Another crisis on the home front forces me to confront my sib's OCS baggage. My 85-year-old father has deteriorated, showing signs of dementia. The sib is bothered by this possible diagnosis, but of even greater import, she is totally disgusted that her schedule has been disturbed. The first thing she tells me after my 4-hour flight from Phoenix is that she spent the bulk of the night in the ER. Unfortunately the triage team in New Brunswick did not consider my father to be a high priority case, so the family had to wait many hours until Dad was moved to a bed. The sib did not like this in a BIG way.
To be fair, my sister is teaching high school at this time (I am freelancing, so according to her, I'm not actually working). I am the logical person to coordinate health care. On the advice of experts we relocate dad to a mental health facility in south Jersey, coincidentally the same one I spent a month in about 10 years ago. My mother and I visit every day, and the psychiatrist confirms Dad has dementia. Things worsen when a nurse discovers that the aortic aneurysm found some years back--and monitored for at least a while--has now doubled in size and is in danger of bursting. This will mean my dad will sustain either instant death from a bleed out or if we opt to remove the aneurysm now, possibly dying from a heart attack (tests reveal prior heart damage from a silent heart attack). All three of us--Mom, the sib and I--agree that surgery is still the best choice. We spend a long day at the hospital and later that evening the doctor calls to tell us Dad died from a massive heart attack in recovery.
Throughout this crisis, my sib continues to play bridge, and I am bewildered by her behavior because I figure that despite her OCS, she would support her mother's fragile emotional state by being present. But no, I'm wrong. I learn that OCS is stronger than death and the dying. What the sib does take responsibility for is organizing the shiva following my father's burial. I offer to pay, and that is the signal to spare no expense in ordering platters and cold salads from a kosher-style deli. Naturally my sib overdoes the ordering but that's no surprise. The sib wants to cultivate a party-like atmosphere--the better to entertain her friends--so the more food the better she looks. Naturally the guests are 90 percent the sib's friends, but one evening my sister-in-law and her husband visit. Jackets are thrown on my mother's bed, so when the husband leaves for their drive to Bayonne, he mistakenly takes a jacket that is not his but resembles the brown leather zip-up left there by my niece's boyfriend. When the boyfriend discovers the mistake, he goes ballistic. He's so angry that his fury threatens to upstage the shiva, which is meant to be an opportunity to mourn my dad.
Finally reason prevails and the boyfriend agrees to a rendezvous with my brother-in-law at a mall halfway between East Brunswick and Bayonne. The boyfriend is still fuming, and I try not to reveal my newest epiphany, which is that the boyfriend is an OCS. Why not! Join the family. (And in the next few months he does, becoming engaged to my niece.) Everyone except me is happy about the coupling, but they don't know that he's an OCS twentysomething. My sib says he's so smart and has a great sense of humor, but my mother is reserved about her praise. Perhaps she senses the OCS bubbling up like carbonic acid in the boyfriend's personality.
As for my sister's positive response to the engagement, I attribute this to the fact that OCS people tend to cluster. They feed off each other's ambitions The next time I see the boyfriend is at his wedding, but his behavior doesn't concern me half as much as my mother's. She is showing some subtle signs of dementia, and I know my sib is going to be a force to be reckoned with.
To be fair, my sister is teaching high school at this time (I am freelancing, so according to her, I'm not actually working). I am the logical person to coordinate health care. On the advice of experts we relocate dad to a mental health facility in south Jersey, coincidentally the same one I spent a month in about 10 years ago. My mother and I visit every day, and the psychiatrist confirms Dad has dementia. Things worsen when a nurse discovers that the aortic aneurysm found some years back--and monitored for at least a while--has now doubled in size and is in danger of bursting. This will mean my dad will sustain either instant death from a bleed out or if we opt to remove the aneurysm now, possibly dying from a heart attack (tests reveal prior heart damage from a silent heart attack). All three of us--Mom, the sib and I--agree that surgery is still the best choice. We spend a long day at the hospital and later that evening the doctor calls to tell us Dad died from a massive heart attack in recovery.
Throughout this crisis, my sib continues to play bridge, and I am bewildered by her behavior because I figure that despite her OCS, she would support her mother's fragile emotional state by being present. But no, I'm wrong. I learn that OCS is stronger than death and the dying. What the sib does take responsibility for is organizing the shiva following my father's burial. I offer to pay, and that is the signal to spare no expense in ordering platters and cold salads from a kosher-style deli. Naturally my sib overdoes the ordering but that's no surprise. The sib wants to cultivate a party-like atmosphere--the better to entertain her friends--so the more food the better she looks. Naturally the guests are 90 percent the sib's friends, but one evening my sister-in-law and her husband visit. Jackets are thrown on my mother's bed, so when the husband leaves for their drive to Bayonne, he mistakenly takes a jacket that is not his but resembles the brown leather zip-up left there by my niece's boyfriend. When the boyfriend discovers the mistake, he goes ballistic. He's so angry that his fury threatens to upstage the shiva, which is meant to be an opportunity to mourn my dad.
Finally reason prevails and the boyfriend agrees to a rendezvous with my brother-in-law at a mall halfway between East Brunswick and Bayonne. The boyfriend is still fuming, and I try not to reveal my newest epiphany, which is that the boyfriend is an OCS. Why not! Join the family. (And in the next few months he does, becoming engaged to my niece.) Everyone except me is happy about the coupling, but they don't know that he's an OCS twentysomething. My sib says he's so smart and has a great sense of humor, but my mother is reserved about her praise. Perhaps she senses the OCS bubbling up like carbonic acid in the boyfriend's personality.
As for my sister's positive response to the engagement, I attribute this to the fact that OCS people tend to cluster. They feed off each other's ambitions The next time I see the boyfriend is at his wedding, but his behavior doesn't concern me half as much as my mother's. She is showing some subtle signs of dementia, and I know my sib is going to be a force to be reckoned with.
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