AGING PARENTS

It's a ways yet for me -- my folks are in their sixties and in good health still. But my dad is starting to slow down a touch -- kinda good that he's retired, officially -- and more than once I've wondered a bit about what the not-so-far-away-now future will mean.

Certainly I salute your patience with this all -- I'm not sure how I would react.

The patience is key, but it's really hard to keep it up. Can other siblings/capable family members come to visit to spell you for a bit?

If by 'graying', you mean 'balding', then yes, to some extent I am such a one.

At the moment the brunt of the responsibility has fallen to an older sister who lives much closer to my 81 year old mother than myself or my other siblings. She takes on the 'dutiful child' role, while the rest of us come in and put in a burst of assistance whenever the tide of troubles rises above a certain level, so my sister doesn't burn out.

My father died two years ago. During his last year and during the year immediately following his death, I drove the 75 mile round trip to see the two of them (later, just my mother) very often. There was so much that needed tending to.

My father, too, suffered from severe short term memory loss toward the end of his life, reducing him to a small shadow of the man he had been - because he became literally unable to encompass any activity that could not be completed within the two minutes or so that he was able to form and hold a single thought. He, too, was inclined to minimize or dismiss the severity of his problems. I finally realized that he understood very well the extent of his diminished capacity, but facing it was too great a threat to his sense of worth and happiness. Denial was how he held depression at bay.

Now that he has passed on, my mother has grasped the nettle of losing her companion and mainstay of 57 years with surprising firmness. I spent 8 months visiting her almost weekly during that transition. It helped a lot, I think, to have family members to talk to and grieve with, and help her form plans and carry them out.

I wish both you and your mother the best, but, as you no doubt know in your bones, even the best possible outcomes available to you and her are still damned difficult to embrace. The cost of love can be pretty steep sometimes, and the bills fall due with increasing frequency at this time. Good luck.

I just moved all of my (paternal) grandfather's stuff in with his, uh, 'friend' because he couldn't afford his truck payment and townhome rent and medicines and everything else at once. And since he's still part of the family cosntruction business I spend much of my day ensuring that he isn't overworking (or just screwing things up - he gets frustrated easily that his muscles and joints don't work like they used to).

My grandmother (maternal) has Alzheimer's (early-mid stage), and drove me kind of nuts before it was full-blown. Neither of my uncles, none of my ten cousins and my brother don't do shit. Anything not handled by my parents falls directly to me. The extent of the agonies here (some her fault, some not, mostly involving my useless uncles and their brood) is too long to list.

With both I'm always on-call to fix something or help out or figure out why the TV isn't working or why this bill didn't get paid. I can't say no, even when I want to, and the occasional feeling of being put-upon hasn't helped my relationship with my grandmother. (And, theoretically, I'd like to move north when my finances are sorted and my degree is finished - but I can't knowing that I'd leave anyone in the lurch.)

Only 20 years 'til my parents are in their late-70s...

It's a tricky situation as for whatever reason, mostly a weird sort of shame or embarassment, she is loathe to talk about her problems with my Dad or myself, or anyone really, my sister whom she is very close to can sometimes get a little discussion about it.

It's terrible because she grieves for her feet as things worsen, quite slowly, though the condition may one day lead to her being in a wheelchair. She grieves yet she never seems to get past the denial stage, she can't accept or discuss the problem.

So she will often cry kind of uncontrollably, it's awful to hear, but worse is that she won't allow you to help or even talk, my Dad sometimes just says to me "I have no idea what to do", which is also quite weird, it all feels kind of dysfunctional.

So I relate to the "denial" thing you mention Beth, my mother is much younger and this is a problem. I can only imagine what she'd think if she knew I was discussing this on a messageboard...I just wish I had some productive advice rather than just empathy...

Good luck Beth, and everyone else posting here. I've been really lucky so far, but the day isn't far off -- my mother will be 74 next month and my dad is 77. But my dad, Jesus, he heals quicker than Wolverine. He planted his garden this year, went in for quintuple bypass surgery, and was recovered enough to bring in the harvest himself.

The child unable to believe that the parent has lost power?

My mother (89) has had alzheimers for about 8 years. Her body has served her well, but her brain slowly went to bits shortly after my stepfather died. Unable to manage her house anymore, my brother and I moved her to an independent living center that guaranteed access to its nursing home if and when the time came. It came about two years after the move. I live 3 hours away, but my brother lives within walking distance and visits her several times a week and we included her in family events until about a year ago when she just became unable to feel comfortable outside of her nursing home environment.

She's now almost totally deaf and has never used a hearing aid which makes any serious communication impossible. I visited last week and found her doing a crossword puzzle. We did the puzzle together for a while, but her mind kept drifting all over the place.

My wife's father (82) has Parkinson's and fell down the stairs recently. Compression fractures of three vertebrae was the diagnosis. Surgeons injected some kind of cement in his spine and he was getting about with a walker after only a few days. My wife plans to care for him in his home in the near future. He suffers from dimentia, too, but is on so many meds that I think that may be a contributing factor. This guy was an infantryman in world war II, a radio and tv personality and has had a very good life. He is loved by many people and has had countless visitors at the hospital. He is very frail now and has told me, and I'm sure others, that he knows his life is at the very end.

These are two of the coolest people that I have ever known, both with precious little time left. One knows it and one doesn't seem to. They are both receiving the best care available, but y'know sometimes that don't mean a thing. My thoughts are with all of you.

This. Heavy shit, huh?

yep

In darker moments, I look at my folks now (esp. my Pa who is 75 this week) and feel like the wave of their good years is just on the cusp of breaking. Not really ready for it, not at all.

My mothers good years are most definitely past. This has become very evident as she's staying with me for a couple days and it's totally heart breaking. Also, there's some memory loss/disorientation stuff happening that's scaring the crap out of me.

so heavy i can't really talk about it

Yeah. I started trying to talk about it with someone at work and couldn't really hold myself together. This is really tough. :/

Good luck Erica... luckily my parents are still mostly 'together' and my dad's problems are a result of his alcoholism rather than real mental deterioration, but it's still awful to have to deal with this stuff.

yeah i'm going through this too. all the best, E x

and everyone else :/

This took up took up over 10 years of my life (from 1994 - 2008 in fact). Both my parents got ill in their early to mid-seventies, and both had dementia and a pretty terrible end in a nursing home in their late seventies.

I spend most of this period visiting at weekends, and other times - and in that rather mad space where you seem cut off from the concerns of normal life, unable to relax for a minute, and living a kind of nightmare existence that no-one else around you realises. (Nothing like the horrific life of a full-time career - but bad enough).

The only thing you can say about it is that it passes, and you realise that what felt like an endless enduring period was in the end just another temporary era.

Siblings help -- if you're lucky.

I'm an only child. This is the only time I've ever wished I had siblings tbh.

Thanks, guys. Things are OK and we had a really nice evening. She's staying with me until she flys back to FL on Wed. Ian - alcoholism is a factor here too in addition to a lot of other things. I guess I just really feel for my dad and am really saddened by realizing that it's only going to get worse from here and I'm afraid it's going to do so pretty quickly.

I feel for you, ENBB. I'm an only child too; my mom's 84 this year but still drives, takes care of her own stuff, is still sharp as ever (dad died in 2000). But I dread so deeply the coming of the signs. I can't even model it in my mind. Hugs.

my mom's 84 this year but still drives, takes care of her own stuff, is still sharp as ever

That's fantastic, good for her! Mine is 74 this year but she's an old 74 and hasn't driven in at least 5 years. Anyway, like I said, we had a lovely day today. It's just a really difficult process to watch and I worry about what will happen down the line.

pullin for you E - us only children gotta stick together. this terrifies me too - and is a big part of what motivates me to do what I do now - but hopefully there will be a good, long time before anything really happens.

You know you have my support as another only, but I'm too much of a weakling to talk about this stuff
In earnest
In public
Beyond this

But you know where to find me offboard if you wanna talk!!

i will say that my mom is pretty damn sharp in mind, but whenever i visit, i insist on driving EVERYWHERE. her driving scares the bejesus out of me, don't understand how she hasn't had her license taken away. and it only gets worse as she gets older.

yeah driving is often the "tipping point" of aging parents decline. really hard to give up.

my heart goes out to enbb,la lechera, ian and everybody facing this. all my middle-aged friends have ailing/aging parents right now, you guys are confronting it early like i did. these days my father in law is essentially dying, i was going to post this on the fuck cancer thread but it fits here too. he's 84, until a couple years ago was robust mentally and physically, the picture of how you'd hope to age. so it's shocking to see his rapid decline not just bodily but he's become very confused and withdrawn, barely a shell of his former self. chemotherapy is keeping him alive but at what cost? we just had our annual visit and my wife, her mom (who's a rock) and her two siblings are stressed out and struggling. not much else to say. but it's good to talk about it, in fact it's important for your - our - own mental health to let it out.

