different kind of visit

I spent all day yesterday cleaning out C's old room making it into a cozy guest room for K, my sister, who arrives from Georgia today. She and her two precious boys were here just a few weeks ago for a purely pleasure visit and it was wonderful. This visit, however, is different because we have an agenda. The agenda is my father. Since Mom passed away two years ago from leukemia (still seems so surreal, especially when I see it put so matter of factly in writing), Dad's aloneness and health weighs very heavily on me.

He suffers from something called, of all things, Binswanger's Disease. It's a type of vascular dementia caused from years and years of ridiculously high blood pressure. It's a rare disease because most people's high blood pressure responds well to medication but Dad has been on as many as 3 different meds at a time to control his. And, his weight. He's been heavy most of his life and that further exacerbates (sp?) the problem. To further muck it all up is his vision. He's legally blind in one eye and over the last few years, has lost more and more vision in his "good" eye.

But the thing is, he's only 73 and the "dementia" has affected things only a daughter very close to him would know. Things like paying bills, keeping up with dr. appts., which medicine's for what, things like that. Well, it's also wierdly affected his mobility, too. He gets around very slowly. Way harder on me than his health, though, is his aloneness. He doesn't have any friends to speak of, he was one of those guys who worked, worked, worked. Mom had her church friends and Dad mostly had his job associates. So now, he's just there, in the house, day in and day out. Whatever socializing he does, apart from one monthly function at a nearby church, involves me and my family. So, like I said, it weighs pretty heavy on me.

That's why my sister, who is 6 years younger than me, and I am very close to, is coming in. She, Dad and I are going to visit a couple of senior living facilities that offer independent living as well as assisted, if and when the time comes. I'm pretty nervous about it because even though Dad says he's o.k. with visiting them, I have no idea how he really feels and I'm afraid that everyone else will be ancient, that it will cost more than Dad will be willing to spend, and, plus, who wants to go and do something like that with their father? I mean, yuck.

So, that, as well as going through a lot more of the accumulated stuff over at Dad's house will be what this visit will be all about. It'll be great to see her again but very different. Just part of getting older, I suppose.