Daughter and Father Adventure

This new phase of our lives began with a phone call from a family friend in August 2009 stating concerns for my father's well being. I booked a flight to Boston to check on dad and my step mom, Helen. I had the nagging feeling for the last year that an intervention of some kind would be needed soon. This was the call I had been waiting for.

My sisters and I visited dad and Helen one or twice a year coming from Atlanta for me, San Antonio for Becky and Spokane for Lucinda. These visits were made difficult by our step mother's agitation at having people in her house. As she continued to decline the visits in the last two years were made somewhat easier as she slipped away into to sleep sitting in her chair in the kitchen from morning to night.

Dad was at last willing to move Helen to a nursing home, finally realizing the toll it was taking on his own health and mental state. I flew to Massachusetts, happy that I had banked a lot of vacation and personal leave at my job. My step mother Helen at 92 was failing. She had dementia for at least 10 years. Dad was her sole caretaker. After different hospitalizations, the doctors would place her in a nursing home and she would beg Dad to bring her home. He was unable to leave her so he would bring her home. The day after I arrived in Boston, Dad and I were outside doing some yard work when he backed off a step going down to the cellar and fell down four steps on to gravel. I called the EMT's. They took him to Faulkner Hospital. It turned out he was OK but the accident was further confirmation that with or without Helen, he should not be living alone.

Over Labor Day weekend the Visiting Nurse put Helen in the hospital for dehydration and she was placed in Epoch a Nursing Home in the Chestnut Hill area. Becky came up for a few weeks to be with Dad, then Lucinda took a turn then I came up again from Atlanta. Helen was in the nursing home for three months before passed away on December 8.

The end of October, Dad came to Atlanta to be with me over Thanksgiving. We came up to Boston for a week here and there to visit Helen and check on the house which was being rewired and renovated (another story). After Thanksgiving and visit to Boston, he went to San Antonio with Becky & Dave for Christmas and New Years. We had seen Helen on Saturday before flying out of Logan. Helen died on Tuesday. The next week we were all flying to Boston for Helen's memorial service.