Everything changed

I haven't written a blog post since our last President was still in office. It was a kinder, gentler time. It was a time in which I didn't have to worry about COVID-19 coronavirus. It was before my mom's heart failed, before my sister and I took turns staying with our 89-year-old dad who had literally lost track of time, before everything changed.

I've been thinking about blogging for a while. Wondering if writing about the joys, pains, pitfalls, and sheer exhaustion of being a "caretaker" for my parents will help me process and cope.

I don't do the caretaking alone. My younger sister is actually the general manager of this endeavor. Over the past year and half we've moved my mother from hospital to transitional care, to condo, to hospital, to transitional care, to condo, to independent living in a graduated care building, to hospital, to transitional care, and back to "independent" living. We've moved my dad from the condo he shared with my mother to the Veterans Home.

These past 16 months feel like years. The emotional noise has been deafening and I still haven't really found homeostasis. And now, in the time of the virus, my parents are in the red zone (as if they weren't before this).