I Love My Father — That’s Why I Put Him in a Home

Photo by Sebastian Frederik Jacobsen on Unsplash

I’m going to get judged. There are a cohort of people who believe that you have the responsibility, no matter what the circumstances or consequences, to personally care for your aging parents.

My father, aged 70, is a resident of a memory care unit in a small town near Manchester, England.

Obviously, I’m not going to reveal details of my father’s condition. It’s not Alzheimer’s.

Locking him up…and I’m not going to sugar coat it, he is confined…is the hardest decision I and his sister have made in either of our lives.

It hurts. And when society heaps guilt on us…that only adds to the hurt. To the sense of failure that we can’t look after him, not separately, not together.

So, why did we do it?

24 Hour Care and Supervision

That’s it in black and white.

My father needs 24 hour care and supervision. He needs to be confined, because if he is not confined he wanders off, gets lost, and walks out into traffic. This makes him a danger to himself and others…if he gets out, there is a very real risk that he will step out in front of a vehicle, get hurt or killed, and traumatize and/or injure the unfortunate driver. The fact that he is losing his vision only makes this worse.