The Duties of a Daughter

 This is my parents and I in 1987 at my cousin Sue's wedding.  Sue and Tod just celebrated their 25th anniversary.  My how time flies.  There have been more weddings, babies, graduations and funerals since that day.   And my parents have both been diagnosed with dementia and been uprooted from the home they lived in for 56 years.   There has been anger, tears, and subsequent broken relationships.  There has been reluctant relocation, first on their part, and then last year, on mine.  But we have also come to a place of  acceptance and even forgiveness, even though some relationships remain broken.  But that is also part of the acceptance.

For the last year my parents have resided at Turning Brook, a wonderful assisted living facility in Alpena.  My mom seems  glad to be "home" again, not in Oscoda, but close to Spruce where she grew up.   My dad is just glad to be where there is coffee, dessert, and my mother.  They are very accessible to friends and family, and they seem to have settled in nicely, even though my mother still refuses to admit that.  

As my friends who are caring for their parents will tell you it is quite an awakening when you go from child of your parents to the parent of your parents.  Besides all the legal mess that comes with being power of attorney and putting names on bank accounts, there is also the unsettledness that comes with trying to rearrange the order of how things have been your entire life.  Suddenly you are telling your parents what to do, instead of the other way around.  Especially when it comes to telling your mother she can no longer live in her home, and your dad he can no longer drive.  I have been told I ruined my mother's life and my dad was going to turn me into the police.  But, I am happy to tell you that most of that misery is behind us now.  My mom's dementia has advanced to the point where she has forgotten that she didn't like me for so long and seems to be quite fond of me and glad to see me on my regular visits to see her and my dad.  Besides a few outbursts about the previously mentioned,  my dad has never really been mad.  I don't think he has ever really been mad at anyone in his life.  I have become proficient at meeting my parents needs, taking them to doctors' appointments and making my dad get a hair cut.  Of course I have Turning Brook to thank for making all of these things possible.  My parents live in a lovely little apartment where their meds are brought to them, their home is cleaned, their laundry is done and their meals are prepared and served to them three times a day.  But there is one little daughterly duty that they do not perform, and it is the one that I dislike the most.  The dreaded Lottery Ticket Detail.

My dad has been a gambler his whole life.  He has been buying lottery tickets for as long as I can remember.  As his dementia progressed, his obsession grew.  Until he lived with me for a while, I never knew how big it was.  When they entered the world of assisted living my dad was able to give up the tobacco that he chewed for almost his entire life.  He had to give up so much because of his disease, that I decided that I wasn't going to take away the one thing that he loved so much.  So eventually we came to an arrangement of ten scratch off tickets a day.  Yes, I know.  For all of you math wizards out there, that is twenty dollars a day, one hundred and seventy dollars a week, and a total that I don't want to think about a year.  I know.  But it is my dad's money.  He worked long and hard for it, and if he wants to spend it on lottery tickets, then we will spend it on lottery tickets.  End of story.  But not really.

In order for my dad to have those ten tickets someone has to buy them.  That would be me.  When we lived in Kalamazoo and saw my parents on almost a daily basis, we would stop and buy them at the corner gas station when we went to visit.  Then, when we became experienced, we started buying them in bulk.  We have even bought the whole roll, which is two hundred tickets, which yes, is four hundred dollars.  

And they have to be Cash Words.  For those of you unfamiliar with this ticket, you scratch off letters and then try to match them on a crossword puzzle.  The more words you are able to scratch off, the more money you make.  It has always been interesting to me that my dad was able to do the somewhat involved Cash Words when his dementia didn't allow him to remember anything about his past.   Why he loves this particular ticket so much I don't know.  Any other selection or variation on the two dollar variety confuses him.  He has  remained steadfast in his loyalty to the Cash Word ever since I have been buying them for him.

 Now that we don't see him everyday, my mom has become the keeper of the tickets.  She has a cashbox with a lock that she puts the them in, and every morning she gives him his allotment.  He puts them in his back pocket.  He will take them out, scratch a letter or two and then put them back.  This way they can last him most of the day.  Because once he gets his daily ration there will be no more.  Well, unless my mom gets lazy and doesn't lock them up.  If he finds them, and he will find them, he will scratch them all.   One time he found a whole week's worth.  And he scratched every last one.  Of course there was no more until my next visit.  But I know he would do it again in a heart beat if she slipped up again.

