Travel Well

 

My Dad passed away last week.  If you've been following this blog, you might remember that I moved back to America from South Korea in February of 2021 (COVID time!) to live with him and become his caregiver.

It was not easy, because one thing about being old (he was 92 at the time) is that you really come to hate being old.  Nobody wants to wear "adult undergarments."  Throw in a dementia diagnosis from about two years ago and yeah, it was hard on everybody.

Long story short, we moved him back here to Maryland to be closer to family.  He was also in a nursing home for about six months but eventually we decided to move him back into his own place, with me.

In the end, at the age of 94, it was a really nasty pneumonia that ended up taking him.  We had nursing care and lots of help from hospice, and this allowed him to fulfill at least one of his wishes -- to die at home, visited by his family, and kept company by my two rescue cats.

I'm still a bit tired more than anything.  I've got plenty to say about the good, the bad, and the ridiculous when it comes to elder care in America.  I quit my job a few weeks ago (which probably would have happened even without his illness).  I need to get back to a more regular exercise routine as the weather gets colder here in Frederick.  If I'm being honest, I just need to leave the house more and make some new friends.  There is still a lot of paperwork and, well, death stuff that needs to be handled, of course.

My dad was a scientist, a world-traveler, a lover of a good joke, and a glass of red wine.  He loved gardening and fishing.  Our relationship was never perfect, but over the past few years I think we both realized time and biology are generally not on anybody's side, not for long at least.  I think he lived as full a life as possible and made a difference professionally.  (Maybe in a later post I'll talk about how he was one of the first agricultural scientists to take organic farming seriously, in an era of high-input "miracle" fertilizers that would solve all our food problems forever.)

Mostly, I think me and my sister did our best.