My mother is great and while I'm not looking forward to her aging more, she's reasonably spry now, my grandmother stayed spry until her late 80's and I'm optimistic that we'll work it out.
And then there is my father-in-law. No money, no plan, divorced from my MIL, horrid relationships with his six children and a family tendency to ignore problems or gossip about them without any action being done. (My husband is not immune from this.) I am reasonably sure that everyone who is NOT my husband in his family just expects I will deal with the process of him aging and fill out the Medicaid forms and do all of the things. I will not. I *refuse* to expend the mental load when there are SIX ADULTS who could do so. Before I had a ND kid, before COVID, before the Trump years, I probably would have done it, like the good little overachieving oldest daughter I am. Now, they can stuff it.
I will come back for a longer comment later, but I need to immediately share that the last time I tried to have this conversation with my 78 year old mother (after one of her many falls), she told me: FUCK OFF AND NEVER MENTION THIS AGAIN. Good times.
Watching my parents age - and especially my mom's decline - I've made a real effort to be nicer (at least on the outside), so people will like me enough to want to help me. 😇
We are in the middle of this right now with my MIL. We have POA and are moving her into a residential facility very close to us, from her home about 4 hours away. She is very belligerent and opposed to the choice, but also requires someone to drive up and manage her bills every month, log back into Netflix if the TV somehow gets logged out, etc etc etc, and we work insanely busy jobs plus have four kids, so, you know.
We have chosen a facility that is outrageously expensive but also honestly great. It has various tiers of assistance (and cost) from “basically doesn’t need any help with ADLs” all the way up to a totally locked-down separate memory-care section, so hopefully she only has to make this big upheaval transition once. The cost is absolutely shocking, but we are using her and her long-deceased husband’s savings to pay for it and easily have about 10 years’ worth covered by that, so we are trying to just not think about that part. My thinking is that there are absolutely no “cheap” options when it comes to this kind of thing, so all you can do is find a place that is worth what it costs, which I feel we’ve done.
It helped us feel better about essentially forcing this move on her, to talk to someone who really went through it from both sides. I had a conversation with a woman who had really dove into being her father’s caregiver; like she promised her dying mother that she would never put her father into a facility. She quit her job and moved him into her home and was his sole, full-time caregiver for two or three years, diapers and all. Then he fell one day and had to go into a rehab facility to heal, and he was there for about 2 months and she realized that in those two months, his world had gotten SO MUCH BIGGER than it had been for a long time. Even though he was relatively confined due to his injury. It turned out that being his caregiver meant that all too often, she was his EVERYTHING, and that’s a very small world for not just her, but for him. She decided to keep him in the non-rehab part of the facility, and she said that it transformed his final years. He had friends, he had enemies, he saw movies and then told her about them, he played card games, he watched TV with other people instead of just alone; he lived in a community, with all that entails. And she realized that she finally got to be his daughter again, which she had not fully understood she had kind of stopped being when she became his caregiver. She told me she cherishes the memory of those final years where it was, once again, daddy and daughter, instead of the fraught, entwined web of roles they played for each other in the years where she had to be everything except his child.
So I accept and make space for my MIL’s feelings, and her complaints, and her anxieties. But I also look forward to both the obvious advantages (me being able to just swing by and pick her up on the way to soccer games, school events, ice cream outings; us being able to come to her place for a weekly dinner in the onsite restaurant – her being able to “host us” again; etc) and the less obvious changes I know will come (her seeing actual real people on a daily basis again – right now she wants to stay put because “her friends are there,” but they are all in facilities or otherwise an hour away living with family and she doesn’t drive anymore, so they only actually talk on the phone; her having a weekly and daily structure again; etc).
The actual move is a different story. Our plan is to move only the absolute essentials down with her (they get to fully furnish their apartments, so we will bring her bed, her favorite recliner, her small desk, wall shelves for tchotchkes, etc). Then spend most of our weekends this summer driving up and sorting through everything left behind to prep her apartment for sale, but not getting rid of everything until end of summer - just in case there's something she realizes she misses that we can find a way to work into her new home. Then we will give away the better stuff to distant family in the area and donate whatever large items they don't want, throw away the rest. Then sell the apartment. It is shaping up to be a hard few months (exacerbated by the fact that we are moving my BIL, who has developmental disabilities, into a separate care facility at the same time) but it will be a relief to be living in the aftermath of all this hell we are currently swimming through.
