"A Man on the Inside" and Working in Senior Living

 

   For the last two years I've been working as the Culinary Services Director at an Assisted Living community. I enjoy my work, love my team and have great fondness for our residents. While my years in the restaurant business helped me prepare for this, as well as my time working in a hospital kitchen and running a coffee shop/cafe, it's a very different animal. My community treats our mealtimes like a restaurant, but it's not exactly like that...It's not a hospital assembly line, but you're intensely aware of dietary needs and restrictions. It's not glamorous and not going to land you on The Food Network, but I'm proud of it. I feel good about myself at the end of the day. 

  A month ago, I binge watched a new series on Netflix called "A Man on the Inside" and fell in love with it. I thought about writing a review of it and then just let that thought fall away. It's funny, entertaining, a hint of mystery, heartwarming, sad and hopeful...and for people in the senior living industry, there are bits and jokes and scenes that are wonderful because we get it. One that had me right away was the Chef telling the Administrator he needed more salt and pepper shakers. She asked him how many he was missing, and he says "40." I have lived this. People with dementia love to boost things.

  The dementia aspect of the show hit me too. I see it every day and before that we dealt with it with my in-laws both going through their progression of dementia. While seeing in a show, had me relive uncomfortable things, it was also nice to see a show that was speaking for the people dealing with the disease as well as the impact it has on their families. 

  But what drove me to write this tonight was a death we had in our community this week. It was a resident everyone loved. Some of our staff knew him for a long time. He was great guy. It was unexpected, sudden, shocking. It felt like a kick in the chest to the whole community. In Senior living you know the end will happen. You accept this part of the job. But with most of our losses, we see it approaching and are prepared for it. This one there was no warning, and it hurt....

  This takes me back to "A Man on the Inside." This very moment is shown in the series. And the pain, and shock, and sadness, and the need to push on, while choking back the frustration & sadness is portrayed perfectly by Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Didi, the Community Administrator. Her character greatly represents those of us that work in senior living. The show isn't about us, so the Chef, Nurses, Aides and Housekeepers are just small characters here and there. Didi is there to give a glimpse of what we all feel and go through. Stephanie Beatriz does it perfectly. 

  I highly recommend the show and can't wait for what comes in season two. Oh, Ted Danson is great in it as well. The guy still does comedy so well. 

Check it out.

 

There Is No God

That's a title that probably isn't surprising to see considering the epic cluster fuck that is 2020...And we still half the year to go...It's easy to look at COVID and the Trump Administration, and Police Brutality, and murderous cops who are still free, #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor...And the fact that there are secret police in Portland, and Americans that scream about athletes kneeling during the National Anthem, who turn around and wave Nazi and Confederate (flag of traitors of the United States) flags while they scream against equality and Black Lives Matter and scream about their mayors and governors trying to keep them safe and healthy by asking them to wear masks during a global pandemic...

All of that alone is enough to make someone say, 'there is no god'....

But faith, religion that's a personal thing...Yes some try to push it on others and cram it down our throats...But it's a personal choice/belief system...So this post comes from a personal point of view...I went to Catholic School for 12 years...In 8th grade I told my parents I didn't want to make my Confirmation because I wasn't ready and I didn't believe in it...They asked me to "just do it and get it over with."  My folks were never super religious...But I think they just wanted to give us a foundation to work off of...

My Catholic high school actually did give us a taste for one semester of other religions, pointing out the differences and similarities...It felt like a propaganda class to pump themselves up...What it did for me was to get me to checkout other religions...Come to find out, they all steal different things from each other and they're all somewhat full of shit...Yeah, for some people it's a good thing to have a fake all power feeling being watching over you...It helps explain shit away...For some it gives a moral compass...Maybe that's a good thing for people who were raised by assholes and didn't get morals and common decency instilled in them...

But then a few days ago I read THIS article on Irish Central...It was a good article but what sent me spinning down this spiral was the comments on Irish Central Facebook page below the link for this article...It was non-stop shitheads...Bashing the LGBTQ community...So many people telling the gay community to get out...There of course those that misquoted the Bible, those that didn't know it had been edited in 1946...There were those who slipped in anti-Semitic comments as well, completely clueless that The Old Testament of their Bible is ripped from the much older, Tanakh, AKA; the Hebrew Bible...As a matter of fact, most of Christianity's doctrine was ripped from other religions...So their high and mighty outlook cracks me the fuck up...

But it just kept driving me crazy that this faith that is suppose to be all about love and caring and helping one another is full of fucking assholes...Bigots, sexists, racists, misogynists, rapists, child rapists, fucking assholes...Intolerant, uncaring, fucking pieces of shit that push away anyone that doesn't fit into their perfect little idiotic box! Except you fuckers are the farthest thing from perfect...Shit, have you read your "good book?" you're the farthest thing from it's teachings...

