(Originally posted in Facebook on August 9, 2019)
Wow – what a week!
My boss has been on vacation, so I’ve been trying to fill her shoes and it’s not been easy! There have been several press releases, interview requests for our CEO, town hall meetings with staff that I’ve needed to attend, TV people just showing up on our campus – unannounced – to start filming and interviewing about issues completely unrelated to everything else that’s going on . . . nothing bad, but not the things I usually deal with at work. Most of my “usual” work takes place behind the scenes and this type of work has put me front and center.
I don’t like it.
Then there’s life with M.
He worked yesterday and is at work today, which is good. I called him yesterday afternoon to remind him that I wouldn’t leave work until after 6 pm – after the last town hall meeting of the day – and then I would be home after that. I was on the road when he called me . . . wanting to know where I was. He had forgotten that I was staying late.
When I called him in the afternoon, I asked him what he was doing – he told me he was getting his things together to go for a bike ride.
Now . . . two weeks ago, he rode his bike in front of a car and got hit. I thought we had talked about it and agreed that he needed to have someone with him when he went riding again, but he didn’t remember it that way.
And he was bound and determined to go out for a ride!
I managed to talk him out of it yesterday, because one of my brothers and sisters-in-law are in town and they were all going to go out to eat – so it gave him something else to do. But how I am going to stop this all together?
I can lock the bike up or put it at my dad’s house or in my car, but . . . he is an adult. If he wants to ride his bike or go for a walk or whatever, how can I say no? And how can I really stop him? I’m 30 miles away.
But at the same time, it isn’t fair to anyone else out there to let him roam around the world, not paying attention to what he is doing and acting as a danger to himself and to other people. It’s bad enough that he scraped up his elbow and knees and probably scared the poor woman who hit him half to death. What if he were seriously hurt – or even killed? It would be devastating to whoever else might be involved in it.
These are the debates that keep me up at night. When you think about someone dealing with dementia, you don’t think about them wanting to jump on their bike and get some exercise.