I am on neighborhood listserv with a subgroup for people with aging parents, and it was really clarifying to learn that 90% of people have to be confronted with a crisis before acting on this stuff. Ten percent of people (my in laws) will be incredibly organized and make their wishes clear and have everything labeled in nice color coded files, etc. But most other people (including my own parents) will be kinda sorta maybe dealing with this, but not really. And trusting that someone (hello to my fellow oldest daughters) will make it work out. I quote my father, who is at increased risk of stroke because of heart issues and family history after I discovered that he had let his long term care insurance lapse. "What if you have a big stroke like Aunt Sue?" "Well, hopefully it will just finish me off." I have tried to gently but firmly frame this as a kindness for his children: lay it out for us so we aren't faced with chaos in the inevitable crisis. And I also have done the "Gee, it was so awful what happened to XX friend, let's do Y so we don't end up in that situation." Baby steps. It's still going to be me, I know. My little brothers are ... little brothers. But just trying to lighten my future burden.
At Mother's Day lunch my 94 year old grandmother made sure to tell me (twice) that the baskets laying around are special/fancy/desirable. Which is fine, but also. . . 🤷🏻♀️🧺
To her credit, this same grandmother brought wrapped 'presents' to another party a few years back. My aunt opened one, "Mom, I gave this to YOU x years ago."
"I know. I'm downsizing. Clearing out for you all." 😉
So, so true, and so, so frustrating. My parents have done a great job planning for AFTER -- grave stones in place, trust established, funeral plans in a binder, funeral programs PRINTED OFF already. But between now and then? Nope. Which is * particularly frustrating b/c my mom was a nurse & director of nursing of a nursing home; she knows this stuff! Me and 2 of on SILs are in healthcare; we know the reality and we all (my siblings & in-laws) have tried multiple times to get them to think thru plans before a crisis hits. But nope. Here we are.
My current plan is that I'm going to do all of my own end-of-life planning stuff (I'm 40) and never shut up about it until maybe my parents get the hint and/or feel guilty about it. Because lord knows that neither aggressive hinting nor blunt conversation has helped.
I was just having this conversation with my husband this week. My parents are in their 70s and in overall very good health and also have a whole plan and have made their wants clear. They also have a lot of money (if they need to hire help), long term care insurance, and live in an apartment where they can age in place. My in laws are more than a decade younger, but are in much worse physical shape and their house is a death trap. There at 15 stairs just to get into the house, and the stairs in the house are so steep that I, a non-elderly person in excellent physical health, fears them. There is no way they can age in place in that house, but none of their seven children have ever talked to them about it because... I don't know why, except that their mom still does everything for 5/7 of them and so the idea that they would be the adults is foreign. I already told my husband that there is no scenario in which his mother could live with us, I would literally move out first, so I hope somebody makes some sort of plan because it's not gonna be me.
Answer is to have friends like Claire who send you hand-crafted bourbon from your own town via special delivery so you can sob, in gratitude, on the floor of your bedroom while denying to your Elder there is any more bourbon in the house.
This is all so so hard and stressful. My suggestion is for US, to try to prevent some of the pain for our families. Write yourself a letter now and give it to the most trustworthy younger person in your life who is likely to be around when it’s time for YOU to get help. The gist of the letter is: “If you are reading this and ___x___ is telling you you need help, LISTEN TO THEM. They are not trying to scam you or lie to you. You trust this person and they are helping you.” It may or may not work when the time comes! But it’s worth a shot.
