LoPo to the rescue

While we have been grieving and celebrating the lives of our Mom and Dad, it has been harder to write about some of the very difficult and sad times they went through in the year before they died. But there were some crushingly hard times, for them and for all of us.

While we knew that they couldn't continue to live independently in their home indefinitely, when the time actually came, and the dominos started to fall, it was hard on all of us. It was like doing fire drills over and over but being hit by a tornado.

Rita and Don had driven from Fla. to Debbie's house in Ga. to spend Thanksgiving in November of 2006. Then Mom became ill and needed their help, so they drove straight to Ohio. It would be many months before they went home, only to come back to bury Dad and spend Mom's last months with her.

When things began to unravel, Dad, who hadn't seen a doctor in nearly 50 years, ended up in Hickory Creek, held in a unit where he was scared and confused. It was so bad that Mom couldn't bear to go to visit him, and Rita and Don felt the same. He needed help, but none of us could manage him.

So there he was -- trapped like a rat. Feeling guilty that I couldn't help, I just wrung my hands and cried. We all knew that something needed to be done, but nobody knew what to do. Dad was in the clutches of "the system," and he wasn't being helped. Instead, they decided he needed speech therapy, of all things. Of course Dad being Dad, he had refused all prior options, trusting "the man upstairs" to just take him away to die before he sufferered such indignities. But there we were, caught without a plan.

Enter Lois, my "Wonder Woman," who finally couldn't stand doing nothing; so she got into her van with her blind dog and drove three days straight from Florida to spring Dad from the nursing home. She didn't really have any plan other than to get him out of there, so some of us thought she was nuts, but get him out she did! Here's the thing: When the rest of us were frozen by indecision, she went into action. She may not always think things through, but thank God she didn't. She just knew she had to get her daddy out of that place.

She drove straight to the nursing home and told them she had come to take him to Florida. He was pretty confused, but he was so relieved to see one of his "sweetie-pies" that he pulled himself together as if he had been in on the plan from the beginning, and he marched outta' there with his hat and coat, climbed into the van with Loie -- and off to Florida they went.

Lois and Walt took him in when nobody else could or would. Sometimes we think he might still be there had Walt's helper not walked out on them, leaving Lois to care for a demented dad, a husband in a wheelchair and a blind dog. On top of that, she needed to get Walt back to Mexico where he could hire a caretaker.

The next chapter in the story was my trip to Florida to take him back -- where? But that's a story for another day. In that one, Rita and Don once again stepped in to save the day.

This story is a tribute to Lois for having the gumption to just do something when I couldn't help. She will always be my heroine for that. Because she did, I was given some last days with my dad, and our family got the gift of time to find a better solution, one that would keep our parents together, so that when Dad's last breath came, Mom could be right beside him. It wasn't a perfect ending, but it was darn close.

It was just what Dad would have done if the tables had been turned: Go to the rescue. Don't stand around talking about it. Just do it. Thank God that Lois heard his unspoken cry for help and did for him what he would have done for any one of us. To my sister Lois, my Wonder Woman!