Thanksgiving arrest 2012

As I write this blog I now realize that you have been arrested more than once, in the days around Thanskgiving.
Is there something about the time of year?

http://seniorfraud.blogspot.com/2015/02/arrest-as-route-to-hospitalization-2010.html
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About one week before Thanksgiving, without any notice, you depart from the senior condo and drive to the farm homestead town in rural Minnesota.
Your intention is to see the doctor there so they can give you back your drivers license.

http://seniorfraud.blogspot.com/2015/02/too-old-and-demented-to-drive.html

You are sure that they will give you anything you ask for.

I first learn of your trip when you call me from the garage, unable to get into the house, your house, the house you built. I talk you through the steps.

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The doctor calls me, informing me you gave him permission to call and get the history, since you are unable to provide your medical history or your med list.   I say, "did you notice the dialysis fistula in his arm?", as well as other pertinent history.
I tell the doctor you don't have a valid drivers license, that you recently failed the driving test.
The doctor informs me that he must call the police (since it is obvious you drove to the appointment and you would be driving again as soon as you leave the appointment).
I don't know what happened after that  -- nobody called me to inform me of anything.

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Its 3 days before Thanskgiving.  You are still alone at the farm homestead.  I call you around 7 PM only to learn that you are heading back home to the city condo tonight.  However, you are sitting at the kitchen table of distant relatives, off the beaten path, a deviation from the usual route we take between locations.  Its dark outside and you are in a strange place, driving without a license.   I don't even like to drive in the dark and I am much younger than you.
I say, "try not to get killed or kill anyone tonight Dad", and we hang up.
Exhausted, I  go to bed and sleep, not realizing that events continue to play out many miles away.

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its 6:30 AM, 2 days before Thansgiving. The phone rings.  Its my aunt, your sister in law.  She tells me you are in Mankato - 90 miles away.   You called her after you couldn't reach me.

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The jitterbug cell phone has my home phone number keyed in as well as my cell phone, office, phone.  Still, you couldn't reach me (purely due to your telephone incompetence).  The staff at the Super 8 hotel helped you get through to my aunt.

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The police found you on highway 14, driving too slow.  I am sure you were lost, having taken an alternate route, driving in the dark, at 10 PM.  They next learned the drivers license wasn't valid.  For the first time you now believe that you don't have a valid drivers license.
The police leave the car on the road and take you to the Super 8 hotel.  What else would you do with an 81 year old guy who was driving 90 miles from home at 10 PM at night?

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"come and get me", you say.


"I can't just drop everything and come and get you because you are driving without a license", I say. I have a job, a schedule I need to keep, people who are depending on me to be responsible.

I didn't pick you up until Thanksgiving morning.

On the way home you agreed to put the car away for the winter.  Actually, you never drove again after this.

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The stay at the Super 8 was actually like a little vacation, quite enjoyable. They had free coffee and donuts in the lobby.

The house-keeping staff entertained you.  You could easily walk next door to the Happy Chef for meals.

Who would have thought getting arrested could be so fun?

Arrest as a route to hospitalization, 2010

I have a deadline and not enough time to do the work.

It is the day after Thanksgiving, 2010.
You have made the 180 mile trek to my house and we had a nice holiday dinner yesterday. You are still driving at this time, and seemingly baseline, even though we had the incompetence related/ scam  events in late 2009/early 2010.  Still, I have changed the locks on my doors.  You no longer have a key to my house -  I can't trust who you are interacting with, who might manipulate you, and what risks that would give me.

I don't even know what happened that day, how our conversation suddenly deteriorated. I can't remember the details this many years later as I write this story.  However, I remember that its as though you had a 2nd sense that I didn't have time to get into a hassle with you. And, you were looking for a fight.

We have been remodeling a condo for you nearby.  You have the key to the new place, your future home.  You are partly moved in there, in fact.
I don't have time to waste on a fight, especially not today.
I suggest that you should leave my house now,  go back to your own place.
But you refuse.  You continue to want to fight.
I ask you to leave, but you refuse, again and again.

Eventually, I call the police.  It isn't the first time I have called the authorities about you.  But it is the first time I have called the police in this location, my own home.

Soon they arrive, 2 officers, a man and a woman, in a squad car.
You tell them your complaint about me, the details which I can't remember anymore.  Actually, I believe the complaint was that you had supported me through college and graduate education.
You now feel I need to pay you back , 25 years after the fact.   Or, it was because you don't think that I repaid the loan on a piano I bought in 1980 (I think I did).    I know you want the money to continue your delusional interactions with the scammers.  It is hurtful to hear you harbor and express these negative feelings about me, related to events of my childhood.

I tell them that I had asked you to leave and that you refused.  You continue to refuse.
The officers are  respectful of the fact that I had asked you to go and you continue to not take it seriously.  You continue to refuse to leave.  Eventually they arrest  you.  They ask me what to do with you and I recommend theytake you to the hospital, to the hospital where I know there is psychiatry intake through the emergency room.

I sadly watch out the window.
I see my elderly father, between 2 police officers, walking to the police car. They place you inside the car, and they drive away.

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A while later the emergency room doctor calls me.  She volunteers, "my mother has dementia too".
What a comfort those words were to me, that someone understood.

They keep you a few hours, but they don't have enough to hold you.  Eventually they call me to come and get you.

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You are sitting in an exam room, in the Emergency room, unconcerned, as if you didn't just get escorted to the hospital by the police.

I help you check out, which includes a referral for outpatient psychiatry follow up.

 We drive home in silence.  As we get closer to my house, where your car is parked, I think to myself that I can't let you back in the house or the same thing is going to start up again.  Its not really over.
I don't have time for this -- I have a deadline related to work, I really need to get back to work, and I can't afford more time to fight with you over nonsense.
How am I going to prevent the same thing  from happening inside my house again?
I pull up in front of the house, and I tell you that I am going to drop you off, while I pull around to the back (the story doesn't even make sense to me today as I write this, I can't remember how I came up with a story to get you out of the car, thinking that things were normal).
I drive to the back , enter the back of the house, but I don't open  the front door, and I don't let you back in.
You have your car keys, and a new condo to stay in , only a mile away.  Its not like I am abandoning you on the street.

I can still remember how you POUNDED on the door, in a rage, once you realized I had tricked you ...... yes, it would have happened again had I let you back in.

But, eventually you go back home to your own place, and the event ends, never to recur.

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Its hard to believe today, in 2015, that such terrible things happened back then in 2010.  But it was all part of the process.

As we moved forward, as your mind got less clear, as you stepped lower in your brain functional abilities, we passed through phases.
At some point normal barriers and social restraints were lost.
Arrest is probably not an uncommon route to hospitalization for those in similar situations.  Unfortunately, the system didn't easily accommodate to hold you there, or more importantly, to fix you.  I now believe that it was impossible to fix you then.  You were normal enough to be out there freely living in the world, and you were abnormal enough to get into lots of trouble.
Luckily, today the crazy mean and violent days seem to be gone forever, as you are now too forgetful to hold grudges, and you are too frail to be a physical threat.