After spending a week away in Okayama, I finally think I understand my father.
Whether I can accept it is another matter.
During our major argument, I told him:
> "Taking care of you is what exhausts me the most."
And,
> "When Mom became seriously ill, you couldn't bring yourself to call an ambulance.
> If things had continued like that, she would have died."
Those words seemed to hit him very hard.
The next day, he looked completely dejected.
He even said things like,
> "Just do whatever you think is best, F."
He was unusually considerate toward me.
During our argument, my father had shouted at me,
> "Why didn't you notice?!"
In the end, those words came back like a boomerang and struck him instead.
Until then, I had never told him that his failure to recognize my mother's medical emergency had delayed her transfer to the hospital and contributed to the severity of her condition.
I believed that the truth would be too much for him to bear.
I honestly thought,
*He might lose the will to live.*
Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—that fear proved unnecessary.
By the following day, he had already forgotten.
His cognitive decline appears to be progressing far more rapidly than I had imagined.
A person in that condition cannot possibly recognize the extent of their own cognitive decline.
At that point, I gave up.
I spent the following week back in Okayama.
Before leaving, I arranged a home-delivered dinner service and stocked the freezer with a week's worth of cooked rice and side dishes.
While I was away, I tried not to think about my father.
I also made a conscious effort not to watch the security cameras.
One of the services provided by the meal delivery company is a daily welfare check.
They hand the meal directly to the recipient whenever possible.
If they cannot confirm that he is home and safe, they call me.
I entrusted my father's daily safety check to the meal delivery staff.
That alone lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.
The week in Okayama passed surprisingly quickly.
I spent my time catching up on hospital appointments I had been unable to attend, arranging a smartphone for my mother to use after her discharge, and cutting back the garden, which had become a jungle.
In the end, I never really had a chance to rest.
When I returned to Nagano after my previous "escape," I had been horrified by the state of the kitchen.
This time, however, I already knew exactly what to expect.
I was certain that he had done almost nothing.
So my reaction was simply,
*"Just as I thought.*
*Actually... it's a little better than I expected."*
A father with dementia simply cannot manage all the dishes on his own.
It appeared that he had used the dishwasher twice.
However, after washing the dishes, he had placed them back onto dirty trays that were still covered with food residue.
As a result, everything had to be washed again.
Some of the dishes returned to the cupboard were still dirty as well.
In the end, I found myself washing more than a week's worth of dishes.
I no longer blame my father for any of this.
There's simply no point.
The dishwasher can handle most of it.
Although it will probably take two full days.
Almost none of the prepared side dishes had been eaten.
That, too, was useful information.
Now I know that I don't need to prepare them next time.
Until now, I had described my father as having a "pathological dependence on others."
Now I think a more accurate description is:
**Dependence caused by dementia.**
It's a disease.
There's nothing anyone can do about that.
The important thing is that he stops depending on **me**.
At this stage, I don't believe this is something an ordinary family member can solve.
We need professionals, such as our care manager, to decide how best to support him.
Please help us.
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