My dad had the driving decision taken out of his hands as he went blind in one eye at the start of the year, but he was getting to be quite a dangerous driver before than (he's 80) so we're really quite glad about it.

even though she knows she needs them, my mom refuses to get glasses because she thinks that they make her face look weird
she lives in fear of having her driver's license taken away from her because she is a very independent person and likes her alone time
:(

My mother-in-law has had quite serious dementia for the past six years or so. This started when she was in her early-to-mid 60s - one of the first events that really got us thinking that something was up was when she drove her car the wrong way round a large roundabout into oncoming traffic. At the moment she lives in a nursing home as is pretty much just a shell of her former self - she doesn't even know who her children are any more when they come to visit, but thankfully she does still appreciate the company which at least is one small positive that you can take away. Totally depressing though, so for anyone out there who is dealing with this right now, I can totally sympathise.

My mom, turning 80 next month, has been fighting the decline, bless her. Joined the hospital wellness center, has been selling and giving away decades' worth of my dad's accumulated packratcrap, still gets out there and mows her own lawn, etc. Next week she, my daughter and probably my wife are heading off to Biloxi to the casinos. But the decline is there...bad knees, bad feet, diabetes... My sympathies to everyone having a tough go of it these days.

My mum (68) has been dealing with my gran (88) for a long time; my gran has alzheimers. About six months ago she finally got her moved to a nursing home in the same town (200 miles from where my gran was before). Only now is she at the point where she can see any humour in the situation, which results in Facebook messages like this from my mum:

Today's visit to your gran!

G. (after a bit of mumbling and searching for words) Are you my daughter?

Me. Yes.

Gr. Are you really my daughter?

Me. Yes.

Gr. I can't remember. Am I your mother?

Me. Yes.

Gr. Where did we live?

So I started giving her a potted history of our life.

GR. How do you know you're my daughter?

A bit later on....

Gr, Haven't I got nice legs!

She thought it was quite funny that she couldn't remember things; seemed very happy and settled. The staff bore this out.

My mom and grandma live together with mom's "girlfriend", and I moved to be closer to them and my terminally ill Dad (they were separated). Grandma is sharp as a tack and well into her 90s. Of course I love Grandma, but mom is making seeing Grandma a miserable experience.

Like I said elsewhere she is getting into that old people thing of being passive-aggressive. I know I called her a "fascist" I didn't mean it, it's that her emotional state is kind of fascist.

It's her stupid family. She wasn't raised by her own mother, she was raised by her abusive and creepy grandmother and aunt and it really shows in how she deals with stuff like death and adult responsibilities.

If anything difficult happens in her life - death or whatever - she just escapes mentally. Her mom's family had a lot of money and stuff was handled for her all her life!! She doesn't understand why other people don't have it as easy. Because of her family, she feels she has a lot of power and I can't ever suspect her of having mental problems EVER.

My mom gave up driving last month. Kinda shocked, but pleased that she came to the decision herself. She's 88 and is in reasonably good health for her age - despite the piles of crap that she's hoarded (ongoing issue for her entire life). Sister is gone for several weeks so I'm on mom duty... it's extra frustrating because her hearing is so bad that she leaves the televisions on with the sound maxed-out and she can't hear the phone.

Vexing problem of the moment... Her sense of time and calendar dates are slipping, so making plans becomes a comedy of errors ("stop by this week" *does so* "what are you doing here, I said to come by next week") ad infinitum ad nauseum

wow, that sounds like a serious challenge. i'm sorry. i have this thread bookmarked and it popped up just as my parents arrived yesterday for their first visit in 3 years. they are aging. my mom is in great shape (in spite of some health issues this year) but my dad keeps looking and acting less like himself, which is thrown into stark relief when we look at old pictures together.

hmph.

I am going to visit my parents this weekend and I think that I'm actually going to have to ask them point blank what they want me to do for them if they ever get dementia or need care etc. My mom is in bad shape and her memory is already slipping and my biggest fear is that my dad dies first (though this is prob unlikely you never know) and I'm left to make decisions for/about her. I want to know now and while I know she's not going to want to talk about this I'm going to make them because I'm an only child and they have no other relatives here to help and I can't handle the stress and weight of this alone without knowing what they want.

Just to share my own personal woes on this thread --

My father nearly died last week; he collapsed on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The ambulance came and got him to a hospital and it turned out he had two massive ulcers in his stomach and large intestine. This comes about 6 weeks after a surgery to biopsy a growth in his spinal cord.

Yesterday morning, recovering from the emergency surgery to stitch up the ulcers, he had a major heart attack and is in the hospital with a breathing tube, heavily sedated etc. On our way up to Rhode Island yesterday our van broke down on the Triboro Bridge -- shocks gave out and started to rub against the front tires, causing lots of burnt rubber smoke. We got it towed back to your neighborhood (luckily we weren't halfway through connecticut) and it's going to be repaired this afternoon, $800 later. I'm incredibly worried about my dad. The doctors are not sure how to treat him; they can't give him the usual blood thinners and medications because of the ulcers and recent surgery. I wish so badly I was there. And now I'm worried about the drive up, even though the car is getting fixed, I have a strong distrust of automobiles... Just don't know what to do. It's bad when my aunt is telling me to go straight to the hospital and bring his 'paperwork' (read: living will.)

So scared :\

I'm sorry to hear all of that.

me too. suerte, ian.

Oh, Ian. I'm sorry.

Aw man... Hoping for the best

the latest news is that he's off the respirator and able to talk a bit, though he is very disoriented and doesn't know where he is... so that's great news. the doctor was surprised at how much he's improved since last night when things were a bit more up in the air.

our car didn't get repaired until after 5:30, and not wanting to drive in rush hour, we are going up tomorrow morning.. thanks everyone for your kindness.

Safe travel, sweetie.

Urgh ENBB, reading your posts here and on other threads - I have the feeling that we're on the same boat.
I'm an only child, living 4 hours away from my parents, with my father at a very advanced stage of Parkinson's and my mother seriously diminished by years of alcoholism (with late-blooming epilepsy added to the mix). My dad has been the justification for getting home-help but in my mind the caretaker's role is also to watch over my mom and alert me when things get real bad. I've been freaking out for the last two years at what will happen if/when my dad passes away and I cannot justify to my mom keeping a caretaker at home.

that rather mad space where you seem cut off from the concerns of normal life, unable to relax for a minute, and living a kind of nightmare existence that no-one else around you realises.

There is a fine line between being a responsible child of an aging parent and being a child who feels responsible for his aging parents in the same way a parent is responsible for their child. If you feel like a disaster of some sort is perpetually imminent in your parents' lives, then they need both more and less from you than your being on perpetual panicky standby.

Hovering nearby in anxiety just exhausts you and accomplishes very little. They need your assistance to form a plan to get more help in their daily lives. If they refuse this assistance, either you must honor that refusal and trust them to steer themselves, or if they have become legally incompetant to be responsible for themselves, then you must bite the bullet and seek the authority of a conservator or guardian, so at least you can move them away from the brink or perpetual disaster.

I know this x1000 times easier to say than to do. I just would like to plant the seed of this thought so you can consider it.

Yeah you're totally right. Knowing deep down that this endless anxiety has zero value to them is one of the most frustrating parts. I basically feel I'm on the border between the two scenarios you describe - ie. my mother is too lucid/young/healthy to be completely assisted or put in a home or under my legal guard - and yet alcoholism makes her accident prone and unable to care for my dad and her household. They've got several hours of help every day but even that is starting to seem not enough.
I know that I should stop aimlessly panicking and start making concrete plans but my general response to the anxiety is to try as hard as I can to put in my head in the sand and try no to think about it. So yeah, obviously not a winning strategy

Alcoholism really complicates that picture. You have a damned tough row to hoe. But you can't realistically save people from themselves.

baaderonixx - Yeah, it does sound similar although thankfully my dad is still in pretty good health but you never know and that's what scares me. I've tried to talk to them about it before but my mom flat out refuses to do so because she likes to ignore her mortality but that's just fucking selfish and I'm sick of worrying about this so I'm going to bring it up when I'm down there next weekend. He is her caretaker right now and I just have no idea what I'd do if something happened to him. I'm sure as hell not moving to Florida that's for sure.

"The last two-three years of my life have been a long panic attack basically, always concerned what may be happening at my parent's house at any given minute, always refusing to relax or to go on trips because I always feel like i'm on standby mode and might need to rush to my parent's home at any time."

If my dad weren't around and in good shape I'm sure this would be me too. That said, if my phone ever rings and I see it's them calling at a time I'm not expecting I go into extreme panic mode. Also, Christmas this year was so awful that I wound up extending my visit to go with my mom to the dr to see about her meds/drinking but sadly, it didn't really do much. At least I felt better for trying.

Oh baad, I'm sorry you're dealing with this. It's really stressful and yours sounds like a particularly tough situation right now.

geez ian, hang in there man.

