I Signed Up for This, But I Didn't Know What This Was

Last Saturday changed everything.

My dad moved in with me. That sentence sounds so simple when I type it out. Neat. Tidy. A daughter taking care of her father. Something people do every day.

But nobody tells you what "moved in" actually means. Nobody hands you a manual at the hospital discharge desk. Nobody sits across from you and says, honey, the man who is coming home with you is not entirely the man you have known your whole life.

I knew my dad had a mini stroke. I knew there was a blockage. I knew he was 76 and a type 2 diabetic and that things were serious. I thought I was prepared.

I was not prepared..

The first night I lay in bed listening to the sounds of someone else in my house. His television too loud. His footsteps at 2am. The refrigerator opening. Again. I stared at the ceiling and I thought — this is my life now — and I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or scream or both.

So I just lay there.

Here is what a week of caregiving has looked like that nobody puts on the inspirational quote graphics:

My dad is always cold. Bone cold, complaining cold, no-blanket-is-ever-enough cold. I have moved thermostats and found extra blankets and still — he is cold.

My dad is always hungry. Constantly. Reaching for food, asking about food, eating food he shouldn't have as a diabetic. Managing that is its own full time job that comes with a side of guilt every single mealtime.

My dad repeats himself. The same story, sometimes four or five times in a single afternoon. And every single time I have to decide — do I tell him he already told me this? Do I just smile and listen like it's brand new? What is the kind thing? What is the honest thing? I haven't figured that out yet.

My dad cusses now. A lot. That one still catches me off guard. The man who raised me, who had standards about language in his house, who was proper — he just lets it fly now without a second thought. I don't know whether to laugh or grieve that too.

He talks about his bowel movements constantly. In detail. In a way that makes dinner complicated.

He cannot take good care of himself the way he once did.

And he is not sleeping well, which means I am not sleeping well, which means we are both running on empty in this house together trying to figure out what this new life looks like.

Here is the part I am almost ashamed to type:

This is not the dad I know.

The dad I know was sharp. Independent. Proud. Put together. The dad I know did not need me to manage his meals or monitor his sleep or brace myself before answering a simple question because I don't know which version of him is going to be on the other side of it.

I love my dad. I want to say that clearly and first and loudly. I love him without question or condition.

And I am also grieving him.

He is right here in my house and I am grieving him.

I didn't have a word for that feeling until recently. It's called ambiguous loss — the grief you carry for someone who is still living but who has changed so significantly that you are mourning the person they were. There is no funeral for this kind of loss. There is no casserole dropped at your door. There is no socially acceptable window of sadness after which people expect you to move on.

You just grieve quietly, in the middle of regular Tuesdays, while you refill his drink cup and turn up the heat and listen to a story you have already heard three times today.

I started this blog because I needed somewhere to put all of this.

I started it because I suspect I am not the only daughter sitting in a parked car in her own driveway taking three deep breaths before going back inside.

I started it because the caregiving content I kept finding online was too clean, too tidy, too much about self-care routines and not enough about the 2am ceiling-staring and the guilt and the love and the exhaustion that all live in the same body at the same time.

I am not an expert. I am not a medical professional. I am a daughter doing her best for a father she loves in a season she did not see coming.

If you are in this with me — if you are grieving someone who is still alive, if you are running on fumes and holding it together with sheer love and stubbornness — then this blog is for you.

Pull up a chair. I'll probably put on coffee. My dad will tell us both a story we've already heard.

And somehow, that will have to be enough for today.

— A daughter, one week in

About

Still Here, Someone New is written by Tanya — a daughter caregiving her 76-year-old father after a stroke. This blog is for every family grieving someone who is still here.

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