Slice O' Life

 

I'm my father's caretaker. He's 93-years-old.

In addition to the expected age-related problems, he also has OCD and is somewhere on the autism spectrum.

I didn't know these things growing up. It was much later that I realized that what I considered "normal" was far from normal.

Sometimes people say, "Oh, I'm so OCD!" and what they really mean is that they like to keep their desk tidy. That's not what I mean.

His OCD means we could never have magnets on the refrigerator or pictures on the wall, because he would fiddle with them to the point of exhaustion trying to get them lined up Just So.

It meant there were complex rules for everything from mowing the lawn to taking out the trash, and any deviation from the rule meant you were doing it wrong, and resulted in an angry outburst.

Most people with OCD have some sense that they view the world differently and recognize that they are the ones out of step. My Dad just thinks everybody else is doing it wrong. The reason they don't do things the "right" way is because they are doing it half-assed, they just don't care.

The only "right" time to mow the lawn, for example, is at 2:00 in the afternoon. Can you imagine mowing the lawn in Texas at the hottest part of the day? When I was a teenager I suggested mowing it in the morning or the evening when it wasn't so hot, and if Mom hadn't moved between us he would have punched me.

The gardeners at his apartment complex don't follow his rules, of course, and mow the lawn at more reasonable times. He's too old to fight them, so he just gets deeply depressed and complains to me.

The rules for taking out the trash are complex and ever changing. Certain kinds of trash go into specific bins, some trash is put on the dryer and put in the trash the next day. He has little piles of trash throughout his apartment, and at the end of the week he carefully places it all into one bag-- just one! That's all that's allowed!-- and sets it to the curb on Tuesday.

His autism means he has virtually no social skills.

The very worst moment of my life was when I told him I had enrolled in college, and he burst out laughing. He thought it was hilarious that an idiot like me would even try. Mom went to him later and tried to make amends, but it was too late. There's no way to make that better. It was soul crushing.

These days it's very rare to get a "Thank you." If I cook him a meal, pay his bills, or drive him to his favorite restaurant (always the same one, always the same time, always the same meal), I'm more likely to hear "Oh."

"I baked you a cake!"

"Oh."

 I got him a clock for Christmas that tells him the day and date. He didn't say "Thank you." He told me he didn't want a clock.

Oh.

We don't have Mom to run interference for us anymore.

And it's exhausting.