So how can there be a god, if so many of his followers are ignorant as fuck? Yeah, I know it's not all of you, but it's way too many of you...Where the fuck is the vengeful that punishes assholes?

As I said, I was in a spiral after this shit...It just got me thinking more and more about the religion I was raised in, and the whole GOD question I've been dealing with for pretty much all my life...And then I thought about the situation we (my family) are in right now...I touched on it a couple weeks back in a 'Monday Moaning" post...Since COVID we had to move my Mother-in-law in with us...She has dementia and it has taken a toll on my wife, my kids and myself...We saw my father-in-law go down this same road and it sucked...but now it's here, in our house, every day....And we've learned that sadly, some of a person's true thoughts and feelings and quirks come out with dementia...

I'm not going to bite my tongue...She's a pain in the ass...It's often like dealing with a bratty child...She bitches about the men in her life that have died, husband, brothers, friends, "they took care of me"..."they were suppose to take care of me"....but she ignores that we are taking care of her, and bitches about us taking care of her...If we didn't, she'd be lying in a gutter babbling...She steals things...She laughs about stealing things...In the early weeks of her living here she talked a lot about how she always "had to break rules growing up"..."Even just something small, I had to break a rule everyday"....Yeah, well, she's a thief and hides shit in her underwear drawer...Sometimes it's dumb shit, like a box that was in our recycling bin, that she just had to have...

She lives every day in a house with three of her grandchildren and doesn't remember them at all and looks at them like 'what the fuck are you doing here?' You tell her who they are, and she has no interest in trying to remember them or re-get to know them even if she forgets tomorrow...

Based on the fact that she barely worked in her life, her tales of how everyone else (Brothers, Husband, Fiends, ) who took care of her, including the bank teller that would just fill out a slip for her and give her money from her mother's account, she was always spoiled...And other than being the mother to 4 kids, and my wife will tell you how she checked out on that in her early teens, that's all she did...That's all she contributed to society...

She has flat-out said that "all the fun in her life ended after she got married"...Her life was miserable after she had kids..."She just wanted to scream all the time"....She's rude as hell to us, and ungrateful as fuck...She doesn't get it that it's either here or locked up in a nursing home's Dementia ward where no one will be able to visit her because of COVID...

I'm stuck with her...A woman who, not her fault, is useless and is an anchor to my family...But you do what you have to for family...You help those in need...you bite your tongue to and you get up everyday make her tea, mop up her piss, cook her meals, give her meds,  answer the same question 70 times, take her on walks, explain shit over and over...I didn't need god and religion to tell me that...I learned that from my parents...You do what you have to do for family...

And she is stuck here...in her moments of lucidity, asking "is it okay to pray to die?"  Because the only people in here mush brain she cares about are dead...Her knees have no cartilage and she's in constant pain, but her doctor can't let her get knee surgery because her dementia is so bad there's no way she could handle it and the rehab...She has no idea where she is and what's going on in the world, let alone in this house...She sometimes doesn't even recognize my wife, her daughter...Her brain is fucked and it won't shutdown...She went to Church every week of her life until COVID...And Sunday's are the toughest day of the week in this house, trying to repeatedly explain why there is no church....Yeah, she might be a thief, but she always went to church and said her prayers to God...

What kind of God does this to one of his loyal followers?  Why would a god make her suffer?  Why would a god make her daughter suffer through seeing both her parents go through this?   Why would he allow her to be such a bitch to her daughter who is doing all she can to take care of her?  

My mother died 3 years ago after a long fight with cancer...She was an amazing mother, great wife, great friend and the greatest grandmother you can imagine...She was full of life, and love and strength...She was a fully functioning being...She gave to this world...She was always the calm in the storm...

What the fuck kind of God takes that away?

What the fuck kind of God takes her away and leaves a suffering mess to drag the people caring for her down?


I know, "Everything happens for a reason"..."God only gives you as much as you can handle"....I've heard them all, I have even said a few...It's bullshit!

And as I just rattled off of pile of shit that is going on these days with me and in the world, religious people will try and point out to me how God is in things like he mothers in Portland who stood in front of the protesters and sang in lullaby fashion, "Hands up. please don't shoot me"....Which I loved and retweeted and shared on facebook...But I say NO...that is people standing up...If  God was so damn great he would have struck down the murderous police officers that have spurred on the protest across this country...They would have been hit by lightning or less dramatic, a heart attack, before they killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many more...

If there was God he would have known this world still needed my mother.

