Dear community, this year I think I have reached my breaking point. It's gotten really bad. I am seeing my father, 91, not wanting to get out of bed. I have kept him at home at his request but he needs more and more help. He has dementia and though I can have conversations with him, he has longterm memories (short is not good) and always knows who I am. I am afraid of moving him because I think that will be it for him.
I manage everything for him and my own life feels like it's falling apart. I can barely focus on work, my personal life is a mess and my mental health is in the gutter. I'm also so scared to lose him. I feel stuck and can't see a way out.
He has 3 other daughters and 6 grandchildren in Europe, but none of them help at all. Need advice and prayers.
If you already fear so to lose your Dad, then putting him into care in his last year or so would likely lead you to inappropriate and devastating guilt. You are building you life on the generation that is gone now, not on the future for our world.
You say that your mental health is in the gutter. There is more going here than your caregiving of your Dad, and I do hope very much that you are seeking the BEST professional help to sort all this out and to help you. Your Father's other daughters are taking the path toward the future, as is the grandchildren.
In the end, and after exploring choices and feelings and beliefs, you choose to care for your father until his death then that is your honest and real choice. Knowing fully that it is your choice should help you. And knowing that you have done all you chose to do should lessen your guilt. I have not only long ago lost my parents, but more recently the brother who was Hansel to my Gretel in every forest of life. I will tell you that they really never leave you. They are always with you in the wonder of the relationship you shared through life.
I will leave you with my favorite Annie Dillard quote: "We live our lives as though hundreds of thousands of generations had not come before us, and as though there were not hundreds of thousands of generations still to come". Our lives are as nothing. A blip in time. But for me, it is imperative to use the each to live with as much quality of time, joy, and care for our earth as we are able to.
It sounds like your father is perhaps depressed, and placing him in the appropriate facility might actually be helpful for him as it would give him other folks his age to interact with. You might be pleasantly surprised how well he might do in such a place. You say that you have no way out, but you do have options here. You have to first and foremost take care of yourself, or there is no way you can be of any good to him. Please start making yourself a priority.
I, too, care for my father alone, with my sibling rarely involved. It helped a lot to have someone come in to clean the house, to have meals delivered, etc. because it took some load off my back. Not everything can be solved, but at least some breathing space became available.
Then maybe you can have the space to think clearly through some long-term options as well. Hang in there! Praying for you.