Safe and Sound in a time of Chaos

 

          For some time, I had not felt safe or sound. I knew nothing but confusion, chaos, and loneliness. From late May 2013 to March of 2014, my life was one level of chaos or another.

To go back in time, from 2000 to 2013, I was the primary care giver to my elderly parents. Mom was the first to go in 2007 shortly after the anniversary of 9/11 then dad in early October of 2013. The real chaos started with dad. He was ill the last months of his life

Towards the end of May of 2013, Dad became ill and was hospitalized with pneumonia and an UTI.  From late May to his death in early October, 2013. Dad spent a grand total of 2 and ½ weeks home during that time. During the first stay in a nursing home he had contracted MRSA and the home couldn’t get him out of the facility fact enough. He was home for less than 72 hours then re-admitted to hospital due a relapse, the rest of the time he was in a hospital or a nursing home for short term rehab.

Because dad had spent so much time in one facility or another, his is Medicare coverage was no longer going to pay for his stay in rehab. They were going to end his stay in the rehab center. Both the center he was in at the time and us were in agreement: He was too sick to come home. The only options were a long term care place which would be paid for by us cashing in his insurance policies and whatever money we can find. We had about 2 weeks to find someplace for Dad to go to.

Then the unexpected happened. Dad died. I was on my way to see him that Saturday morning and got a call saying he had fallen and hit his head. Paramedics were on scene. I was about to pull into their parking lot when I got the call. I go into the place and the whole facility was in lock down. Just about everyone was in a state of shock. It was unexpected. Somehow dad was getting out of bed unsupervised and fell and hit his head on the way down. Also, turned out that he had a massive heart attack.

I went to his floor and immediately escorted to another room. And waited and waited and waited.  For 45 minutes (which felt like an eternity), I didn’t know anything about what was going on. No one would give me an update in his care. The whole facility was on lock down. What happened to dad was unexpected and no one knew what to do. While I was waiting, I noticed an employee carrying a bag of clothes from dad’s wing. I didn’t pay any attention to it at the time.

Eventually someone of authority came in to me and said he wasn’t going to make and they were still cleaning up the room. Dad had been dead for a while by the time I got the news and died without family with him. One of the nursing staff had the day off and came running to work, She had to be there. She told me that he was doing well the day before and was looking forward to going home.

It was one of those things that technology was handy. I had called friends and family to keep from falling apart. I had also posted on FB that there was trouble at the facility. I had spent 25 minutes on the line with one friend. When I was radio silent for a while (meaning that I posted nothing on FB or anywhere or had contact with no one), friends started to call area nursing homes to find out where I was and how things were going.

For the last few months of dad’s life I was going to either the hospital or nursing home to visit him on a daily basis. Each visit drained me. He was early stages of Alzheimer’s. He was good most of the time, memory and personality wise. Every time I went to see him he would ask where brother was. I couldn’t answer dad’s questions about where brother was because most of the time I didn’t know where he was. 

Then after his death, we had a respite of a couple of weeks then the chaos started up again with then it was dealing with the preparations of his memorial service and dealing with insurance and all that. Then came the news the reverse mortgage company started sending letters to start to pay back the reverse mortgage dad took out about 12 years earlier. Now new chaos was to ask for an extension from the mortgage company and put the house onto the market for sale.

That added pressure on me. I was still living in the house at the time. at the time with the meeting with the real estate agency we decided to  put the house on the market as is. Years before I asked dad what about … fixing this or that or something else. Dad opinion was if it was not broke don’t fix it. Brother even suggested before Mom died to sell the house and move into a condo or the like. Dad would hear of it.

Dad had tunnel vision about certain things. Why spend the money on something if we were going to move at some point anyway or if the house was not falling apart why bother or if he couldn’t fix something now one else could fix it. Dad fancied himself a handyman of sorts. Well a lot of things that should have been fixed were not and because of which we put the house on the market as is. For Brother and I, that meant  that our asking price to the property was going to be way lower than if the property was in good shape. I had a dream of a bidding war of sorts. We did get more than we expected.

At one point, I was asked where was I going. the only answer was to Missouri. I knew people there. For a long time it was me taking care of parents.

Then the day for me to go to Missouri came. From where I was living in CT to Springfield, MO it was an 19 hour drive, so I had decide to split it up into several days.  I had decided to stay in in one of my favorite places: Gettysburg, PA for a couple of days then drive on to Springfield. Gettysburg is one of my favorite places.

  I got to Missouri and my time was short, returning not long after.  I still had no idea where I was going to live. Went back and forth to stay in Missouri or return to Connecticut. After a day of licking my wounds I decided to return to Connecticut.

I returned to Connecticut. I was not able to return to the family house; it was in shambles and in the process of being sold as is. I spent about 3 weeks in a motel till I found an apartment. I started to get angst because of the amount of money I had spent to get out there the returning to CT and the movers.

That was a dark time too. Could not see the light at the end of the tunnel, thought the light was turned off. Needed to find someplace to live and someplace I could afford and was pet friendly. So after sometime of “living” in a motel room with my cat, Cairo, I found a place to live. I couldn’t move in right away, needed to get the movers to get my belongings out of storage and into the new place, so that is another week in the motel room.

After I moved into my new apartment, things started to look up. I started to see light at the end of the tunnel and it was a beautiful site! Being in the new place and having a it will be settling into a new routine my new life can begin.   Now it was time for to spread my wings and take flight into a new era of my life. Somehow I thought my new life would start in Missouri but turns out that the new life starts where it began, just in another town.

Now two years I am now in another state. Towards the end of 2015 I had started to feel I needed another change, this time on my terms, not another’s. I was so not prepared for that first move to Missouri and back. Now I have a good idea where I wanted to be. I made the move to Gettysburg, PA. it was closer to where I lived in CT but a new beginning. I think I will always be worried about money. And concerned about other things too. But know I am on my terms.

Now it’s getting my life back on track. I had done a lot of writing when I was younger. Only recently did I start to finish articles and get back into writing. I had loved writing when I was younger. I was always writing short stories and poems. I even wrote an article about the paranormal. That got published in a national paranormal online magazine.

I didn’t paid for it but it is a start. I sent that article to my godmother.  My godmother read something I wrote about 6 months ago about the paranormal. She loved it, not so much what I wrote about but the writing part. I had a unique style, almost conversational style, according to her.

After hear what she said, I started to look at things I started to write before and start to rewrite things. Now its finding finishing stories and articles I started and finding places to publish them. That is the next adventure.