Several years ago, my 12-year-old son and I found ourselves on Thanksgiving morning living in a cheap motel. We were invited to my sister's home in Utah, but we had neither the gas money nor the inclination to go. We'd had enough of my family at the time, having been recently evicted from my father's home, where we'd been caring for him following the death of my mother. Father suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
Yet it was Thanksgiving. I didn't have a job at the time and had only about $75 to my name, but one way or another, Zach and I were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner.
Our motel room was small, but mostly clean. When the wind blew under the front door we had to keep the heater on high to stay warm. The two beds and the easy chair covered most of the available floor space. The room had a small refrigerator and microwave oven, but no cooking facilities.
I offer no excuses, simply an explanation as to how we arrived in this predicament.
Father has Alzheimer's
I had been laid off from a good job several years earlier. My wife and I separated at about the same time, and I took Zach because I was in a better position to take care of him. I worked odd jobs here and there, mostly farm work, and made some money on the side selling antiques and collectibles, a trade I had dabbled in for several years.
When my mother died, my brother and sisters decided I was in the best position to care for my father, who had suffered from Alzheimer's for several years but whose condition worsened dramatically upon my mother's death. Since they all lived in other states, since I didn't have a steady job and was the most available, and since it sounded like the right thing to do, I accepted the responsibility.
I quickly learned that caring for an Alzheimer's patient is somewhat akin to a prison sentence. My father didn't need constant surveillance, but taking care of him was a 24-7 job nonetheless.
Talk was cheap, but honest-to-God assistance was a much rarer commodity. My brother and sisters made plenty of promises for assistance, but kept few of them. My sister in Utah said she would take our father for a weekend once a month, but she only ended up doing it a few times in the 15 months that I was the designated caretaker. She complained that father disrupted their lives. No kidding.
Advice from my family was plentiful. Interference from afar was commonplace. Complaints about spending too much of father's money were weekly occurrences.
Alzheimer's is a tragic disease. Here was my father, once a brilliant and respected man, now with the mentality of a 5-year-old. If he didn't get his way he sometimes threw temper tantrums. I had to physically restrain him at times, when he was angry with Zach, when he wanted to go searching for my mother or when he simply didn't get his way.
When Father asked where Mother was, he didn't believe me when I told him she'd passed away. And he asked the question nearly every day, sometimes on the frequency of about once every five minutes. I found it best to just tell him I didn't know. Anything else could provoke an argument. He generally slept from 10 p.m. until 8 a.m., and that was the only time I could count on any peace and quiet.
Getting him to take a shower and put on clean clothes was a daily ordeal. Answering his questions over and over was emotionally draining.
I could make sure Father ate and took his medicine, I could help him find Lawrence Welk on television and I could usually keep him from wandering off and getting lost. But I couldn't bring him peace of mind or comfort. I could only keep him alive. Eventually, my brother and sisters decided that Father could be kept alive more economically elsewhere.
They offered me a small, cash settlement if I didn't fight them over the issue—enough to last us about a month. I supposed they assumed that I would find a job immediately, but it took a little longer than that. They put my father's home up for sale, shipped Father off to a retirement home in Utah and put Zach and I out on the streets.
I'm not sure what was best for my father. His condition was only going to worsen one way or another. But after the ordeal I'd been through, I jumped at my chance for freedom.
Thanksgiving morning
Our money had to last until Monday when I was supposed to get paid for something I'd sold. Zach suggested we should go to a grocery store and buy our own Thanksgiving dinner. Always a fussy eater, and mindful of our situation, all he said he wanted was turkey, rolls and pumpkin pie. Maybe I can do this, I decided. To Zach's list I added cranberries and something to drink. We called a local grocery store and found out that they had cooked turkey breasts ready for sale.
We drove to the store and made our purchase. I added a small tub of potato salad because what's Thanksgiving without potatoes.
We warmed the turkey in the microwave. I carved it with an old hunting knife and served up the meal on paper plates.
Zach ate turkey, rolls and pumpkin pie and washed it down from a large bottle of Mountain Dew. All the while, I'm thinking this is a pretty crummy Thanksgiving, but Zach seemed to be enjoying it.
Then I realized, we're eating better now than we have for several days. We have a roof over our heads, beds to sleep in and the weekly rent is paid. We have money to last through the weekend. The two of us are together. Zach is happy. And, perhaps most important of all, we are free with no one to answer to except each other.
I think that was the only Thanksgiving in my life when I have been truly thankful.
We watched football on television, played board games and later watched Comedy Central. Zach munched on turkey and rolls throughout the day and ate an occasional piece of pie.
The telephone rang once or twice, but we didn't even answer it.
