A Conversation About Aging

One Story Among Many

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Hello. My name is Steven (or Steve) Benstead. I’m very new to this blogging game, so please forgive me any gaffs I may commit.’/’

Though I am not a man of wealth nor means, please allow me to introduce myself. I am a recent retiree, having worked at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg for over thirty years. While still working full-time, my stepfather, Taras Diachun who was then in his eighties, fell down the stairs of the house which he shared with his wife, my mother. This was in December 2018. He spent the next few months in Seven Oaks Hospital, but never recovered his ability to walk. The shock of the fall, I think, accelerated his nascent dementia, and he finally entered the Luther Home, a long-term care facility, the following April. The care he received there was top notch. My mother and I visited him everyday and did everything we could think of to make his stay as peasant as possible. But he was confined to a wheel chair, and as time went on we found he was staying in bed more and more often, sometimes all day. His dementia became worse and his health declined. He was often in pain, his appetite declined, and he was being sent to hospital more and more frequently to deal with health issues which were beyond the ability of the Home to deal with, until finally in January 2020 he passed away from heart failure. /./

By then I was working part time, and would pick up my mother at two in the afternoon to visit Taras in the Home. We received the news of his passing as we were about to leave, and were down at the Home a few minutes later, where we were allowed to sit with him. I think my mother was in a state of numbness, and after a while we left him, and turned to face the new reality of the days to come in which Taras’ absence would be most keenly felt. ‘/’

There was the funeral to take care of, of course, and friends and relatives to be notified, and I, as executor, had to look after all the things an executor has to look after. My mother, however, cannot remember making the funeral arrangements, nor the funeral itself. The shock of it all perhaps, but also the first obvious instance of her own road to forgetfulness. She is now 92, and she admits she often cannot remember in the afternoon what took place in the morning. ‘/’

But I am getting ahead of myself. More of that next time. ‘/’

Signing of for now, ‘/’

Steve ‘/’

“You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” A.A. Milne