“No, I’m not ready,” I was adamant. It was winter 2018 in Seattle, Washington, and I was in the middle of maintaining a somewhat unrealistic boundary with my mother. I was not ready to meet her new boyfriend, and she couldn’t make me.
I was 25 years old when my dad died; he was 65. He died from complications with early-onset dementia in our home during the Fall of 2016.
On the surface, my mother’s and my experience with losing a loved one were fairly benign. My father had lucid moments up until his last evening. He never forgot who we were to him, or stopped telling us how much he loved and appreciated us. However, his experience was more insidious under the surface.
As a career scientist, losing his mind was my father’s worst nightmare. He spent the majority of his diagnosis in an immovable state of depression. He rebuked and ridiculed cutting edge nutritional treatments when all he wanted to do was sleep, eat, and watch the news. His judgemental and self-righteous tendencies became even more entrenched the sicker he became. When he was hospitalized for pneumonia, I moved home to Seattle to live with my parents, and help my mother take care of him. What I soon realized was that he was already past a point of no return. He didn’t want my help, or anyone else’s for that matter. He had resigned himself to his fate and…