And of course, like every professional lottery ticket scratcher, he has a dedicated scratching nail.  Yep, his right thumb nail is purposely not clipped because he uses it to reveal his letters.  I have asked him to use a coin but he refuses.  I have threatened him with not getting anymore tickets if he doesn't at least trim it.  And he will.  He will very reluctantly snip off little bit by little bit until I get impatient and tell him to forget it.  I have pretty much given up that battle.

So I buy lottery tickets two hundred dollars at a time.  That is a ten day supply.  Maybe a little more since the Ticket Nazi, aka my mom,  has been trying to get him down to six tickets a day.  I don't know why she is now trying to control his habit, since this has obviously been going on for years.  But, she is the designated ticket doler-outer, so I don't interfere.   Purchasing that many tickets at once always causes questions and comments.   I go into the gas station or convenience store I have selected and lurk around the coffee station, persevering over the size and variety of my brew until no one is up at the counter.   Then I walk up and say to the clerk "I would like one hundred of your two dollar cash words please."  I say it clearly and loudly enough for just the clerk to hear.  But no matter how clearly or loudly I say it, the clerk always replies in a booming voice for everyone in the entire store to hear, "ONE HUNDRED?  DID YOU SAY ONE HUNDRED? Then  I reply, "yes, I said one hundred." as I lay my twenty dollar bills on the counter.   Then comes the process of  counting them out. They will start with "one, two, three, four, five" and get louder with every ticket that passes through their hands, as increasing amounts of people appear out of nowhere and form a line behind me.  Then, the clerk,  just to be sure they have gotten the right amount, will go through the painful count again, and at times, again.  I feel everyone's eyes boring into the back of my head because I am now seriously holding up the line.  By this time everyone is wondering why I am buying that many tickets.  Then the comments start.  "Wow, I wish I had that much money" and "you must be feeling lucky."  I have realized that saying "these are for my dad and he has dementia and can only do the Cash Words" is useless because by this time everyone in line is convinced that they are looking at a woman with a serious gambling problem.  

 When I go and visit my parents, as soon as I walk in the door, my dad will present me with the winning tickets from the previous week's allotment, even before he says hello.  He looks at the winners as his own personal accomplishment.  He will whisper in my ear "go turn these in and buy yourself something nice."  I tell him, I will even though I take them back and use the money to buy more.   Up until recently, the ones he gave me were all winners.   So I would take them to the places I bought them from and turn them back in.  I have learned to go on off hours when they aren't busy because turning them in is almost as involved as purchasing them.  And of course people again appear out of nowhere as I stand there, while the clerk scans each one, enters some code, and waits the full two or three seconds for the machine to verify how much each ticket has won.  Multiply this process by forty or fifty, and it is quite time consuming. I have stepped aside while the clerk waits on the people paying for their gas and cigarettes and  I know what they are secretly thinking to themselves.   They can't wait to tell their wife or husband or who ever that that woman with the gambling problem was at the gas station again claiming that she was doing lottery business for "her dad" as they do they air quote thing.

Of course, over the last year I have learned where to go to make my purchase and subsequent redemption.  I know who is fast and who isn't when it comes to turning them in.  There is a guy at the Marathon in Alpena who moves with the speed of light, and will zip through the tickets in no time flat.  Tammy at Nedo's in Mikado is not only quick, but can chat while she does it.  She is always glad to see me, and I appreciate her more than she knows.   Especially now that my dad isn't as good at telling winners from losers, so I feel like I have to check all his tickets.  

The ticket says that you can win thirty five thousand dollars.  We have yet to win that, even though at times I feel like we have purchased every Cash Word in town.   The most he has won is a hundred dollars, but that seems to be enough for him.  Many people have told me I should just not buy them anymore, what a waste of money, and on and on.  My dad used to be proud of many things.   How well he played baseball, how hard he worked, how honest he was, and what a great wife and daughter he had.   But basically he remembers none of his previous life.  So if he is proud of a winning (or a non winning) lottery ticket, then I am certainly not ever going to take that from him.  As the daughter of Joe Mosley, I have to endure a reputation as someone who belongs at Gamblers Anonymous.  I even had a clerk once turn a ticket over and point out the number you are supposed to call if you are spending more than you can afford.  Then she pursed her lips, shook her head slightly, sighed, and continued to enable my imagined habit by completing the transaction.  

I am lucky.  Except for the dementia, my dad is very healthy.  He demands little: chocolate, coffee and lottery tickets. He has weathered the changes in his life like a champ.  When I walk into his apartment and he comes up to me and says "you didn't buy me any tickets did you?" I can't help but smile.  Then as always, I tell him, "why yes, I did."  He grins, gives me a big hug and says "boy, I sure am a nut on those things."  And then I say, "I know Dad, I know."