I'm spending my Christmas break cleaning out my mother's hoarder house. She's 89 and after being very active for most of her life, her body has quit out on her and she's depressed, but meeting it with competing levels of rage and denial. She's flat-out refused all help for years and can be quite alienating about it. Her balance is very unsteady, but she can't use a walker in the house because there's too much trash. My sister brings her food, but she won't let anyone in the house. Hoarding has been an issue in her entire life - it's the reason why my parents broke up. When given the choice between her house full of newspapers and unopened mail or her family, she chose the pile. Now there are consequences.

Ten days ago she began (lust like the commercial) falling down and not getting up. She knows she can't call 911 because emergency services will report just how much of a fire hazard things are in there. Each fall has been progressively worse... The next day, my sister found her fallen over on a pile of unopened magazine. Apparently she had been there overnight without any clothes on and had, well, vacated herself on top of things. The day after that, she fell again and became hypothermic. So after a stay in the hospital and time away from the horrifying conditions in her house she's in outpatient assisted living and impatiently wanting to go home. Only she can't, because it's a shambles. About the only plus side to having to having to Make A Decision about assisted living/nursing homes during Christmas break is that there are so many of them in Orange County.

So we're finally cleaning the house. Desperately want to rant about the weird shit I'm finding, but I don't anything ending up on Reddit right now. The photos I took of the "high water mark" before we began emptying things out have been powerfully radioactive. I think my aunt had a nervous breakdown and I haven't heard back from the last person I sent them too.

his Christmas I've broken out of my current state of "existential depression fortified by all-new economic anxiety" has been interrupted by

oh man

oops... meant to finish with

"At least this Christmas I've broken out of my current state of "existential depression fortified by all-new economic anxiety" with this."

ugh, i'm sorry, that must be really stressful. :-/

oh wow C that's so awful. I hope you get thru it with plenty of support.

Aw, jeez, I'm so sorry you're dealing with this right now. Well, at all, really. Hope that she is able to get the help she requires, and that you are able to cope with it all.

My sister and I went on a whirlwind tour of four different assisted living places yesterday. The outpatient place where my mom is put us in touch with a woman who works as a real estate agent for (what the preferred term is) assisted living facilities. Whatever stereotypes you're imagining after reading that describes the day. If I was a douchey indie film screenwriter, a repeating theme would be:

ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY AGENT has programmed the addresses of dozens 
of facilities in the satellite navigation system of her Mercedes SUV and scrolls 
through them with the expertise of a veteran video gamer.

Oddly enough the one we went with is the one that felt most like a well appointed desert Indian casino. Guess that's what the Greatest Generation goes for now. The facilities were all new and the staff simply seemed like they gave a shit about the residents. Blurted out "it looks just like The Village from The Prisoner" several times during the day.

I know what you mean - we went through a similar search three years ago, right before the holidays, for Mr. Jaq's mom. If there had been a more casino themed one available, it would have been a perfect fit. As it is now, he takes her out every other Sunday to one. She was just moved into the "memory care" unit though, and has trouble remembering how the slot machines work. It's a challenging time, and my thoughts are with you.

I'm so sorry man, that's so rough. It's such a hard decision to make. I foresee that we'll be facing similar tough decisions in the coming year/s with my father in law as his dementia worsens. There's a small, quiet part of me that hopes that he shuffles off before such a decision has to be made.

It's so hard to bear witness to that level of helplessness...I really sympathize.

So last weekend, my mother unplugged the monitor and tried to use the bathroom by herself (this is still at the first outpatient place). She fell and hurt her back pretty badly, so assisted living is now completely out of the question. Go directly to Memory Care, do not pass Go, etc. The doctor's report gets directly to the point... "dementia, memory loss, wandering & fall risk." I drove her to the new facility on Monday in her own car, but she couldn't recognize it and kept forgetting after I reminded her. Since then she has been just horrible to the staff who have been nothing but patient. I got a message this morning that she had been screaming so loudly at everyone that she developed chest pains and had to be readmitted back to the hospital.

I had been thinking to myself "ok, maybe after 90 days (a totally arbitrary number) things will become predicable again." Now I'm not sure at all.

Thanks for all the kind words. Need to unload somewhere and it might as well be here.

In the meantime, I'm dealing with two floors of this.

http://quartzcity.net/ilx/momshouse.jpg

The front door to the house is back there somewhere. I bought a giant 150 count box of 13 gallon trash bags at Home Depot and have filled half of them (75 - I counted) with unopened mail, magazines, and newspapers. That's just from the living room.

I think I'm now an expert in dealing with aging parent hoarders - feel free to ask questions!

Oh, ET, I am so sorry it's going down this way. Just wishing you strength to cope with it!

(feeling kinda guilty tho coz that room is really only a year or so away from my living room. Eep!)

oh jesus. sorry elvis and best to u

Damn. Sending best.

et, you will get through, i'm so sorry to hear of the circumstances. stay strong. don't forget to take care of yourself.

Oh Elvis. I'm so sorry.

This is the tough stuff of life, sorry you are going through it.

I recently learned that hoarding disorder is now classified as a distinct disorder (as opposed to a form of obsessive compulsive disorder) in the new DSM-V. One of my profs at BU does hoarding research--apparently it is very difficult to treat. I'm so sorry that you have a massive cleanup on your hands on top of your mom's move. What a good child you are, you should be proud and take all due credit for what you are doing on your mom's behalf. Best wishes during this difficult time, to you and all of the other ilxors dealing with aging parent issues.

And to ENBB and everyone else trying to engage their family in end-of-life planning, you might find this helpful? This is how I'm pushing my spouse to structure a convo with his parents:

http://www.engagewithgrace.org/

Click on "download the one slide"

quincie, thanks for that link - knowing it's too late to have this conversation with my MIL makes it seem possible to approach it with my mother, and to think about what I would want for myself.

Elvis, oh man - take care of yourself as you deal with all this, take full advantage of any and all resources you can. It can feel invasive to contract out a cleanup, but remember the possibility is there if it becomes just too much.

It can feel invasive to contract out a cleanup, but remember the possibility is there if it becomes just too much

My sister and I have considered this, but there's some treasure mixed in with the trash so everything needs to be looked at. An example...

A great uncle had a career straight out of a Biggles adventure story. When World War One started, he left Canada for England, learned how to fly, and joined up with the pre-RAF Royal Flying Corps in 1915. He was a reconnaissance pilot, was pals with King Albert I of Belgium, took part in the first aerial survey of Africa, and somehow survived it all. Would have loved to have met him, but he passed before I was born.

One long-standing mystery was whatever happened to his war medals (a Distinguished Flying Cross, a cigarette case presented to him by King Albert, etc.) My mother eventually convinced herself that one of her sisters took them when the old family house was cleaned out but she was always questioning herself about it.

Well I found them. Stuffed in a plastic supermarket grocery bag, Underneath a pile of squalid newspapers with a chair over them. The only thing missing was a "Beware Of The Leopard" sign.

wow

Seriously wow

I recently learned that hoarding disorder is now classified as a distinct disorder (as opposed to a form of obsessive compulsive disorder) in the new DSM-V. One of my profs at BU does hoarding research--apparently it is very difficult to treat.

Does your prof have any articles or books out? Would love to read anything on hoarding that's not at a reality show level. I'm especially curious about neuropsych/genetic connections. My mother's father was a big hoarder, my brother is a hoarder, while an aunt is an obsessive neat freak.

BTW, while I'm not a physical hoarder - I do have 8TB of hard drives full of mp3s, scanned comics, etc.

Finding some amazingly Really Weird Shit too. My favorite so far is a fake pewter (but probably aluminum) peacock free-standing flower vase. Apparently you're supposed to put the flowers in its butt. It's aggressively hideous.

Black humor helps immeasurably through all this.

By the way, if anyone here is facing these kinds of issues with your parents. PLEASE do everything you can to have power of attorney, bank accounts, etc. squared away. I don't know what we would be doing now if that wasn't taken care of.

On the lighter side, I found this. Yes, I'm a member of the Wacky Packages generation.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdFq8W8CAAA4B0a.jpg

I wish you the best ET, I empathize with your situation, and I recommend a book called Stuff by Steketee/Frost. It was very compassionately written and totally not stupid. It changed my relationship with my mom after she read it.

The Steketee/Frost book is great. Recommend it to anyone dealing with this.

One more crazy treasure-in-the-trash story, but I'm doing this at risk of class warfare.

My mother's interests can be summarized like this: cars, football, skiing, ice skating, and the British Royal Family, but cars are definitely #1 on the list. She was pretty active in vintage car clubs, and 2013 was the first time she missed going to the vintage races and concours up in Monterey. The Little Old Lady from Pasadena? That's her.

About two years ago she voluntarily chose to stop driving. This was a HUGE decision and one I never ever expected her to make on her own. She was just way too independent to admit that her eyesight and hearing was failing on her.

The Little Old Lady From Pasadena might have driven a shiny red Super Stock Dodge, but my mom drove these:

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1108/1372811681_7a0fca804c.jpg

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4078/4741094340_6637e8fa83.jpg

When she stopped driving, the key to the A-M vanished in the house somewhere. I offered to help look for the key, but she completely refused (with increasing levels of fury and anger as her health worsened). Getting a new key from the dealer was out of the question ("I'm not paying for a new goddamn key - it's in the house somewhere!") so there it sat for a year.

