Parents of Dinos

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I am assuming a lot of dinos have elderly parents.
Since the asperger's is new to me and the medical community had no such word when I was growing up, I am trying to figure out a few things.

My father died last year and in examining my parents and 2 grandparent behaviors I think it was my father who showed the most signs of asperger.

He did have friends, was whitty and I think he could look you in the eye (I could never look him in the eyes so I am not sure about that one). He had 160 IQ and a phd in education. His family was most important to him.

He was extremely controling of all situations. He was O/C and would get depressed. His obsessions, his rules, his desires, and his point of view were the only things in life that mattered. I fought back as hard as I could and my two brothers did not.

When he died at 85 I did not cry, I did not care, and was rather glad.

The last 5 years of his life he put everyone, especially my mom, through hell. He became extremely rude, demanding, angry and unreasonable. Some things he could remember, some he could not. He did not want anyone in the house except his friends. He would not believe his thought processes had become muddy and would not waiver from them.

We all assumed this was due to a form of dementia.
I am now wondering if part of this was due to asperger's.

In old age, does one eventually let go of the controls we carefully build around ourselves? Do we just get tired of playing the social game and just let the 'me' aspects of our persona take over?

I suspect a combination of dementia and asperger's and am not sure if I am off base or not.

Sufi, your father sounds much like mine. He was very bright and educated, but he was also stern and almost non-human in his lack of kindness and empathy. He died 16 years ago and I can't say that I have that much emotion about his passing. In fact, my professional life has blossomed since he has died. I think that carrying around the burden of his judgement and expectations was a very negative aspect of my life. Now that he is gone, I've been freer to live my life.

Hi Sufi

Mine have gone to where ever it is they go. But yeah I think my Dad may well have been. It sure seems to show on that side of the family, which actually helped convince me I have it. They were going with a BiPolar DX and it just plain did not show in the family tree, but the over all traits of AS do. Good chance I have the BP as well, hard to know anymore. I think part of the hard part of what you're asking is, we're all so different, even my dad and I were different. I think that some of it is just due to the times and ways we were raised in and what else has come along for the ride.

See, I get this "but you make eye contact" all the time or did with my current doc, like if you can, you ain't. I can make eye contact, but don't ask me to think at the same time or my eyes will be on the floor or on the ceiling. It can be a learned behavior, I think about the conversation so much, even before it happens, it's like I have a script handy to read off or I've been through the same thing so many times the script is already in place. It's when the script no longer comes to my mind that I run into trouble, my coping skill has failed me.

But yeah I can now afford to let go of the social norms I had to play before. I'm in a position I can do that where before, when younger, I had to play the game. But to say I'm abusing them or being nasty about how I act, well I hope not and I do try to be aware of the few around me. However, I won't get on the treadmill again. I earned it not to, it was no gift.

No, I didn't cry either when my folks died. It's just how I react to most human deaths. Doesn't make me a bad person, I'm just wired different is all. But I will admit once in a while my voice gets all funny when talking about them to others. It isn't controlled either, like I said, it's just how I am. Now, ask me about the Vietnam Memorial and I'll start thinking about all that and before I know it I'll be balling my eyes out. Walking contradiction sometimes.

my grandmother seemed to have severe AS. OCD issues, black and whit thinking, no empathy, no tact (in fact, unbelievably blunt), expected everyone to agree with her and cater to her. No friends, little contact with family members, high IQ (she taught herself english by reading american books she could get during WWII in germany), ungrateful, completive, interest in words (HUGE vocabulary, scrabble was scarry), and insane memory for facts, particularly about religion. if it didn't have something to do with her religion, she dint care no matter how important something was to one of her children or grandchildren. but strangely, the last few months before she died, she got nice, said thank you, seemed to appreciate people and what they did for her. she was less ridigid and difficult, though still a far cry from NT. maybe it was the meds. i dunno. sad thing is, no one really cared when she died. my mom was shopping and met me for a baseball game that day. we barely gave it a second thought. I felt a little bad about not caring, cause its sad when no one cares that you die. My cousins and aunt didn't seem to care either. the same was when my grandpa died no one cared there either. i wont eve try to go into his issues. i'd probably need mor space than one post would allow.