Why it sucks to get old

Ddaddy said

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My father went down hard with Alzheimer’s/dementia 6 years ago, but we still care for him and he still finds things in life to enjoy...even if he barely understands them. He is 82 now and we don’t find caring for him to be a burden. It is a cherished responsibility for a man who gave us life. He was the CEO of a biotech company that was one of the top 25 IPOs of 1992 that included companies like AOL.

It was hard to watch him decline at first...but after awhile, you realize that it is just a part of the cycle of life and caring for him now is as much my responsibility as his caring for me as a child was.

I just hate to think about my being there in the future...but I hope my family will be as kind and thoughtful to me in their feeling of responsibility as we are to him.

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Awesome post.

My Mom has Alzheimer's and has progressed to the point that we're praying she'll last the summer.

As part of the Alzheimer's she's striken with an affliction I can't remember the name of, but she just collapses. Eventually this will lead to her not being to swallow her food, as it progresses in stages.

Pop is her sole caretaker. All 76 years of him and now he's been diagnosed with a bad vertabrae in his lower back.

We kids help out as much as we can. My sister goes and helps with Momma while my nephew takes him shopping or to doctors appointments. My brother does all the manual labor in the house, cleaning, washing dishes, laundry, mowing the lawn. I do the higher skilled **** my brother doesn't do. Maintenance on the house when it comes up, car repairs, tilling the gardens.

It's a group effort as much as we can make it.

These are the folks who raised us. Primarly Momma as Pop was away from home a lot with his jobs.

As the single father of two rambunctious boys, I always said Momma could give badass lessons to Wonder Woman, raising for of us at once.