Breakthrough
It's five years since my father passed at age 93. I felt disoriented, confused, and angry during the last 10 years of his life. Dad had always been difficult, but he was in new territory after my mother/his wife passed.
I'm talking about words and deeds that were beyond the Pale. Stuff like when my sister's beloved puppy was struck and killed right before Thanksgiving dinner, and she and my brother-in-law were weeping and cradling the little dead body, Dad was trying his damnedest to get us to the supper table. No empathy whatsoever. Stuff like disinheriting me and my sibs but leaving $35,000 to the neighbor. Stuff like screaming at me for washing all the pots and pans and dishes on the counter b/c it would give the cleaning lady "nothing to do". Repeating verbatim whatever he had heard on FOX News, repeating like every 3 minutes. Bad driving (which eventually and consequently killed him). Refusing to let any of us prepare checks for him to sign for six months of unpaid bills. And more.
My sister and brother didn't have an answer. He was too functional to be senile or suffering from full blown dementia. And we were certain that if we couldn't exactly put our proverbial finger on the problem, we couldn't get help for the "new normal".
But today, I believe I know what the problem was: Frontotemporal Dementia. https://www.alzheimers.net/signs-of-frontotemporal-dementia/
My father had 9 of the 10 warning signs. If anything, all of us are nominated for sainthood for the extra abuse we received from our father. When he died, it was truly a relief. (I had the brunt of the responsibility as I lived the closest.)
Please appreciate this revelation/discovery has done wonders for me. My head has stopped spinning and the anger really starting to dissipate. My father "died" years before his mortality caught up with him. I was dealing with dementia, not Dad.
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