I eventually found the key at the bottom of a box filled with letters (date range 1968 - 2009) and thousands of those pre-printed return address labels that you sometimes get unsolicited in the mail.

P.S. to the story... When I took her to the nursing home on Monday night, I took her in the A-M - patiently explaining "don't worry, I'm taking care of the cars. I found the key. etc. etc." She didn't recognize the car at all. Sure, she might have occasionally called me by my brother's name and she's been repeating her words for awhile, but this was my first hand "she's not coming back" moment. A couple hours later, I found out that Benjamin Curtis passed. Fucking hell.

P.P.S. What's getting me through this is cooking (the meals at Casa Drone are spectacular and my baking skills are now off the charts), binge watching X-Files on Netflix, and good old-fashioned California Medical Weed. One day at a time as they say.

Indeed. And yeah...not coming up for the Concours must have seemed so strange.

To an earlier point:

By the way, if anyone here is facing these kinds of issues with your parents. PLEASE do everything you can to have power of attorney, bank accounts, etc. squared away. I don't know what we would be doing now if that wasn't taken care of.

Thankfully -- very thankfully -- my parents have been extremely good about this, and I have all paperwork to hand if necessary. We just spent a little time as well during the holidays updating access to safe deposit boxes too. As time progresses we'll see what more needs to happen, but they've been very proactive, and if anything my sis and I wait on them. And so time continues, for now.

When my grandma died, my parents and my dad's brother and his wife spent months clearing out what was a fair amount of stuff from her house, and much like ET mentions, there were hidden treasures among...not trash per se (it never got that cluttered), but a lot of unnecessary things. They said the experience made them aware of how to keep things as simple as possible in terms of what was kept at the house -- it's almost been two decades since grandma's and the process has always been one of a careful paring down of possessions and necessities -- and seeing a story like ET's make me feel very fortunate.

ET, we're dealing with something not dissimilar. my wife's mom has alzheimer's (70 years old) and is getting progressively worse (yesterday she thought i was her father) and her eyesight is also terrible. in addition to that, my wife's dad (83 years old) is a mid-level hoarder (almost in a "sweep everything under the rug" way; the living room is deceptively clean but the bedrooms and his office are stacked with old newspapers, magazines, etc, the garage is worse than that, real earthquake hazard rooms.) he refuses to throw pretty much anything away and the kitchen and dining tables are stacked with papers that have to be shuffled aside so we can eat.

worse still is that he was never social and has really no friends, and she has one good friend. plus he leaves her alone for 90 min every day when he goes to temple. and he won't stop. we're just in the process of trying to get their finances in order as best we can AND getting someone into the house to help while working our jobs and raising a two year old.

my inlaws are caring for my father inlaw, who has severe dementia. my brother inlaw swore to his mom before she died that he would take care of his dad, and now he is saddled with the depth of that reality.

at first it was just him & my sisterinlaw doing the caring, but two months of that proved that the task was too big for just them to manage. my brother inlaw, a paramedic & firefighter, had come across Samoan women caring for dementia patients a few times when he ran calls, and he had noticed how good they were with their charges. years later he remembered them & made some calls, and hired two of them to take over his inhome care & housekeeping 7-4 every day except sunday.

this was a HUGE gamechanger. it allowed my inlaws to restore their relationship with him somewhat instead of being "in charge of him" which is a big distinction & a hard role to take on for family members. it also frees up their time so they could separate a little during the day & focus on caring for him at night. unfortunately sunset is the worst time for him - he gets anxious & belligerent, barricades himself in his room, and loses a lot of his cognition around this time of day, as quickly as if you flipped a switch.

the carers have bought them some time, but we are all well aware that it's all borrowed now. but unless/until he becomes violent or a threat to himself/family, my brother inlaw will keep him under his roof.

and while he still knows who we are, it seems to do him some good.

but i have every understanding for anyone not in the position to manage homecare. it's not black or white, and ultimately the best thing for these people we love is as changeable as weather.

i think the thing I have learned watching my father inlaw is the sad reality that most of the qualities i associate with him are now largely gone, just swept away like an eroding sand dune. the shape of him is still there, and it tricks you...but he is fragile inside, and more and more unable to live up to what we all want for him in this stage of his life. it's the hardest thing to watch

Tomorrow marks a milestone: my 89-year-old grandmother has sullenly consented to live-in care. Mind, this was a woman who up until two hours ago still drove her car to the supermarket, about three miles east to the beauty parlor and manicurist, and until three months ago balanced her own checkbook. To increasing scorn and now resignation from my grandmother, Mom has taken this away and restocks her pillbox every week. Except for short term memory lapses which clear as soon as she has a conversation, she's a woman of stunning mental and physical fortitude: no heart trouble to speak, no hereditary cancers, no longterm problems of any kind! When I visit Sunday mornings we watch the Food Channel and she tells me what horrors Guy Fieri concocted an hour before.

Although I'm proud of her independence, it's not a good idea for a woman a year shy of ninety to drive anymore, and my mother understandably resents waiting by the phone anxiously when it's 6 p.m. and Grandma doesn't answer the phone -- she's at the supermarket and lost track of time. Pride keeps Grandma from admitting she wants Mom to do for her what Grandma did to her own mother: be a slave in the most abject manner as she deteriorates (my great grandmother's dementia was a searing experience; unlike Grandma she was a violent woman who bit, kicked, punched, and yelled bloodcurdling imprecations at anyone, young and old, male or female). She would like nothing more than my mother to simply move in with her, regardless of the fact that she's married, happily, to my father and has no intention of spending her autumnal years in bondage to quiet dementia...and for what exactly? To assuage a guilt that doesn't mean shit anyway once the person dies?

When my grandma died, my parents and my dad's brother and his wife spent months clearing out what was a fair amount of stuff from her house, and much like ET mentions, there were hidden treasures among...not trash per se (it never got that cluttered), but a lot of unnecessary things. They said the experience made them aware of how to keep things as simple as possible in terms of what was kept at the house

My mom learned the wisdom of this a few months ago as she threw away Grandma's tax returns from 1976. Fortunately she gave Mom power of attorney and do-not-resuscitate orders years ago, before the trouble.

The Steketee/Frost book is great. Recommend it to anyone dealing with this.

Gail Steketee is my prof! Super smart and passionate.

I filled an entire cargo van with paper garbage (newspapers, unopened/junk mail, and magazines) to the recycler yesterday. Total weight: 1.52 tons. This was mostly trash from the upstairs living room and side bedroom. There's still a long ways to go, but at least there's a little bit of maneuvering room.

Strong possibility that the nursing home might Section Eight my mother out to a mental hospital for a couple of weeks while they adjust her meds. My sister and I brought her some furniture on Friday night and she greeted us with the worst kind "my children are horrible. I'd rather die alone" hostility and violence (she's been punching the staff members and shrieking out loud for minutes at a time). The floor supervisor told us that this behavior is "moderate to average" for Level 4 dementia. Had to ask what the worst is and she said that they sometimes get residents who throw themselves against the wall, beat their heads on furniture, etc. Wondering what the hell level 5 and up is...

Sorry to hear it, ET. A psychiatric unit may be very helpful for your mom; clearly she is having a hard time of it (which of course means YOU are having a hard time of it, too!). Sounds like you making good progress with the house, kudos on that.

Sheesh, ET, my heart goes out to you, I can't imagine what it's like to go through something like this.

While I was out in Vermont last autumn, my Mum, while in the process of rearranging her own house, announced that she had no intention whatsoever to live past 80, even if it took measures to ensure this. And at the time I was kind of freaking out, like, how can you say this, it's not your choice to make, you live as long as you live, if I'm not allowed to end my life, you're not allowed to end your life. But then I realised, that she is a priest, and has an ageing congregation, and spends half her life going to hospitals and old age care facilities, and administering last rites, and she's seen a great deal of how people end their lives and under what conditions. I suppose I should commend her for making the decision while she still has the faculties to make it, but it scares the shit out of me.

Oh ET how hard this must be for you to go through. I'm so sorry you've been dealing with this. I have about 30 something unread bookmarks and only just now saw this. I can't even imagine.

My mom is beginning to forget things. A lot. She forgets words for this and instead describes them and stops mid-sentence. Last week she apparently had no idea who my dad was in a picture of the two of them taken back when they first met and admitted that her forgetfulness is beginning to scare her.

I never did get to talk to them about what will happen if he dies first and I'm literally the only person left to make decisions about her/with her etc. I think I really need to when I go visit next month though because her flat out refusal to talk about his not only ridiculous at this point, it's insanely selfish.

I have about 30 something unread bookmarks and only just now saw this. I can't even imagine.

You need to stop hoarding bookmarks.

._.

yeah I think I'm gonna delete some now tbh. I bookmark things I don't even care about which is weird.

I mean, someone's going to have to come along and delete those things one day.

