Beige Gardens

So you have to take care of the demented?

At this point, we’re not waiting for the people in charge to clear a path. There is no will to change. We must forge our own paths because all of our parents are getting older, not just mine. Dementia is a diagnosis the whole family gets, I was forced to take care of my aging father. I was reverse Baby Boomed. But why listen to me? I’m just a storyteller with lived experence.

In 2018, I had to move back from LA when my widowed father told me he needed bypass surgery. A temporary moment; his recovery would be fast. I could get back to my life in a few months. Only, my first reaction felt hyperbolic: “This is going to ruin my life”. It was a premonition. By the time the pandemic hit, I was moved back into the family home, and on a path that would change my relationships with my sister, my dead mother’s family, my father’s sisters and my friends.

More than that, it put me on a path to digging up my whole life. Turning my back on a career I had been training for since birth. Ending inauthentic relationships, falling into the worst depressive cycle I’ve been in since my mother’s death 20 years ago, perimenopause, ADHD, the failure of Universal Medicine to maintain health, learning to garden. Finally, finding a whole new persona in time for my 50th birthday.

This is not a book about forgiveness or navigating systems; it’s a reminder that Radical Acceptance is to have a full life, no matter what happens, and that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Baby Boom was a great movie; they’re even doing a remake. I want to write the sequel, where Keaton shows up at her door with dementia. It’s not tit for tat when you never asked to be born.

This stock image is a lie, no one is this happy when someone else beats them at mario kart

Alone and Stoned. It’s a natural life.

  • Stories for Gen X to get old to:

  • ‘Ok, Boomer’ isn’t just a punchline. It’s a way of life. This is a list of why we suck at taking care of people, and how Kathleen Hanna made us better at being taken care of. Knowing they’re still “the man” is how you get your power back

  • ‘Where are the Dudes?’ Kurt Cobain died for somebody’s sins, but not yours… cis-men are slowing down progress, and trust me, your sensitive good-dad and sensitive liberal-husband is still enjoying his patriarchy, and so is your married sister.

  • Baby BoomED - great movie about work or family. I picked work. Family was forced on me. But this baby is no cherub; he was my first bully.

  • Till it happens to you: no one else can relate- parent loss, caregiving, hanging out with olds? Getting used to going to a friend’s house and their parents are there. Dealing with the feelings of being a loser while you carve out a place in your father’s haunted house.

  • Stories about being the problem:

  • The Villain Edit: Your siblings are not your friends. How can one person hold the family’s pain so another can thrive, and what happens when the breeders think their life is more important than the artist's? Or -You know those ride-or-dies who cry into your arms about breakups and goals lost? They will not be there for you now. It’s ok, they won’t be there for you when the parent dies. They will be there when there are baby showers to be planned!

  • Power Struggles: the day-to-day is nothing when you have a family that believes it’s your duty to care for a parent, but not be in charge of them. How to get control, even if it means burning down the whole system. What a boss bitch does when you’re told you face that you’re “Just the child” on your 48th birthday. Hint: it’s called a Kundalini Awakening, and it’s violent.

  • You can’t save money - should we even be trying? The hidden costs of broken brains: - lawyers, doctors, renos so he can “age in place”, and spending your life savings on renovating the family home, so you can have a basement instead of your own life. How fear of finances keeps the system broken: lawyers

  • Stories of survial:

  • The caregiver’s checklist, paper, scissors, a pencil; A Puppy and a Baby?! Trust me either literally or allegorically- get the dog; it’s your best friend, and it can watch the baby while you do drugs.

  • If you can be a Weed Nun, be a Weed Nun - Canada’s favourite drug is a double-edged sword, and essential to not going crazy. (Warning: this opinion includes talk about forging new neural pathways, breaking up with toxic family systems, and playing video games like a teenager).

  • You can’t believe in the patriarchy when you’re raising your emotionally immature parent; it will drive you mad. My conversion to being a house witch, and yes, it’s a lot of sweeping.

  • Anti-Social is your perspective; protecting my time is a hill worth dying on.

“When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent, but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.”
— bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

Want to know more? Be in touch for the full proposal.

NOTE:

  • Caregiving is specific to the caregiver and recipient; no one should ever tell you how it is …including me.