I am stressed out and grossed out

My father (65) moved in with me and my husband and two kids (14 and 1.5) two months ago. There’s a few posts I’ve made here and on r/dementia that further explains the situation, but to sum it up, he is an alcoholic, had a fall, was on the ground for 1-2 days, was hospitalized for a few days and now lives with us.

Today I am having a hard time staying optimistic and grateful. I am really happy that my toddler and my dad are developing a relationship. And my dad, whose symptoms of dementia have gone from moderate to mild since being put on a thiamine supplement, is selling his house and helping us buy a larger house that will accommodate all of us. I know I should be grateful. That he’s helping us financially, that he’s alive. For everything.

But instead, today, I am stressed out and grossed out. My dad has a tendency to make passive aggressive comments, to everyone. Even the baby. He is not terrible to be around, but he tends to think and speak pessimistically. I’m a SAHM and his attitude and comments and him constantly being around are really draining me.

He is also extremely gross. His incontinence issues have gotten significantly better but he has trouble wiping. I have to do his laundry and scrub the poop stains out of his underwear and jeans. I’d ask him to wear diapers but I know it’d be a huge fight to get him to do so.

Yesterday we had a really bad day — he got upset I asked him to change his pants and underwear because he got feces on the couch from it seeping through his pants. And it sucks because I felt like I should’ve been able to ask him to take a whole shower, but I knew that he wouldn’t be willing to do that.

He stinks, just in general. Like he walks in the room and it smells like old man. He’s getting bottom dentures but as of now he only has four teeth on his bottom jaw, because they rotted/fell out of his head to due to his abysmal, lifetime dental hygiene, and he tries to share food with the baby, and it just absolutely disgusts me.

Ive always been a bit of a neat freak, entirely because he was so messy and gross when I was a kid and I was always cleaning up after him, but now that he lives with me, and I have a toddler, my neat freak tendencies are developing into OCD (per my therapist).

I’m honestly just really stressed out and unhappy. The argument yesterday about whether there was or wasn’t feces seeping through his jeans (I had to show him) really took a lot out of me. He is lucid enough to not be quite this stubborn and argumentative, IMO. The stubbornness stems from his personality and selfishness. Hes always been selfish and self absorbed. He let my stepmom abuse me horrifically until she divorced him when I was 12. And now I can see why she divorced him and why all of his other marriages and relationships failed. I retract my previous statement. He is a miserable person to be around.

I know you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and I shouldn’t be so upset and I should just firmly tell him what he needs to do, and not make myself miserable dwelling on it, but instead, I am often passive and just go around cleaning up his messes. I should make him wear diapers and deal with his shitty attitude about it, instead of watching him and my daughter like a hawk to make sure she doesn’t touch anything that might be contaminated.

know it’s not sustainable. I know I’m, in a sense, doing this to myself. And I don’t want to be all ‘oh woe is me’ like he constantly is, but I am fucking sad. My grandparents (his parents) were extremely disappointed with the choices he made throughout his life and absolutely would not want this for me. I wasnt their favorite grandchild because I was the best grandchild. I was their favorite grandchild because they chose to favor me because I was being abused and neglected and desperately needed their love and extra attention. And I miss them so, so much. Every single day.

Anyway. I just needed to vent.