I feel bad. I bailed on my Dad, who asked me a couple of weeks ago if I would be interested in going with him to help his sister/my aunt with some yard work. I got the sense that he was asking me to come as a buffer.
He told me on Tuesday that he was planning to go yesterday and was I still interested in going? I was having a rough week and replied that I could not give him a definite answer.
Dad called this morning with questions about Mom's final affairs and I asked him about yesterday. His slightly older sister is a character and just does not know when to stop. My poor 81 year old father got put through some very awkward paces yesterday.
He drove for an hour to get to her house. She has a tree growing against her garage and the limbs are now against and over the roof. She wanted my dad to go up on a ladder to cut them down. He told her it wasn't a good idea and suggested she spend the $200 to get it cut down and hauled away. She pushed, but he still said no. She said she was going to get her chain saw to cut it down.
Keep in mind that their oldest brother is still alive and functioning after suffering from traumatic brain injury sustained when he was standing on the wrong end of a limb while tree trimming. That was more than 15 years ago. I told Dad that when he was telling me all this about Auntie's requests with the tree, all I could think about was what happened to their brother. Dad said the same thing went through his head at the time.
Around 3:30 Dad had enough and was ready to call it a day. His sister started giving him a hard time, saying she usually worked until sundown, to which Dad responded that he had an hour's drive to get back home.
Just because Dad is 81 years old doesn't mean that family dynamics still don't come into play. Behind those 81 years is a boy whose sister always was and always will be four years older than him. All seven siblings are still alive, with Dad the next to the youngest. The unspoken part now is that any one of them could go at any time now and some of them want to be able to look back with no regrets.
I love my Dad. He is such a great person.