I kid about a harsh subject because I'm on the internet and none of you can punch me, but I've been watching my parents go through all of this with their parents. My mother has been moving things back and forth between three houses since my grandmother died nine years ago. I just want to say STOP, THROW IT AWAY, TAKE IT TO CHARITY.

And my diabetic father who's losing feeling in his feet lives in this swanky 1981 A-frame with spiral staircases and a loft bedroom that has this imitation wrought-iron barrier separating him from the living room 25 feet below. Step-mom has MS. Right now, there are about 20 years worth of Fantasy Football trophies sitting on the floor at the pinnacle of one of those spiral staircases.

So I'm not as close to the situation as some of you are, but I can sure smell it from here. My dad's mom went a little demented late in life, thinking Mexicans were electrocuting her dog through the carpet. I ask him, what am I going to do when you start saying crazy things like that? His answer is along the lines of, "Well, first of all, Mexicans weren't really doing anything to your grandma," and I"m like I KNOW THAT.

thinking Mexicans were electrocuting her dog through the carpet

woah

Oh, they'd come in and steal checks that she had written to the phone company. Leave the TV and jewelry behind, even the checkbook itself.

So I'm not as close to the situation as some of you are, but I can sure smell it from here.

My sister and I knew that the status quo with my mother was going to change sometime - we just didn't know when and how it would play out. You just end up waiting around vaguely worried and on hold. I'm right in that age-range when people are dealing with elderly parents and answering the "hey ET, how's it going?" question has led to a lot of stories. I believe a lot of us are more worried about our parents than climate change.

*throws away more mp3s and bookmarks*

haha yeah - for the last 3 years my parents have been my main source of concerns (on a daily basis basically). My situation is pretty extreme, but it's true that once your touch the subject you realise how many people around you are dealing with all kinds of family shit.

as documented elsewhere here I'm helping my wife deal w/her parents (her mom has Alzheimer's and her dad has hoarding issues) and it's a terrible combo. I think this particular generation of people was a generation also that accumulated a lot of stuff, in general, maybe more than subsequent ones. I have no evidence to back this theory up but I also know a lot of people ourselves included who are almost terrified of having too much random crap around the house bc of how we've seen it pile up in the houses of older relatives. my wife's grandparents on the other hand (who are in their 90s, lucid, and sadly well aware of their daughter's state) on the other hand just have always thrown or given everything away (to almost comical degrees: they'll get a gift from someone and a week later quietly give it to someone else. Sometimes the same day!)

my wife lives in fear of the day she inherits the staggering hoard of antique car parts that fills the barn and house of her childhood home

Call those American Picker guys.

my wife lives in fear of the day she inherits the staggering hoard of antique car parts that fills the barn and house of her childhood home

FWIW, the antique/collector car underground is surprisingly helpful when it comes to these situations. Last year a friend of mine had to deal with her father's car/car parts hoard and after just a few well-placed ads got connected with a collector who paid $$$$ to take the whole works. That world is obsessed with "old cars in barns" stories.

my wife's grandparents on the other hand (who are in their 90s, lucid, and sadly well aware of their daughter's state)

This is heart-breaking

my hard left (but stock market baller dad): "wait for rick santelli's take, he knows what he's talking about"

Aging parents.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but one of the reasons I moved to Los Angeles was to spend the last few years of my guardian's life with her. She raised me and though she was not my biological mother, she was the closest thing I ever had to one.

Today marks two months since she passed away. There was a lot of reflecting going on in the last three months. Earlier in 2013, I remember having a conversation with a good friend and telling her, "I don't know if she can make it through another winter". But the next winter seemed so far away. And even a couple of days before her passing, death seemed so far away.

Now, I'm not judging anyone, obviously, and I think it totally depends on other circumstances, but we would have never put her in a home. Too many thoughts going through my head right now to write something coherent.

I remember about 8 of us slept in her hospital room for probably four days, because we didn't want her to be alone. Many of her family members visited and she seemed to be improving. As the black sheep in a Catholic family, I always looked at the science, and was sceptical ever since maybe April of 2013. And everyone kept...I don't know if deluding themselves is the right word, but they kept holding onto their faith and at the hint of any positive news, they'd forget about all the other ill-occurrences and symptoms she'd had and would continue to have. It was shocking to me, and I tried to say something, but pretty much got accused of so many bad things and being so negative, when I was only trying to help.

Too many thoughts.

She was probably the strongest person I have ever met in my entire life.

I remember when I first created this user, it was meant as an experiment. I really can't keep it up anymore, as it is too much work and seems quite infantile and frivolous. Still trying to understand if there was a deeper meaning for all of this than what it all appears on the face of it.

Created a new user.

god bless you. i mean that. and i don't believe in god. but i feel for you. i went through something similar w/ my grandmother, but it's too difficult to write about right now.

I spend most of this period visiting at weekends, and other times - and in that rather mad space where you seem cut off from the concerns of normal life, unable to relax for a minute, and living a kind of nightmare existence that no-one else around you realises. (Nothing like the horrific life of a full-time career - but bad enough).

The only thing you can say about it is that it passes, and you realise that what felt like an endless enduring period was in the end just another temporary era.

Pfff - i'll requote this again, mostly for my own personal benefit. Good to know that people have gone through this shit, since it often feels like you're living a nightmare that's completely oblivious to everybody else.

An Amazing Village Designed Just For People With Dementia

For example, one common symptom is the urge to roam, often without warning, which had led most "memory units" and dementia care centers to institute a strict lock-down policy. In one German town, an Alzheimer's care center event set up a fake bus stop to foil wandering residents. At Hogeweyk, the interior of the security perimeter is its own little village—which means that patients can move about as they wish without being in danger.

http://www.anglotopia.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/truman-show-lightning-travel-agent.png

The whole concept makes me very teary, I think that is a wonderful way to care for dementia patients.

And the fake bus stop made me lol, I bet that would work wonders with my father in law.

If I could live out my final days as a shambling Number Six perpetually harassing The Village in that annoying old-person way... I would be so fucking happy.

right? it makes total sense

What if you already are? WHAT IF YOU ALREADY ARE?

The floors are now able to tell The Village if you've wandered too far: http://www.future-shape.com/en/technologies/23/sensfloor-large-area-sensor-system

Was it on this page where I talked about my grandmother thinking her dog was being electrocuted through the carpet by her neighbors?

Because I'm so glad she never saw that link, Elvis.

TMI ahead.

So back in March my mother managed to sneak out of the memory care floor and make it outside by hiding next to the food cart in the elevator and then casually walking out the front door. Alert! The facility calls the cops and everything becomes comically ridiculous with all the procedures that have to be activated when a well-appointed assisted living facility in 2014 surveillance state Orange County goes on lockdown. I'm so fucking thankful I have a job however tenuous because I dodged being the one who had to take the call to persuade my mom to go back inside - my sister did. It all works out OK and she goes back in. The folks at the facility were trying to figure out how she managed to get off of the second floor, but I know the real reason: all the 60s/70s-era pulp espionage fiction she loves*! Alistair MacLean, Len Deighton, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, etc. she read it all. One unexpected benefit of being the child of a super-conservative mom is that we saw every James Bond** movie, every nihilistic conspiracy movie, cold war/WWII/etc. movie on opening night at the Big Edwards in Fascist Island.

The situation over there though was worsening. My mother was just being obnoxious and belligerent, kept trying to get out, and just horrible to everyone. Two weeks ago the facility finally had enough... An Official 5150 (really! It's on the form) and she was moved to a psych hospital for a couple of weeks so her meds could be straightened-out. Success! My sister saw her today and the difference was incredible. She's still talks in cycles and thinks she fell down and hit her head while ice skating but at least she's friendly. One staffer described her as being "the mom you wished you had." Hoping so at least for her sake. I haven't been over there since she told me to shut up and shrieked like a pod person.

*I've been hauling all of these books out of the hoard and taking them to Goodwill by the van-full. My sister and I just started in on month four of this and by my rough calculations + actual vehicle weighing we've hauled out 8.5 tons of crap: most of it books, old clothes, leftover material from abandoned construction and bags upon bags upon bags of paper garbage. One set of civic trash cans have already been killed and replaced (for free!) with larger/stronger ones. Last weekend I let my inner troglodyte take over and took two van loads of disgusting desiccated furniture and leftover construction material to the San Juan Capistrano landfill. At least there's an ocean view out there. The master plan for that part of the county is that the landfill will close in 2067 and then a regional park and city built over the top. I haven't been to the county landfill in over twenty years and I had no idea just how oversized it is now. These days you just kick the trash out of the van onto the landfill moonscape while a bulldozer the size of a McDonalds stands by to grind your filth into the ground. I totally nerd out on infrastructure and things the CLUI does but holy shit there's an eye-croggling amount of Future Bullshit our followers are going to have to deal with. I hate hoarding. I fucking hate it. I hate the corporations who sell "collectables" to elderlies because it's only collectable to a dying generation. I hate the default "that will be worth something some day" and "one day I'm going to fix that up" attitudes. I'm even more annoyed when my hoarding gene is validated and something I hung onto becomes useful again. Prima Deshecha Landfill is now my #1 search term on my phone's Google Maps.