~ Yours Truly, 

A Broken Catholic

Monday Moaning: Dementia Moved In

The image is click-bait but that's always been part of the game, and a major part of my game since I started blogging at Sporting News back in 2007...But I always found a way to tie it in with the post...I carried it on with me here and at the now defunct YouGabSports....

-I had a couple of masterpiece blogs in the bullpen...They were going to get me noticed by Barstool Sports who would offer me a job...(yeah, right!)But with the murder of George Floyd, the ensuing protests, the hate spewed by the President and his ignorant supporters who hold the Confederate Traitors in such high regard, I scrapped those...I didn't blog...I just carpet bombed social media facts, truth, reality, history, and quick rants...I got flagged on Facebook for things that were factually correct but Anti-Trump and Anti-Racism...I got unfollowed by plenty of people, which is fine...If you're a racist...If you are ok with people flying Nazi and Confederate flags, I don't want to know you and don't want you around....I got suspended on Twitter twice...A week for tweeting at Drew Brees that he "is a fucking idiot"....My first tweet back was at Twitter and their owners, pointing out the hypocritical bullshit standards they have...And then I retweeted porn clips that are allowed on twitter at them...

-One blog shredding MLB for being a bunch of greedy fucks who are killing their game and are about to lose the dog days of Summer to the NHL...The NHL is planning to have their playoffs (the best playoffs of all sports) in July, August and September...Pushing the start of next season back, and if they stick with it that way they can continue starting their season later, and having their playoffs in the Summer, sports dead zone, when many people get extra casual with Baseball until it gets closer to September....But with Billionaire owners and millionaire players fighting over money, more and more people are going to care less and less about a sport who's core fanbase is dying...


-I had done  series of "COVID Blogs"...Those stopped This next section was going to be one in the series...A month into the COVID shutdown, we moved my Mother-in-Law in with us...My wife, three kids, two dogs, myself and my dementia riddled Mother-in-Law...She was in assisted living and was locked down, stuck in her room for over month...No visitors allowed, no activities, no dining room...It scrambled her already fragile brain even more...When we saw her outside of the place on her birthday, my wife and I knew we had to get her out...So she's here with us...My Father-in-Law went down this same road so we knew to some extent what we were getting into...But it's bad...It's hard...

The kids were doing school from home...The wife works from home...there's limited separation people can get...We get bombarded with the same questions over and over again...The last 20 years don't exist...She doesn't know who I am, except that I cook for her and answer questions...There are times she doesn't know my wife...

We made a answer sheet for her to keep...When she starts asking questions we tell her to look at it...She would ask a question, you would answer and she would ask it again immediately...She looked at the sheet and said, "This is my daughters house?" I said yes...She then said "Is she still alive?"...Which was when the most blunt thing I could say fell out of my face..."If she was dead you wouldn't live here."  I felt awful, but she forgot it within seconds...

My day often starts with making her Tea and toast or an English muffin with orange marmalade...Once she is sitting down eating and working on a puzzle I go and check to see if I have to mop the floor in her bedroom, the hallway and the bathroom, as she likes to take her diapers off during the night and often leaves a trail of pee.... 

It's hard seeing someone fall apart in front of you...It's hard on my wife, as her mother often seems ungrateful for what we do for her...At night she becomes child-like, wants to "break rules" and gets pissy with my wife...We had to put up a baby gate to try and prevent her from roaming around the house at night while everyone is asleep...She loves to search for cookies between 11:00 PM and 4:00 AM...We have signs on doors to help her and prevent her taking a header down the basement steps....

The one thing makes my wife nuts...Her mother will go to the bathroom door wide open, doing her business, everything hanging out...But then when she's done, she pulls the door shut behind her...WTF!?!

If 2020 didn't suck bad enough, especially for the kids, my oldest having her senior year of high school kicked in the balls...She gave up her room for her Grandmother and moved into her little sister's room...And Grandma has no idea who our kids are...She had lived everyday for over two months with them and looks at them like strangers...We spent so many weekends visiting...Personal time and vacation time spent with my in-laws...Moved to fucking Erie to take care of things for them....and she has no memory of them or any of it...There are moments when I talk to her and she looks at me like 'Who the fuck are you and what are you doing here.?'

As frustrated and annoyed as I get, I have to remind myself that my wife is watching her mother's brain turn to pudding right in front of her everyday...I don't know how my wife deals with it so calmly...Well, she does like to hit the bottle like the piece of click-bait at the top of this post! 

That's what's been going on in my world...

Have a drink...Stay safe...Stay strong...Don't be a racist...Help fight for positive change in this country and world...And love...Love your family...No matter what, love your family.