Franklin

My emotional support dog ...
Everyone needs one. He’s my grand-dog, but he never fails to fill my heart with joy and my face with a smile, especially when I come home from an overnighter caring for my dad or have just came home from a hard or emotional day with him. It’s been a while blip friends but life has been a bit challenging with my father’s failing. He is 87 years old and has been diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease and the doctors are figuring out the best form of treatment. We, my three siblings and I were doing a twenty four hour care for the past three month in his home that has cause us burn out because it was too much on us. Yes care taker burn out is a real thing. All of our ugly was coming out, blame, quilt, and resentment. We finally came to the conclusion we weren’t doing it. We have just hired two of my father’s grandchildren, one who just finished nursing school and the other who is just starting to care for him which has lighten up things for us older ones. They have felt called to do this and it is a true blessing. Now when we are with father it’s quality time not exhaustion time. It’s such a hard thing when parents get old. They have taken care of us our whole lives and you want to return the care not to mention we will be the old ones one day. But sometimes it gets to the point where you need the professionals, the one who have been taught how to care and care comes in all forms. We are taking this one day at the time and I know we are all doing the very best we can. The most important thing is we need to remember how much we love each other and stay united as a family. We need to accept each other as is without blame, quilt, resentment but most of all expectations of each other because ... we are all different.