A plant died and now I’m incompetent for his care
Vent!
My dad has vascular dementia. My mom is pretty nonchalant with it and will only directly address it when it impacts her.
I moved in a few years ago to help with care. With me, I brought more than a hundred houseplants. They were all well cared for and beautiful. I loved propagating them and giving them as gifts.
As my dad’s needs started to rise, my attention had to be drawn from my plants. There are only so many hours in the day and I have an intense job, a needy cat, and I would like to leave the house once in awhile. You know, normal things.
My Hoya carnosa died this week. It went from a dozen thick green vines to…. One pale yellow sickly thing.
It’s one plant in many that I’ve neglected because my dad needs the attention more.
But instead, so cruelly, he turns to me today and says, “I don’t want anyone to look after me who can’t even keep a plant alive.”
It stung. I walked out of the house. I didn’t even take the knobs off the oven before I left, which is something I always do.
It’s been two hours, and now I’m sitting in my driveway, and I can see the front door is open. He doesn’t wander, he just has a weird thing about locking and locking doors, and my cat will open the doors. But that means my cat got out. My cat has a tracker. Not the end of the world. I can find him. The house will feel like the surface of the sun inside because we’re in central Florida and who knows how long the door was open.
Just problem. Problem. Problem.
And I just really want to go to the plant store and get a new Hoya, live in my own little world with my cat and plants, and be like, see! I can keep my plants alive! 😩