A Personal Quandry

Oh, what do do...?

I’m an only child, who grew up without a mother who was the beacon until she died when I was aged 14. My Grandfather stepped up to the plate thankfully. My dad? I don’t know what happened to him.

I went off to boarding school, and my dad went on an alcoholic binger until he had to get a liver transplant. He parlayed that into disability until Social Security. He turns 80 years old next month and I’ve never seen him work an honest day in my life.

His father was killed somehow (no one will really talk about it) when my dad was 1 and my grandmother had another 2-year-old and was pregnant with my aunt. And she took care of a crowd of others to boot. The 30’s and 40’s were hard times in Southern Ga.

So flash forward about 40 years or so when I moved out of this house and went off on my own at age 15. More or less. But more. I just returned at age 55 to help with my father who is now about to turn 80. He’s never moved. He’s never maintained anything. He’s never managed anything. He’s never grown or traveled. He never volunteered or worked again. He went to a state of inertness and has squandered every second of those decades. And now he has Alzheimer’s.

I came home to help. He refuses help, but needs and interestingly, also demands it. He refuses responsibility above everything but is the only one left to be responsible and he’s not liking it. And now that I’m here, the light is being shined on the incompetence, which is making him mad. In the true sense of the word. He’s cussing, yelling, and throwing pedantic fits towards me, of all people. I haven’t lived here in 40 years. The animosity is at himself. But I’m worried for my safety.

He has loaded guns around the house and dozens of large containers of combustibles, from propane to drag racing fuel to gasoline, to turpentine, thinners, and other chemicals that you don’t want in your kitchen.

The kitchen is unusable. Nothing here works. The appliances are all broken, everything leaks, the HVAC hasn’t worked in forever, so there are propane heaters around randomly that I don’t think he knows how to use properly, and the electricity is all jacked up, he has 7 cars and none of them work properly, there’s no hot water where needed, and on and on. It’s a rotten stump in a swamp. I’m currently washing dishes in the bathroom which has no ceiling and has been leaking for decades from upstairs. The next room over has the ceiling ripped apart from a flood a year or two ago. He’s squatting in his own house like a homeless person. Destruction by neglect.

What do I do? He has two stray dogs he “adopted” he won’t even give names to because that would provide too much responsibility that he sleeps with in pile of dirt. He locks himself in his bedroom all day and looks for things to complain about.

It’s a pretty tense situation. I’ve spoken to him about it but he won’t communicate.