My mother had to take her mother to court to have her declared incompetent to handle her affairs. Mom lived in Texas, grandma in Virginia. Luckily, Grandma regularly went to a Greek restaurant, so they knew her and began to take steps like making sure they took her to her taxi, told them where to take her, and let the driver know they were keeping tabs. When the dementia clearly became dementia, they managed to let my mom know somehow. Mom had to have a lawyer as co-guardian because she lived outside of Virginia. That became a hilarious-after-the-fact discussion of the fact that Grandma had enough money for a live-in help, but my mom had to tell the lawyer that grandma would never accept another woman in her house. Lawyer of course insisted that only a woman could care for Grandma. Grandma managed to drive away multiple female caretakers. Mom became a frequent flyer. Finally they found a male caregiver the lawyer could accept (apparently his being gay made it ok) and he took great care of her until she broke a wrist. Grandma ended up in the hospital. Mom warned hospital not to put Grandma near a door. They put Grandma near a door and caught her halfway across the parking lot. Hellooo! The woman has dementia! Listen to the people who know her! Grandma deteriorated and never made it home. She was in a nursing home for a short while.
Mom has developed memory loss. My brother and I live far away from where she was living in the house we grew up in. Luckily, neighbors noticed her difficulties and called us. (Notice a pattern? It is imperative that other people are checking on things if you live far away.) Brother, who at least lives in the same state, got her into an apartment in a senior living facility where he lives. She kind of thought it was temporary when she moved but then I showed up to help clear out the house. She had tried to work on that before my brother moved her, but it was too much. With me helping, we cleared the house and she has accepted the permanence. She balked more at not being able to drive but the advantage to moving her to a new city is she understands it would be hard to drive there and has come to accept that she no longer drives. They have toured memory care facilities and she's on a waiting list. So much easier to deal with than her mother! We are lucky! We also have a good relationship with Mom whereas Mom had a difficult relationship with her mother.
My paternal grandma wouldn't give up driving until my uncle took the battery out of her car to stop her. She was angry for quite a while but came to agree it was the best thing. It is so hard in the US to give up driving because we have such crap public transportation and just in general public support of anything.
Yeah, still no good answers. There's no easy way through this. There's all the stuff we should do & can do & then there's the fact that our parents have minds of their own (even if they're declining). I've got an 87 going on 88 yr old mother w limited & declining mobility and 88 going on 89 yr old father w declining cognition living in a split level home we all know they should have moved out of years ago. (Which my mom now admits) But lay on top of that a 50 yrs dysfunctional and Catholic marriage &...here we are. As someone who recently "finished" raising 4 children, I'm struck by how similar this is to parenting teens: We *see what's likely to happen, we advise against it, offer options, and they...do what they do. We just have to live w it & deal w what's next. I'm trying to have some peace w that -- do what you can; let the rest fall where it may -- but I'm also trying to advocate safer options. (Actual sentence my mother said to me yesterday: "The sooner I die, the better. All we have to look forward to now is more decline.")
I moved during the pandemic to be closer to my parents when my sister and I started to realize that they were going to need more help but moving them to be near her wasn't a great option. So far they have each had a joint replaced, requiring some higher intensity care for short periods of time, but are otherwise still independent, although I'm starting to see memory issues with my mom. We are all realizing that they should have already moved out of their too-big house with too much yard, but at least they are talking about it. Current thought is to build a small place in my backyard, so they will be nearby but not IN our space, it can be built to meet their needs, and I don't have to move my kids AGAIN to support my parents the way they will need. So all this is timely, and daunting, and getting from here to there feels like quite a slog, but this little internet community makes me feel less alone. Any tips as I face down possible memory care issues, or for the transition to moving them to my space (my yard, if not my house!) after so many years of independence (theirs and mine!) are welcome!!
I know at least one witch whose mom lives in a granny flat next door and it's been such a good relationship with her and the grandkids. I hope you can find some good resources. My friend, a witch, facilitates the caregiving group at their Chicago church--I don't know if you have to be a parishioner to attend but I hope a group like this can give some advice
It's so funny that you posted this, as my brother airtagged my mother this morning because she either accidentally turns off her phone tracking or forgets it at home. The final straw was when she decided to go to CVS with her friend but neglected to tell him which one, so he had to go to the four CVS stores to find her.
