Esme53 Asked March 2015
My parents (90) are at home, no plan other than relying on their children for help, refusing to consider other options. What to do?
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My 90 year old parents live at home. They rely on their kids for help. Dad is basically being kept alive with drugs, and now has some dementia. Mom is in denial (a very old habit) and has dug her heels in about them staying at home so they can die there. She believes she is above asking for help, but their finances and contingency plans (or lack of them) show otherwise. We are burnt out and need help dealing with this ... anyone else been there? There's of course a lot more to this.
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I can't convince my parents that I am also a senior citizen, even flashing my Medicare card and AARP membership doesn't phase them :P
My mom is 96 and in a NH. We never would have believed that she would like it there. We had to back off and not be at her beckon call. Then, she fell and went to the hospital, where we stated that she was no longer able to live at home. It saved her life.
A perfect plan to me is one that a friend of mine does. His mother is a difficult woman. My friend works and is married with college kids. His mother has been living in an assisted living community for a few years. He visits with her several times a week, and takes her to church and out to eat on Sundays. She doesn't feel neglected and is well cared for. He was able to protect his family and self from the disruption to his home I know she would have caused. I think it is a very good model for elder care. The only bad thing is the cost of most AL communities. He was able to get her in one that runs about $2700 a month, though. This isn't bad, since all meals are provided. It would be out of the reach, unfortunately, for someone who only has SS.
One cousin gave up trying to maintain 3 single family homes: his own, his mother's and his mother-in-law's.... thus, he and his wife sold their dream home and moved into a retirement community. He's glad he had moved, his Mom lived to be 100 before passing on, and his mother-in-law is now 100.
For me, my therapist told me that since my parents refuse to move they need to take responsibility for their choice, which means to stop relying on their only child to help out. So, I started cutting back on things I use to do.... but I can't erase the guilt I feel whenever I say *no*.
I don't feel comfortable telling anyone else what to do, even if it's for their own welfare. I'm just trying to get comfortable with the idea of telling her what I'm willing and not willing to do. I'm making plans to move up North, and she can either find other help to stay in her home, or move to assisted living. Elderly parents have a way of blanking out all considerations other than what they want (or feel most comfortable with) and it's our natural tendency to try to accommodate them, especially when they're old and needy and pathetic. It's very hard to draw boundaries with them, but if you don't, you can end up giving up everything you want in life to take care of them, and resenting them bitterly for it. That's where I am now, but it's not where I want to stay.
Mom's standard argument is that HER Mom stayed in her house until she died and that everyone helped, so why shouldn't she be able to. And that it's her house and if she wants to stay, she should be able to.
In 200, my parents moved a few hours drive away from our neighborhood, to a retirement community. It's very nice--for healthy, active, retired people. For the very elderly and infirm though, it's not enough--it just wasn't designed to provide medical oversight, welfare oversight, and so on. But my mother refuses to leave. She has no social life, no nothing, aside from her caregiver who comes by for a few hours, 4 days a week. But she will not leave.
I feel like I'm learning from my parents' - well, I can't say it was a 'mistake' -- they just didn't know what they didn't know. They didn't consider that moving from a very large, crowded, overpopulated city to a smaller one would mean that, in 15 years, traffic woud increase to the point that it's extremely difficult, draining, and time consuming to make the drive. What was a relatively smooth 2.5 hour drive max in 2000 is now at LEAST 3 hours in stop-and-go traffic, usually more (and if it's raining, and on a weekend, it's absolutely horrendous). Gas has also gone up quite a bit, and they didn't think about that either. They didn't consider that keeping in touch with friends and family would fall on the shoulders of everyone else, since my father, and now my mother, no longer drive. And, I don't think they gave any thought to the possibility that I might move even farther away. Without realizing it, they put so much responsibility for their welfare on my shoulders. They did plan wisely in the financial department though, and I'm very grateful for that. But the day to day stuff, which keeps increasing, is too much.
To me, staying in the same house is holding onto the past and not seeing a future. If it were the old days when communities were slow to change and kids stayed close to home, it would make sense. This is not the case anymore. A big problem happens when the parents will not leave the house, so it becomes a burden on their children's shoulders. It is beyond me why so many parents would rather one of their children give up his/her life to come stay with them. Wouldn't it be better if they got rid of the albatross that is weighing them down? That house they won't leave.
I speak from first-hand experience. I was living in sunny TX in a retirement community. I told my parents I could get them an apartment in the same place. No, they didn't want to leave their house. You couldn't get them out of it with a shoe horn. Being born in a more mobile time, I don't understand attachment to a structure that is in a community of young people they don't know. It is just a building and not worth the sacrificing of life and offspring to maintain.
So I would tell people to get rid of that albatross of a house that is holding them down. And I would tell children to look for other options rather than giving up their own lives so the parents can keep their albatross. I have made my own decision already about my house. It is going on the market after my mother's death. Keeping it would be like nailing one of my feet to the floor.
Forgive the rambling, but it seems so relevant to what you're going through, Esme. I have a feeling it is long past time for your parents to leave that albatross on the beach and get on with the rest of their lives. It is keeping them chained to a past that isn't there anymore and creating a burden for them and you. Imagine how nice an apartment in a senior community would be for them.