Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

I'm not a big complainer.  Usually I am a doer.  When you health is not one hundred percent things change.  You can't do as much.  You must be careful.  Life becomes more of a challenge, if life weren't all ready enough of a challenge.  My life has been challenging the last two years.  It has been challenging because, "I came home."  We all know, "You can't go home."  I came home anyway, because my dad left home.  He needed to be cared for in a full nursing facility, so his two years of service in the United States Army playing trumpet aided him.  We were able to admit him to the North Carolina State Veteran's Nursing Home.  This change altered my parent's lifestyle, not that my mother's lifestyle all ready hadn't been altered.  Her lifestyle was been altered when my father began to experience dementia.  I witnessed some of this when I returned home from my cruise ship piano job.  During my tenure as a ship pianist it was necessary to store my belongings, so I could travel for extended periods of time living on these ships.  This was convenient, because only it had been approximately one year since I had moved back from Columbus, Ohio.  During this period staying in my parents house and the exact weekend I interviewed for a college teaching position at Western Carolina University my father had a small stroke.  While I was interviewing in Cullowee the phone rang at my boarding house.  It was my brother-in-law who instructed me to return home.  The following year my father was lucky that I was around.  I filled in for him in his band playing left-hand bass and jazz piano.  He had enough gigs, so I felt gainfully employed.  I also enjoyed this time.  It was not long before my father felt well enough to be compelled to return to playing the piano.  It was not a pretty change.  His impetus for change rather than telling me he wanted to return was to come to a gig fully dressed and sit on the front row with my mother.  They proceeded to whisper to themselves, as we tried to play ignoring his intimidating presence.  Doris, our singer, was so uncomfortable she could not remember the songs.  It was an awkward place to be.  Having been duly notified by this politically incorrect procedure, I accepted a pit orchestra job at the Cape Fear Regional Theater playing for the musical "Footloose."  I played both electric and keyboard bass and designed their MIDI keyboard system for use my Marla Ham.  The day after the show opened I received a call from Carnival Cruise Lines offering me a job in their orchestra.  My employment began with them on September 29, 2002, directly after the 9/11 terrorist event.  Through the years I worked for Carnival, Princess, and Royal Caribbean.  During these years I stayed both at my parents house and a few times with my sister and brother-in-law.  Ten years later when I received the news that my father was failing, I came home.  It was a shock.  He called me, "Our guest."  I had to reiterate to him that I was his son, and when I did he attempted to exploit that familial connection.  His dementia was driving him as was ensuing incontinence.  It was a difficult time for my mother.  He demanded her attention twenty-four hours a day.  He would beckon for her every moment, "June......."  To be helpful in the only way I saw possible, I took more ship jobs to earn money.  While I was gone my mother had to make the difficult decision that my father needed to go somewhere.  First she tried the Fayetteville Manor.  Shortly after it became apparent he would need full nursing care.  Retrieving my father's draft card successfully she found a place for him in the North Carolina facility.  While her life may have become a small amount less difficult, mine became exceedingly more difficult.  Everything I had done for the last decade suddenly now was on hold, and I was living in an a changed environment resembling where we had moved when I was in ninth grade.  The changes that had transpired were a metaphor for my father's dementia, not that his home protocol was a cup of tea to decipher.  He enjoyed drama, and thus he enjoyed challenges.  These challenges in my eyes were the antithesis of how responsible people organize and run their lives.  he created problems to solve.  This worked well during his prime years, but created havoc during his later more challenging times.  These circumstances themselves cemented that he no longer could do the things he used to do, not that they were easy to begin with.  I have spent two long years trying to undo these things organizing a house in a logical and livable way.  Second to graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill it has proven emotionally exhausting.  It has been exhausting, because, "You can't go home."