My parents and in-laws are aged 82-95. We are very lucky that they are relatively healthy. My parents live the majority of the year in the Motherland, a nice 24 hours of travel and $2k away. The advantage is that their retirement money goes a very long way; they can't spend the money they get every month. However, one day they will be too old to travel, and then what? QUALITY assisted living is now $6K A MONTH/person (Assisted Living is the new daycare). Who can afford that? We have 10 years until we are empty nesters, so going SAHO(ffspring) is not an option. My parents, especially my father, are maddeningly mellow about it. It will all work out is their mantra these days. Sure it will (we're all going to die anyway), but that doesn't mean the process will not be painful.
My parents grew up in extreme poverty, so in their eyes, anything above that is better. My dad always had the attitude that if you had food in your belly, a roof over your head, and a steady income, nothing else was a real problem (in other words, DENIAL). My mother is just more philosophical and faith-filled; prayer will get you through. My mom is a retired nurse, so she is a bit more realistic than my dad and knows her limits. She serves as the buffer for my dad, so that helps. Admittedly, my brother might have a different take, as my parents stay with him for the majority when they are in the US, so he bears the brunt of their antics. All-in-all, they have survived thus far, and would say it was a good life, so they're just riding the wave to the end.
this is a good read for me now, trying to get my parents to book their trip to visit meeeeee while they fiddle with travel insurance bc both have had heart issues in past 12 months. I keep sending them IG accounts of fit-ass elderly weightlifters, but they're not getting proactive about tending to their skeletons
My mother is great and while I'm not looking forward to her aging more, she's reasonably spry now, my grandmother stayed spry until her late 80's and I'm optimistic that we'll work it out.
And then there is my father-in-law. No money, no plan, divorced from my MIL, horrid relationships with his six children and a family tendency to ignore problems or gossip about them without any action being done. (My husband is not immune from this.) I am reasonably sure that everyone who is NOT my husband in his family just expects I will deal with the process of him aging and fill out the Medicaid forms and do all of the things. I will not. I *refuse* to expend the mental load when there are SIX ADULTS who could do so. Before I had a ND kid, before COVID, before the Trump years, I probably would have done it, like the good little overachieving oldest daughter I am. Now, they can stuff it.
Because you probably don't hear this enough, I am very proud of you.
Hear hear Shylo! I'm glad you have these boundaries Kate
I will come back for a longer comment later, but I need to immediately share that the last time I tried to have this conversation with my 78 year old mother (after one of her many falls), she told me: FUCK OFF AND NEVER MENTION THIS AGAIN. Good times.
i feel like if someone tried to take care of me i'd be so nice to them
Watching my parents age - and especially my mom's decline - I've made a real effort to be nicer (at least on the outside), so people will like me enough to want to help me. 😇
We are in the middle of this right now with my MIL. We have POA and are moving her into a residential facility very close to us, from her home about 4 hours away. She is very belligerent and opposed to the choice, but also requires someone to drive up and manage her bills every month, log back into Netflix if the TV somehow gets logged out, etc etc etc, and we work insanely busy jobs plus have four kids, so, you know.
We have chosen a facility that is outrageously expensive but also honestly great. It has various tiers of assistance (and cost) from “basically doesn’t need any help with ADLs” all the way up to a totally locked-down separate memory-care section, so hopefully she only has to make this big upheaval transition once. The cost is absolutely shocking, but we are using her and her long-deceased husband’s savings to pay for it and easily have about 10 years’ worth covered by that, so we are trying to just not think about that part. My thinking is that there are absolutely no “cheap” options when it comes to this kind of thing, so all you can do is find a place that is worth what it costs, which I feel we’ve done.
