When Love Isn't Enough

This weekend, I move my father into an assisted living home, and I feel as if I'm betraying him. "What did I do wrong?" my father asked, "I'm not sick." But my father has mid-stage dementia - Alzheimer's - and has been declining steadily for the past 5 years.


There are good days where dad seems as lucent as ever, full of stories about growing up in the Philippines. He can be chatty and charming. I mostly don't mind when he pauses to ask me, "What time is it?" for the 3rd time this hour.


But then there are bad days when he's moody, temperamental, paranoid, & defiant. We might go in circles about what happened to all his money, even though I just gave him $20 earlier that day. It's a cruel reminder of how dementia changes a person, and the people who love them. Anymore, the bad days seem to outweigh the good. And my mother seems helpless in her vain attempts to reach him as he slips away.

I had a cultural upbringing where it was considered taboo to "abandon" your loved ones in a nursing home. That's where the elderly are "left to die." I never wanted that for my father. And yet my whole family is at this point having to face reality. Truth has consequences, mainly within the heart. 

I always thought that no matter how difficult the circumstances, love would magically carry us through.  And though my love for my father has grown exponentially, somehow, it wasn't enough to give him the right care. Love sometimes isn't enough.

Ironically, someone asked me this week what personal and professional success meant to me. After surveying my own raw emotions, I responded, "being at peace with all the difficult decisions we're faced with in life." 

Sincerely,

a son