**Of course there will never be a movie about what happens when the older children of an 89-year-old Stage 4 Dementia Moneypenny have to deal with her craziness. I'm still waiting for that perfect existential moment to hit while driving the Aston Martin around but so far no success. Too many assholes that rev engines at stop lights and try to ruin your day.

whoa! I can't believe your mom sneaked out! That is scary but also totally amazing and I can't help but cheer for her.

Glad she is doing better. What meds is she taking? <<< that is a totally personal question so feel free to ignore, of course, but I do have a professional interest in such things or I wouldn't ask!

Your cleanup is amazing. So is your writing. TY for these posts!

I wish I could be around in 2067 for a 20th Century bureaucrat to explain to the new mayor what to do with the landfill.

"Well, our thinking back then was that you could build a park on top of it."

Porcelain Air Bud doll, commemorative plate remembering the 5/23 attacks, wicker bean bag roll by...

"Yeah, that's what you were thinking, eh?"

medication adjustments can really make a huge difference

my father in law (dementia) was aggressive, argumentative, downright misogynistic to my sister in law and his female carer and over a period of 6 months had turned into this horrible man that they didn't want to be around, and did not at ALL resemble the man he had been before things ramped up.

a month ago they took him off a few medications, put him on some new ones (I couldn't tell you what exactly the changes were)...he's back to his old self. He can follow a logical flow of conversation, doesn't get aggressive or agitated with ideas that are new to him, and is much friendlier to be around especially for my sister in law and his carer

I think it's difficult when they are on so many medications for physical ailments AND mental ailments, and in some cases they may have more than one doctor and none of them know what the other is prescribing, or aren't made aware by guardians or whatever. having someone knowledgeable to act as a *medical* advocate for aging patients where mental health is an issue can really make a difference

Glad she is doing better. What meds is she taking? <<< that is a totally personal question so feel free to ignore, of course, but I do have a professional interest in such things or I wouldn't ask!

I haven't seen the full report back from the hospital so I don't have the full details. The text from my sister simply said "Better living through chemistry"

I wish I could be around in 2067 for a 20th Century bureaucrat to explain to the new mayor what to do with the landfill.

You don't have to wait, you can read about the toxic mess at the former Coyote Canyon Landfill site

From all outward appearances, Newport Coast—the prized real-estate development project of Orange County's wealthiest, most powerful man, Irvine Co. billionaire Don Bren—looks to be a slice of heaven on Earth. Elaborate gates and private guards protect hillside neighborhoods with sweeping, Pacific Ocean views. Mediterranean-style houses, some accurately called "palatial estates" in real-estate guides, can fetch $20 million or more. Even the palm tree-, succulent- and flower-lined, litter-free public roads suggest paradise.

It's the perfect setting for a crime or, at least, a bizarre mystery.

Just as Bren hails himself as the perfect, proud capitalist even though his private, cash-cow project is (cleverly) publicly subsidized, Newport Coast is built on a contradiction. Next to all those gorgeous estates is one of OC's largest toxic dumps: Beside Newport Coast Road, the 395-acre Coyote Canyon Landfill contains 60 million cubic yards of municipal solid waste generated from household, commercial, industrial, recreational and agricultural trash sources during a 30-year period.

But the waste—so extensive it goes 200 feet deep—hasn't just been sitting there. County officials and Bren have allowed a gas-recovery company to burn the trash to generate power. Incinerating trash can have negative consequences for nearby humans through the release of dioxins and arsenic into the atmosphere. In January 2010, a decision to burn Coyote Canyon trash around the clock seven days a week doubled the cancer-risk threshold, requiring government air-quality officials to alert 200 Newport Coast households to the danger.

This is where our crime mystery begins.

After the decision to keep Coyote Canyon incinerators burning nonstop, Anna D. Steiner—a practicing medical doctor, single mother of three children and well-to-do Newport Coast resident—noticed that her children (ages 14, 12 and 11) began suffering unusual symptoms, including bloody noses and chronic abdominal pain. Concerned, Steiner took them for urinalysis testing. Arsenic—a lethal poison in large doses—was detected, but in levels considered normal. The kids continued to exhibit signs of sickness, and Steiner continued to test. In May 2010, her youngest child twice tested positive for above-normal levels of arsenic in her system.

The findings were understandably alarming. Steiner wondered if Coyote Canyon landfill activities caused the poisoning, or if a sneaky, would-be killer was loose. On the advice of a social worker and with the hope of solving the mystery, she went to the local police in Bren's home city for help.

If there are any Boston-area ilxors who read this thread, I need your help.

We live in nyc, but my wife is in Framingham right now trying to get her mother's situation sorted out. In a nutshell, her mom has had severe OCD for a long time and it has gotten to the point where it is seriously imperiling her health (she's barely eating or drinking because of her inner edicts). She lives on her own in a subsidized complex and gets social security. She still drives (is only in her early 70s) and goes out every day, but is highly, angrily, nastily, cunningly resistant to treatment for her problem. My wife is down there to basically force her into treatment by hook or by crook, preferably CBT and with a female practitioner, maybe inpatient if medicare/Tufts HMO will cover it. Wife is gonna stay down there for a week and half but there is def gonna need to be something like a caseworker popping in on Mom after that to make sure she is working whatever program is assigned her etc. I am hoping one of y'all might know a) a provider that fits the bill in the area around framingham/metro west and or b) some kind of MA state program that is especially geared toward this kind of instance with elderly patients? Or a state hotline that points one in the right direction? Wife does not have much internet access down there and only has her smartphone with her so I'm trying to come up with a game plan from my perch in nyc...

By the way, if anyone here is facing these kinds of issues with your parents. PLEASE do everything you can to have power of attorney, bank accounts, etc. squared away. I don't know what we would be doing now if that wasn't taken care of.

Does anyone here have any advice on convincing a reluctant parent to cooperate in this sort of business? My mother is living in squalor reminiscent of the pictures upthread, and in the past has dodged the question when I try to bring up this subject. I dread the idea of something critical happening, and having to dig through feet of stuff to try and find her information.

(I am so cowardly in the face of this that I am considering getting back together with the guy I dumped years ago, just in hope of getting some emotional support.)

hey jon. to get the attention of the people you want, just keep posting here: Boston -- Classic or Dirty Water?

that's kind of our thread. (even if you didn't get a response last time)

it's been more inactive as of late than it has in the past, but it's possibly your best bet on ilx

Best wishes and positive thoughts to all on this thread -- this is hard, hard stuff.

Since his retirement, Pa C. has been living in a cabin in the north Georgia mountains. Over the last year or two it has become obvious that his ability to function on his own is waning. What finally prompted me to intervene was his inability to make the drive to or from our house, about 100 miles, without becoming confused and lost and arriving many hours late. After his last nerve-wracking attempt, I talked to him very directly about how much stress and fear his diminishing capacity was creating for me and for the rest of the family. His short-term memory is shot, but he's otherwise still fairly cogent, and he seemed to respond much better to my saying "you can't live this way any more because it's scaring me to death" than "you can't live this way any more because you're frail and demented."

Once I got him to acknowledge there was a problem, he gradually let me get more directly involved. That was about six months ago. Last week he moved into a place a few blocks from ours and so far seems to be adapting well to his new environment. How I am going to adapt to spending many hours a week helping him shop, clean, etc. remains to be seen.

I think a huge part of the challenge of these situations is breaking through the psychological conditioning of childhood in relating to a parent, whether that conditioning disposes one toward passivity, rebellion, deference, terror, or whatever. It's difficult to get past habitual emotional responses and find new ones that are based more on current events than on history. This opportunity for emotional reorientation is one faintly positive aspect of events that otherwise can feel overwhelming.

By calculation I'm up to around 13 tons of crap out of the house and into the Goodwill and Prima Deshecha: City Of The Future. Most of the heavyweight: mouse-pee infected furniture, 1200 pounds of rusted wrought-iron furniture, enough books to stock several Goodwill stores of the type of books Goodwills carry, and unending piles of accumulated bullshit that's hard to deal with. Every day I utter "Fuck, do I just put all that into a bag?" I feel like I'm paying some perverse type of psychic penalty for being really into Mad Men - having to dig out a mid-century modern house

I keep thinking in terms of restarting a derelict spaceship ("life-support is at 35% captain") but the reality is more ferally practical. I want to get the fucking toilet working so I don't auto-conclude "enh, it's just easier to pee in the trees on the hillside." On top of all that, I'M MOVING IN. It's hard not to think of it as squatting in a derelict place, but if those maniacs in Slab City can make it work out in apocalypse land I certainly can deal with this. Mad respect to those folks in Detroit who buy ten dollar houses and somehow Make It Work.

Meanwhile my mother is... well let me quote from an email my sister just sent me:

It seems that when mother is left alone, she walks around a bit and participates on the periphery of things going on, which is a big improvement. As soon as one of the staff is in the room or I'm there, she manipulates and moans and groans. There was an issue a week ago of two staff people having to make her get in the shower, and those people are now "evil."