It helped us feel better about essentially forcing this move on her, to talk to someone who really went through it from both sides. I had a conversation with a woman who had really dove into being her father’s caregiver; like she promised her dying mother that she would never put her father into a facility. She quit her job and moved him into her home and was his sole, full-time caregiver for two or three years, diapers and all. Then he fell one day and had to go into a rehab facility to heal, and he was there for about 2 months and she realized that in those two months, his world had gotten SO MUCH BIGGER than it had been for a long time. Even though he was relatively confined due to his injury. It turned out that being his caregiver meant that all too often, she was his EVERYTHING, and that’s a very small world for not just her, but for him. She decided to keep him in the non-rehab part of the facility, and she said that it transformed his final years. He had friends, he had enemies, he saw movies and then told her about them, he played card games, he watched TV with other people instead of just alone; he lived in a community, with all that entails. And she realized that she finally got to be his daughter again, which she had not fully understood she had kind of stopped being when she became his caregiver. She told me she cherishes the memory of those final years where it was, once again, daddy and daughter, instead of the fraught, entwined web of roles they played for each other in the years where she had to be everything except his child.
So I accept and make space for my MIL’s feelings, and her complaints, and her anxieties. But I also look forward to both the obvious advantages (me being able to just swing by and pick her up on the way to soccer games, school events, ice cream outings; us being able to come to her place for a weekly dinner in the onsite restaurant – her being able to “host us” again; etc) and the less obvious changes I know will come (her seeing actual real people on a daily basis again – right now she wants to stay put because “her friends are there,” but they are all in facilities or otherwise an hour away living with family and she doesn’t drive anymore, so they only actually talk on the phone; her having a weekly and daily structure again; etc).
that's such an important perspective about the caregiver/receiver relationship meaning a much narrower world if you all try to do it yourself.
The actual move is a different story. Our plan is to move only the absolute essentials down with her (they get to fully furnish their apartments, so we will bring her bed, her favorite recliner, her small desk, wall shelves for tchotchkes, etc). Then spend most of our weekends this summer driving up and sorting through everything left behind to prep her apartment for sale, but not getting rid of everything until end of summer - just in case there's something she realizes she misses that we can find a way to work into her new home. Then we will give away the better stuff to distant family in the area and donate whatever large items they don't want, throw away the rest. Then sell the apartment. It is shaping up to be a hard few months (exacerbated by the fact that we are moving my BIL, who has developmental disabilities, into a separate care facility at the same time) but it will be a relief to be living in the aftermath of all this hell we are currently swimming through.
I am on neighborhood listserv with a subgroup for people with aging parents, and it was really clarifying to learn that 90% of people have to be confronted with a crisis before acting on this stuff. Ten percent of people (my in laws) will be incredibly organized and make their wishes clear and have everything labeled in nice color coded files, etc. But most other people (including my own parents) will be kinda sorta maybe dealing with this, but not really. And trusting that someone (hello to my fellow oldest daughters) will make it work out. I quote my father, who is at increased risk of stroke because of heart issues and family history after I discovered that he had let his long term care insurance lapse. "What if you have a big stroke like Aunt Sue?" "Well, hopefully it will just finish me off." I have tried to gently but firmly frame this as a kindness for his children: lay it out for us so we aren't faced with chaos in the inevitable crisis. And I also have done the "Gee, it was so awful what happened to XX friend, let's do Y so we don't end up in that situation." Baby steps. It's still going to be me, I know. My little brothers are ... little brothers. But just trying to lighten my future burden.
And please, parents, divest your precious collections of whatever weird object that you've been fixated on for 40 years. We do not want them.
At Mother's Day lunch my 94 year old grandmother made sure to tell me (twice) that the baskets laying around are special/fancy/desirable. Which is fine, but also. . . 🤷🏻♀️🧺
To her credit, this same grandmother brought wrapped 'presents' to another party a few years back. My aunt opened one, "Mom, I gave this to YOU x years ago."
"I know. I'm downsizing. Clearing out for you all." 😉
So, so true, and so, so frustrating. My parents have done a great job planning for AFTER -- grave stones in place, trust established, funeral plans in a binder, funeral programs PRINTED OFF already. But between now and then? Nope. Which is * particularly frustrating b/c my mom was a nurse & director of nursing of a nursing home; she knows this stuff! Me and 2 of on SILs are in healthcare; we know the reality and we all (my siblings & in-laws) have tried multiple times to get them to think thru plans before a crisis hits. But nope. Here we are.
brothers...
