of Two Moms.
Although I have more to say about our post-surgical adventure, this is nearly all I have to say on the topic of my parents vs. my inlaws.
I say "nearly" because I want to tell one last story, related to that text conversation with my mother and that first message about Dave's cousin's wife coming out of a coma (which my mother didn't even respond to?). The short version of that is that Jenn was giving birth and the placenta didn't detach and they had to do an emergency hysterectomy and she lost so much blood that they kept her in a coma for a couple of days while rushing her back and forth to the OR for emergency procedures. This was happening the same week that Grandpa was waiting for his surgery, so although we're not super-close with Jenn, it did add to the overall stress. (And her story has a happy ending, too.)
So last night, my first night back home in nearly a week (because I have been staying with Granny to keep her company and keep her focussed while the Alzheimer's starts to scramble her memory), Ken came over to ask us how we are and how the inlaws are. He made some offhand comment about, "Has Aunt Susie been to visit?" (Aunt Susie is Granny's sister and Jenn's mother-in-law; Susan has spent the week helping out her son and worrying that his wife was going to die.) So I started to say, "Susie's daughter-in-law nearly died in childbirth..." And Ken says, "I don't care about all that." And, trying to explain how it did affect us, the people he's asking about, I said, "Yeah, but, when she was in the hospital..." And he cut me off again with, "I don't give a shit about those people. I care about you and I care about Dave. I care about your kids. I care about Jim and Bev. Rudy. Dan. That's about it."
That's exactly the way our Dad talks about people, and the older Ken gets, the more he affects our father's mannerisms. What a rude and stupid way to talk to me -- especially when it feels like an affectation -- and then I'm supposed to sit here and listen while he tells some stupid story about how he's buying a trailer from our cousin and flipping it for profit to a friend of his? On what planet is that a more interesting story than the near loss of a human being; even one you don't know; even someone you "don't give a shit about"?
It's easy to say that our lack of empathy comes from our father's aggressive misanthropy but the fact that my mother's compassion ends at the tip of her own nose has also affected the people that my brothers and I have become. I may not always have the appropriate emotional responses but I do try to act with the compassion that I'm not truly feeling. Here's hoping my own girls have their father's heart.