There's another hoarder on the floor! She comes into other residents' rooms and takes stuff.

Potential problems!!

The CENSORED is having a hard time renting out the room next door because mother enjoys walking around in the nude. She doesn't go out in the hallway like that though--yet. Another big problem (brace yourself for this one) is that she is also very sexual and noisy about it. A number of dementia patients are like this--more men than women. I asked if there was some kind of med to tone it down, and there is one that they give to men sometimes. CENSORED STAFF will ask the doctor.

You cannot get enough praise and support for what you're dealing with, ET.

If I lived near you I would totally adopt your mom and hang out with her, because it is SO MUCH EASIER when it is not *your* parent!

i think you deserve a break
how heavy, on a scale of 1-10 is this for you? (feel free to not answer this if you don't want, i don't mean to pry)
i ask bc if it were me (and it will be eventually on some scale), i think i would be completely imploding. i hope you have someone you can talk to and hang with irl to decompress.

1 = can totes handle this no problem
10 = take me down to the hospital

aw dude, sending you good vibes.

It's all over the scale. Sometimes I wish my memory wasn't quite so sharp because *everything* in there has sense memory and you can't turn that off. My gf has come down several times to help me dig out and she approaches it as pure archeology - separating the treasure from the trash - and is asking the honest "keep, eBay, Goodwill, or trash" question and I keep having answering "trash" and getting frayed around the edges because every single fucking thing in there was a choice my mom made to value that thing more than she valued her family. There's no sense of importance - the piles of unhandled junk mail become equally as important as family photographs, kindergarten drawings, old furniture she compulsively bought at garage sales, broken hot plates, dozens of old desiccated dolls, even more dozens of teapots, hundreds of never opened cook books, water-damaged photographs that I remember not because of the vacation or occasion but because she made me feel bad about wearing glasses ("you got your father's eyes") and demanded that I take them off, and on and on and on.

At some point I just had to push back and deliberately say out loud "you will not be able to make sense out of this because she's crazy. Crazier for much longer than you suspected. It's also not your fault because she got a bad hand dealt to her by her parents." I've been seeing a therapist regularly for about a year and a half now. Good guy - he and his family left revolutionary Iran for Australia and then the US with only the clothes on their backs. Has a perspective on life I can relate to and specializes in PTSD. I actually started seeing him after I was laid off and discovered that nuTech had disrupted me out of my profession and into a New Economy Midlife Crisis. The mother stuff came a few months later and after a sufficiently long period of weed, screeching guitar noise, staying up all night watching X-Files reruns, Diablo 3 and halfhearted attempts at looking for work I had to make the choice of either surrender to depression and just be Depressed Guy or slowly and deliberately get some momentum going again. I went with cathartic determination and my own special blend of black humor.

The last major breakdown I had onsite was last week when I finally found the picture from the time my parents and I went to Florida to see the launch of the last moon landing flight - Apollo 17. A NASA astronaut from Orange County spoke at one of my mom's political groups, got us passes for the launch with everything it entails for a minor local visiting dignitary. Go ahead and guess how important that trip was to seven-year-old me. Anyway, after the flight he got the A17 crew to autograph a print of the launch - not a NASA PR auto pen, but actually hand-signed. The photo disappeared into the horde and hadn't been seen since 1973. Sure, that photo has huge artifact importance to the Telecom household but that to Florida was the last time my parents and I went on a vacation together and acted about as well as a normal family could be. Huge psychic importance and I wasn't giving good odds to recovery as six months into the digging I had found nothing. Until last weekend. Found it sandwiched in between 30 year old magazines and crumbling newspapers. Still in the original NASA envelope. I must have cried for 15 minutes straight.

Some cool side-effects... In the early 50s my dad was trying to sell short-stores to magazines. My mom always said that he put "writer" in the Father's Occupation box on my brother's birth certificate because he felt bad about putting in "Taxi Driver," but I didn't know that he was actually working the hustle. Found a box with all his stories complete with the rejection letters from Esquire. Remind me a little of Elmore Leonard.

Also discovered that my kindergarten art is so obvious of an indicator that I'm going to be into abstract expressionism, obsess over Kandinsky, Leger, etc.

Another side-effect. I'm in the best physical shape I've ever been in this century. My next door neighbor was positive that I was ten years younger. Seriously looking at preparing for a big hike on the John Muir Trail later on.

Elvis i fucking love you for these posts.

One of my parents-in-law is gravely ill rn, but NOT the one whose house is filled to the gills with a physical pandemonium that (I'm told, we've not been allowed in there in the 10 years my wife and I have been together) bids fair to put anything seen on Hoarders in the shade. When that parent in law passes I'm going to be the copilot for a garbage journey that will probably be unimaginably painful and intense for my wife. May tap you for wisdom when that time comes.

oh man elvis

pretty sure my reckoning will be, for better or worse, infinitely more mundane: fifty-year-old sewing/gardening implements, windows 3.1 manuals, 90s-era newspaper clippings, hidden caches of v8 juice forgotten amidst the mess

Seriously looking at preparing for a big hike on the John Muir Trail later on.

My dad and sis have done it. I encourage you to do so.

elvis, your posts in this thread are humbling and inspiring. i have a shit ton going on with my elderly folks at the moment, and i truly appreciate the fortitude, forthrightness, and imo righteous dignity that you present here. take care of yourself. hope you get to go hiking.

otm

ET, this sounds like an almost unbearable load, and yet you seem to be bearing it with forthrightness and even good (albeit black) humour. That you are taking this terrible experience and turning it into this heartbreaking yet beautiful and strengthening series of posts is such a sign of your personal strength and integrity. This is going to sound like a strange thing to say, but I hope that you are writing it down elsewhere, as well. You are such a creative person, creativity is really the way to handle these impossible and unbearable things. (Short way of saying: it's an insane and yet fascinating experience to be digging out the personal archeology of your and your family's life as you try to transform a hoarder's prison into a liveable home. I'd read a book about that subject, should you have the energy to turn it into one.)

I dunno about saying the other half of what I want to say (my talking about mental illness on ILX always ends up coming out wrong) but it's this: you do have the right to feel angry and sad and frustrated and betrayed about your mother's aberrant behaviour. (Some of it - the stuff about the glasses - yeah, that's not mental illness, that's a choice.) But the stuff that very much *is* mental illness - the hoarding, the indiscriminate composting of your most treasured family memories in amidst fucking garbage - the thing that I always have to try to remember when dealing with the seriously mentally ill members of my family, is that people are not being mentally ill *at* you. Intention is one of those hard things to disentangle, because, when someone is hurting you, and badly, it does not matter if they *meant* to step on your foot or not, it still hurts having your foot stepped on and your bones crushed, and you have a right to that pain. But when you're reading into it "my mother didn't care about me any more than she cared about rubbish" - that's not how it is. Your mother's mental illness was unable to distinguish between mementoes of your life and mementoes of the morning's post, but that is not an intentional act, that is the madness, and as hard and as painful as it is, one cannot draw conclusions about what a person truly values, emotionally, from what their mental illness and their compulsions compel them to do.

Like, to use a metaphor here, which will feel very familiar to you: I hoard CDs. You've seen (at least part of) my CD collection, and you know that it's physically impossible for me to get rid of CDs, even promos I don't even like. I keep everything, it's a weird compulsion. Yet, when it comes to the things I treasure, I fucking know the difference between "this is a treasured and meaningful artefact, a demo that was given to me by the guitarist" and "these are 37 copies of the same single (not even my favourite single!) in different formats that I just have because my bandmate was working at their record company when it came out that I cannot bring myself to get rid of." No one looking at that CD collection would know that the treasure sandwiched between 37 copies of junk is my treasure, but I still know. It's a dumb metaphor and probably doesn't work, but it's just about the futility of trying to draw ideas about value from the actions of a compulsion.

Anyway, just sending you light & love and reminding you that there will eventually be an end to all this digging.

Branwell -

If anything I've learned just how human my mother is. I allude to her family background a little in http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=5052558&boardid=77&threadid=100094 but in short - she was raised in a 1920s-era children-seen-and-not-heard family were parental emotions were, at best, austere. Her father was also a out-of-control hoarder. Furthermore, she was the eldest of five daughters - I can only imagine what the competition was like in the middle of that: fifty years later, my mother still held a grudge against a younger sister who got ballet lessons when she didn't. Others held grudges against my mother for being the one who "moved away and left us." I was born so late into the marriage that all of this background may as well have happened to another person - I never really had an idea of what her experiences were like and reading all the saved letters (and they're *all* saved) has been, well, eye-opening. She was dealt a bad hand, got married at 19, and sadly was never able to get out in front of her own festering mental illness. Who could? It was the 1940s and 50s - mental illness itself wasn't even an addressable problem, much less hoarding. My dad used to say "I wonder how bad it could get?" Um dad, pretty fucking bad!