My current plan is that I'm going to do all of my own end-of-life planning stuff (I'm 40) and never shut up about it until maybe my parents get the hint and/or feel guilty about it. Because lord knows that neither aggressive hinting nor blunt conversation has helped.
it would be funny to see an adult kid passive aggressively move into senior living just to make a point to their parents.
My husband and I just discussed this option the other day!
I might have to try that next! We'll see how it goes with getting a will, PoAs, etc!
I was just having this conversation with my husband this week. My parents are in their 70s and in overall very good health and also have a whole plan and have made their wants clear. They also have a lot of money (if they need to hire help), long term care insurance, and live in an apartment where they can age in place. My in laws are more than a decade younger, but are in much worse physical shape and their house is a death trap. There at 15 stairs just to get into the house, and the stairs in the house are so steep that I, a non-elderly person in excellent physical health, fears them. There is no way they can age in place in that house, but none of their seven children have ever talked to them about it because... I don't know why, except that their mom still does everything for 5/7 of them and so the idea that they would be the adults is foreign. I already told my husband that there is no scenario in which his mother could live with us, I would literally move out first, so I hope somebody makes some sort of plan because it's not gonna be me.
Amen
Answer is to have friends like Claire who send you hand-crafted bourbon from your own town via special delivery so you can sob, in gratitude, on the floor of your bedroom while denying to your Elder there is any more bourbon in the house.
<3
This is all so so hard and stressful. My suggestion is for US, to try to prevent some of the pain for our families. Write yourself a letter now and give it to the most trustworthy younger person in your life who is likely to be around when it’s time for YOU to get help. The gist of the letter is: “If you are reading this and ___x___ is telling you you need help, LISTEN TO THEM. They are not trying to scam you or lie to you. You trust this person and they are helping you.” It may or may not work when the time comes! But it’s worth a shot.
that's great advice
Jade from ANTM might actually be a boomer, girl lied so much about her age.
Just wanted to say thank you for this topic and such frank advice…we’re facing these issues with my (stubborn/strong) MIL and it’s a doozy.
My mother had to take her mother to court to have her declared incompetent to handle her affairs. Mom lived in Texas, grandma in Virginia. Luckily, Grandma regularly went to a Greek restaurant, so they knew her and began to take steps like making sure they took her to her taxi, told them where to take her, and let the driver know they were keeping tabs. When the dementia clearly became dementia, they managed to let my mom know somehow. Mom had to have a lawyer as co-guardian because she lived outside of Virginia. That became a hilarious-after-the-fact discussion of the fact that Grandma had enough money for a live-in help, but my mom had to tell the lawyer that grandma would never accept another woman in her house. Lawyer of course insisted that only a woman could care for Grandma. Grandma managed to drive away multiple female caretakers. Mom became a frequent flyer. Finally they found a male caregiver the lawyer could accept (apparently his being gay made it ok) and he took great care of her until she broke a wrist. Grandma ended up in the hospital. Mom warned hospital not to put Grandma near a door. They put Grandma near a door and caught her halfway across the parking lot. Hellooo! The woman has dementia! Listen to the people who know her! Grandma deteriorated and never made it home. She was in a nursing home for a short while.
Mom has developed memory loss. My brother and I live far away from where she was living in the house we grew up in. Luckily, neighbors noticed her difficulties and called us. (Notice a pattern? It is imperative that other people are checking on things if you live far away.) Brother, who at least lives in the same state, got her into an apartment in a senior living facility where he lives. She kind of thought it was temporary when she moved but then I showed up to help clear out the house. She had tried to work on that before my brother moved her, but it was too much. With me helping, we cleared the house and she has accepted the permanence. She balked more at not being able to drive but the advantage to moving her to a new city is she understands it would be hard to drive there and has come to accept that she no longer drives. They have toured memory care facilities and she's on a waiting list. So much easier to deal with than her mother! We are lucky! We also have a good relationship with Mom whereas Mom had a difficult relationship with her mother.
My paternal grandma wouldn't give up driving until my uncle took the battery out of her car to stop her. She was angry for quite a while but came to agree it was the best thing. It is so hard in the US to give up driving because we have such crap public transportation and just in general public support of anything.
