Peggy Jaeger, Author

So…about my stepfather.

I’m going to be totally honest here and say I never thought my mother would die first. Aside from the two falls and subsequent broken hips, she was as healthy as that proverbial horse. No meds, except for a daily multivitamin and some calcium pills to help her thinning bones.

Whereas her husband had high blood pressure, kidney disease, and some vague cardiac condition no one ever could explain to me ( and I’m a nurse!)

He was taking 3 prescriptions daily for hypertension and the kidney issues, and one more for his cardiac status. In addition to a MVI and some Colace for chronic constipation.

He’d had a prostatectomy, bilateral cataract surgery, and a gallbladder removal all in the time they’d moved to Vermont, where my mother had nothing until her first hip fracture.

He went to the doctor every 3-6 months for a checkup.

My mother hadn’t seen a doctor in over 40 years before she broke her hip.

When I had to admit them to the nursing home, my hope was they’d be there a few years, together, and live out their days as they had the past 56 years of their marriage.

Alas, that wasn’t to be and, unfortunately, he survived her. It would have been so much better if he’d died first and I know that sounds horrible.

But…

My mother was a survivor. My stepfather isn’t. He’s more a take-care-of-me kind of person, where my mother was an I’ll-take-care-of-myself-until-I-can’t-gal.

His depression encompasses a grand scope. I visit him twice weekly and he cries every single time. About everything and nothing. He clings to me when I’m leaving. This from a man who never even pecked my cheek in 50 years, much less hugged me.

I’ve been trying to learn a little more about him because I realized when I was filling out all his paperwork for various things, I knew next to nothing.

I mean, I knew the basics. Age, birthday, number of siblings and where he came in the family food chain. But other than that, not a whole lot. And since he has no living family left, I figured someone (me) should know something about the man’s life.

So I gave him a spiral-bound notebook and on each page I wrote a question meant for him to answer by the next time I visited.

Where were you born? What schools did you go to? Who were your friends growing up? Why did you go into the service? Favorite music, movies.

Stuff like that.

How did you meet my mother? When did you get married?

His responses, brief though they are, have been eye-opening.

For instance, I found out he’d been married twice before my mother. Once in college while living in Utah, and once while living in California. Wife number one he said was too young, emotionally, to be married. Wife number two was, in his words, a mistake. No further elaboration and he wouldn’t tell me their names.

Interesting, no?

He and my mother “lived in sin” for a year before they married because his second divorce wasn’t finalized yet. I always thought their wedding anniversary was December 1966. Nope. Add a year.

I discovered he had a love of history, World War II history to be exact, and was very knowledgeable about the various factions of the wars, the battles, and even some of the main players in the military.

His mother never wanted him to get married. Not to any of the 3 women. She wanted him to live with her and take care of her after his father died. And she spoiled him rotten, made it sososo easy for him to just stay with her. He had no house responsibilities like laundry, cooking, or trash takeout. All he had to do was go to work every day. She cooked him breakfast before he left, made him his lunch to bring, and then gave him dinner every night when he got home. She did his laundry, ironed his work shirts, and made his bed every day.

That accounts for so many behaviors and interactions I observed in my mother’s and his marriage.

So many…

He also gave his paycheck to his mother every week.

I didn’t know men like that really existed.

Of course, not much changed when he married my mother. She cooked, cleaned, ironed and made the bed. He brought home his paycheck at the end of the week and handed it over to her.

This pattern continued until the day my mother died, only by then instead of a weekly paycheck, she handled the monthly social security and pension checks, continuing to make his life as easy as could be.

And as dependent.

And now I do all that.  I’ve taken over as the financial keeper. The nursing home staff does everything else.

And he’s still dependent.