December 10, 2009 – OUR DARKEST DAY

 

 

**Click to WATCH this LOCAL NEWS STORY!!**

 

 

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I have been posting my story retroactively and linearly, starting with my dad’s initial diagnosis on April 10, 2007.  Staring today, I am shifting the story’s angle to present day.  Going forward, I will designate a REAL-TIME, CURRENT DAY BLOG by italicizing the entry.  This will enable me to update you in real-time about what’s going on in my life (like a true blog), while still allowing me to fill you in intermittently on the past background of the story.

Here goes…

(REAL-TIME ENTRY)

Yesterday morning I received the most harrowing phone call from my mother.  From her voice, I could tell that either someone had died or she was finally having the long-awaited breakdown.

MY PARENTS HAVE BEEN ROBBED AND ALMOST ALL OF OUR FAMILY JEWELRY HEIRLOOMS ARE GONE!!!  My father’s wedding ring, his engraved pocket watch, his $20-gold-coin-and-diamond money clip – all items left to us kids in their Will – GONE!!  Countless rings and bracelets, necklaces and earrings of my mother – GONE!!  Fifty years worth of gifts signifying the love between them have been grotesquely ripped from our lives!

The most harrowing part of the story is that the police investigation is focusing on the 4 in-home care workers who have been helping us take care of my dad over the past number of months; people who have been entrusted with a security entry code and endless hours alone in our home.  One of these people had enough time to locate a hidden safe and learn to crack the code!  One of these seemingly-caring people entered our home under the guise of helping us care for my ailing father and they STOLE from us the only remaining precious items we’re about to have left of him!!

How COULD someone?!!!!  My poor mother had a breakdown yesterday.  I’ve never seen her so distressed nor cry so hard.  She said she can’t do this anymore.  She’s at the end of her rope.  She’s desperately trying to hold on, but it’s fraying.

Here she is being the most courageous and loving person, caring for my dad 24/7 (all while her heart slowly breaks into a million pieces!), finally trusting someone enough to let them in to help share the burden of care giving, finally getting some much-needed sleep, and they do THIS to her?!!!?

After a long, emotional and exhausting day, the bottom line from yesterday is that a crime report has been filed and the in-home care companies have been fired.  Which brings us back to square one: No support system is in place to help us with Dad!

Together Mom and I made the heartbreaking and anguishing decision yesterday afternoon to finally place Dad in a nursing home.  I called Sunrise Assisted Living and committed to a room for Dad beginning January 1^st.  When I hung up the phone, I thought I was going to throw up in my lap.  I’m still crying as I type this. This means we have just 3 weeks and 1 day left of our life with Dad at home. 

The fact that someone took advantage of my parents while they are suffering and in such need and distress is severely disheartening, to say the least.  It makes you sick to your stomach.  It almost makes you disappointed in humanity. 

But then my brother and I sent out an emailed cry for help and support last night to our family and family friends – and the outpouring today has been enormous!  It’s these gestures that snap you back and remind you of how much goodness there is in the world.  Thank God we have THESE people surrounding us in our life, helping us to our (proverbial and emotional) finish line.  Because, as Mom and I have learned, we cannot do this alone.