Yeah, still no good answers. There's no easy way through this. There's all the stuff we should do & can do & then there's the fact that our parents have minds of their own (even if they're declining). I've got an 87 going on 88 yr old mother w limited & declining mobility and 88 going on 89 yr old father w declining cognition living in a split level home we all know they should have moved out of years ago. (Which my mom now admits) But lay on top of that a 50 yrs dysfunctional and Catholic marriage &...here we are. As someone who recently "finished" raising 4 children, I'm struck by how similar this is to parenting teens: We *see what's likely to happen, we advise against it, offer options, and they...do what they do. We just have to live w it & deal w what's next. I'm trying to have some peace w that -- do what you can; let the rest fall where it may -- but I'm also trying to advocate safer options. (Actual sentence my mother said to me yesterday: "The sooner I die, the better. All we have to look forward to now is more decline.")
yep! Something very helpful my therapist told me is "It sucks and there's nothing you can really do." That was what I needed to hear.
I don’t want to get into specifics on a public post but I’m reading everything and taking notes.
I moved during the pandemic to be closer to my parents when my sister and I started to realize that they were going to need more help but moving them to be near her wasn't a great option. So far they have each had a joint replaced, requiring some higher intensity care for short periods of time, but are otherwise still independent, although I'm starting to see memory issues with my mom. We are all realizing that they should have already moved out of their too-big house with too much yard, but at least they are talking about it. Current thought is to build a small place in my backyard, so they will be nearby but not IN our space, it can be built to meet their needs, and I don't have to move my kids AGAIN to support my parents the way they will need. So all this is timely, and daunting, and getting from here to there feels like quite a slog, but this little internet community makes me feel less alone. Any tips as I face down possible memory care issues, or for the transition to moving them to my space (my yard, if not my house!) after so many years of independence (theirs and mine!) are welcome!!
I know at least one witch whose mom lives in a granny flat next door and it's been such a good relationship with her and the grandkids. I hope you can find some good resources. My friend, a witch, facilitates the caregiving group at their Chicago church--I don't know if you have to be a parishioner to attend but I hope a group like this can give some advice
https://allsaintschicago.org/event-calendar/list/page/2/
It's so funny that you posted this, as my brother airtagged my mother this morning because she either accidentally turns off her phone tracking or forgets it at home. The final straw was when she decided to go to CVS with her friend but neglected to tell him which one, so he had to go to the four CVS stores to find her.
My parents and in-laws are aged 82-95. We are very lucky that they are relatively healthy. My parents live the majority of the year in the Motherland, a nice 24 hours of travel and $2k away. The advantage is that their retirement money goes a very long way; they can't spend the money they get every month. However, one day they will be too old to travel, and then what? QUALITY assisted living is now $6K A MONTH/person (Assisted Living is the new daycare). Who can afford that? We have 10 years until we are empty nesters, so going SAHO(ffspring) is not an option. My parents, especially my father, are maddeningly mellow about it. It will all work out is their mantra these days. Sure it will (we're all going to die anyway), but that doesn't mean the process will not be painful.
why are they so mellow? it's really annoying. and that CVS thing sounds maddening--I think airtagging is genius.
My parents grew up in extreme poverty, so in their eyes, anything above that is better. My dad always had the attitude that if you had food in your belly, a roof over your head, and a steady income, nothing else was a real problem (in other words, DENIAL). My mother is just more philosophical and faith-filled; prayer will get you through. My mom is a retired nurse, so she is a bit more realistic than my dad and knows her limits. She serves as the buffer for my dad, so that helps. Admittedly, my brother might have a different take, as my parents stay with him for the majority when they are in the US, so he bears the brunt of their antics. All-in-all, they have survived thus far, and would say it was a good life, so they're just riding the wave to the end.
this is a good read for me now, trying to get my parents to book their trip to visit meeeeee while they fiddle with travel insurance bc both have had heart issues in past 12 months. I keep sending them IG accounts of fit-ass elderly weightlifters, but they're not getting proactive about tending to their skeletons
god, worrying about them from half a world away -- I don't envy you Janet!