Of course I bring my own baggage and perspective to the Current Situation. I'm a expert problem-solving guy - perpetually on the lookout for patterns and intentions and latching onto them like Sherlock Holmes. I can't help it - my whole brain is optimized for doing that. After thirteen broken hotplates, 70+ teapots, endless numbers of empty tissue boxes and on and on and on it I finally had to admit to myself that I probably would not and never will find any connections, explanations, and certainly not any answers and to just get on with the digging. If I paused at every "WTF is this?" moment I'd still be outside trying to open the door. I'm also completely terrified because in a parallel universe that's very close to this one, I'm a hoarder too and probably just as bad - towers of albums, books, ephemera, on and on.

I used to think that I was responsible for a lot of her behavior. Two weeks ago I made it to the back wall of the garage (the windows had not been opened in over 45 years - I know this for a fact) and found most of her things that pre-dated her marriage that she could never let go of. There's a lot of it. I wish that she could have found a way to let go but hooboy were there a lot of consequences. I need to write a follow-up post to my exegesis at Tell me all about 10-year-old you

I didn't intend to take over the thread, but megathanks to everyone here for all of the support. Whenever I answer the "so what have you been up to?" question with "89-year-old hoarder mom" more often than not it inevitably ends up being a "I don't know what's going to happen to my parents" discussion. Seems like there's a lot of ambient fear, uncertainty and doubt when it comes to dealing with parents in the final stage of their lives. I wouldn't usually suggest stream of consciousness core-dumps on ILX, but HFS I gotta get this out somewhere.

xxxxxxpost to Jon - please ask away when it's time.

I can only describe the excavation as like writing a book, climbing a mountain, driving I-10 through Texas or really anything that requires constant, steady, unchanging work. It sucks, I hate it. I want my weekends back and then all of sudden, holy shit I made a clean spot. Hey, there's a house under here. That bedroom can now be yellow-tagged.

Sign posts like that keep you going - also taking things to Goodwill where I'm hoping the stuff will, you know, actually get used for once.

OK, one last thing.

You know who I hate? I hate the people at Franklin Mint, QVC, or anyplace who markets ridiculously priced "collectables" at elderly folks vulnerable to the exploitation of nostalgia. Over a long enough time scale, the value of these collectables is a Big Fat Zero. Can only imagine the meetings going on as these people look at aging population of baby boomers and how to best market them out of their money.

the thing that I always have to try to remember when dealing with the seriously mentally ill members of my family, is that people are not being mentally ill *at* you.

Thanks for this, Branwell. You're absolutely right.
I've been dealing with my own aging parents hell, as documented upthread, and yeah I do get in these fits of rage because of my mother's drinking and all the accidents and the middle-of-the-night calls from the local hospital. But beyond all the horrible practicalities, the hardest part is this misguided resentment I have towards my mom - as if she was stabbing me in the back everytime she buys a bottle.

Louis Theroux's documentary about dementia patients in Arizona to thread:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xs16mn_extreme-love-dementia_shortfilms

^^^just finished watching this--thank you for posting. I'm feeling a little torn about doing my next internship (I do 2--am currently in a hospital ICU) in hospice or at a memory care facility. I'm going to try to get a volunteer gig it a local memory care joint to get a little experience.

When I first learned that dementia progression was broken down into numbered stages I kept thinking of hurricane and tornado strength ratings. If you're already at stage five, then what the heck happens when things get even worse?

Last week the nursing home called. In short, my mother's needs have gone beyond what they can provide. They're absolutely correct too... her dementia is progressing very quickly and because of all the falling, she's had to trade in the walker for a wheelchair. She can barely cut her food, much less move a fork to her mouth. Using the bathroom (which she does often) is more of a production. Her instinct is to get up and go, but that's when she keeps falling down and whenever she complains about the pain the home automatically sends her to the hospital for examination. Repeat repeat repeat.

The next step is a board-and-care house. These are residential houses with five to six residents and since they're smaller, the staff (the better ones have RNs on duty) can provide constant and more individualized care. They're also significantly less expensive. So last week my sister and I met up with a Realtor For The Elderly and we visited a half-dozen. Knocked flat at just how camouflaged they are - they look just like a regular Orange County suburban house from the outside, but the insides are all set up for dementia care. Instantly thought of suburban marijuana grow houses or stash houses for the undocumented. Apparently there's a lot of them in OC, because of the crash quite a few homeowners have converted their properties to board-and-cares. Just in time too, there's not enough facility space to accommodate the growing numbers of patients.

Finding the right match is tricky. One house was scratched off because of my mother's casual racist colonialism (the director was Indian and I instantly envisioned my mother going off again on "how horrible it was that England gave up on India"). Another house scratched because the manager looked visibly worried when we mentioned the middle-of-the-night hollering and attempts to walk. All of them have hospice options which I suspect we're going to need sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile there are some issues with her physical health. A couple months ago the doctors ran a complete physical test and found an aortic aneurysm. Surgery is out of the question because of her age and fragility. She's on a pain patch right now, which seems to help but the dementia is front-and-center.

BTW, the costs of all this is eye-croggling. Because of all the outbursts, we had to move her to a private room - a change from $5500/month to $6650/month. Pharmacy costs are equally as HFS: $1800/month - mostly from a couple of black box meds. There's some small relief from Medicare and social security. There's an upcoming change in January that will relieve some more, but I don't know what it is - my sister is handling all the medical stuff while I deal with the house. For that matter, I'm unsure if my mother will make it to January.

Oh yeah, I finished moving into the house yesterday.

Didn't expect to be updating again so soon, but the board-and-care is out for the time being. The dementia behavior is completely out of control again. She's now "painting herself in shit" and hollering so loudly at all times that folks on the first floor are calling up to see what's going on. Anyway, it's back to the hospital for now while the doctors again readjust her anti-psychotics and try to level her out.

One of my aunts commented that my mom "thought of herself as an only child who happened to have 4 younger sisters" and commonly threw tantrums. The nursing home manager remarked that as dementia patients regress back to the toddler stage those emotional memories become front-and-center again. Fucking hell.

One resident on the memory care floor has 11 children and all of them are fighting amongst themselves. The conservator wants to quit.

thank you for your contributions to this thread, which as horrid as they are to read give a very lucid insight into something that few people who don't have first-degree relatives with dementia will be particularly acquainted this

acquainted *with*

Yeah. I mean...damn. DAMN.

ET, seriously, if you need to step away for an evening at some point, you know where I'm at, and you're more than welcome to just come over here and decompress.

I can't even imagine on how families deal with early-onset dementia/Alzheimer's. One of the dementia patients featured in the Theroux documentary is a forty year old woman with a family and a nine year old child. Utterly heartbreaking. I feel like I'm... well, not lucky but maybe dealing with an abbreviated experience? It's not like I'm super-close with my mother, but as nakh. said she's still first-degree and you only have one. I was 22 when my dad died and very young at handling Big Life Issues like that. I'd like to think I'm better at that now.

I can't wait until I no longer need to monopolize the thread, but I'm glad it's here should another ILXor need it.

BTW, TIg Notaro's LIVE may just be the best thing to listen to when you're suddenly navigating through pits of stress and uncertainty:
http://tignation.com/2013/08/tig-notaro-live-full-release/

saw my 101-yr old grandfather again today -- he said he misses his mother

shits real

ugh

my wife's mom has been on and off various medications for her alzheimer's and she has also been prone to seizures. she went off one medication that was giving her certain 'digestive issues' and then yesterday had another seizure, pulling down my wife's dad as she fell. she's okay, relatively speaking, and is at home. my wife's dad has a small hip fracture and needs a rod installed to prevent any future complete break.

we drove out there last night to deliver some overnight stuff to my wife, who had gone earlier. my wife's mom is asking to go home or asking where her husband is or needs to (or more accurately thinks she needs to) use the bathroom every ten minutes. my wife's trying to use this time to get rid of any crap lying around the house resulting from her dad's hoarding problem. on my way out the door last night i grabbed about twenty old used tissues lying on the dining table and an old banana.

i did not attend to the pile of paper towel bits: you know how when you tear a paper towel and sometimes there's just a little triangle left to the roll? he doesn't leave it there, he tears it off and saves them in a pile on the kitchen counter for tiny spills. this would be ok if the counter wasn't filled with dozens of other things and also if he ever actually used the scraps.

Elvis did you ever find anything to read about hoarding? I read Stuff a while ago and it's a thoughtful, sensitive, fascinating-but-not-lurid account of hoarding and the psychology of hoarding. (It's popular nonfiction, not an academic text, but the authors are a research psychologist and a clinician with loads of experience.)

ugh

it's not like it was a total surprise, but getting the official dementia diagnosis for an otherwise extremely healthy 73 year old is oh god I know this road and it is such a fucking sad road

oh quincie. It is.

already I have had suggestions for "looking into coconut oil and a super-low carb diet" I mean this is Alzheimer's, c'mon.

suggestions from well-meaning ppl who don't have a clue, is what I mean

yeah, the pervasive notion that dementia can be halted or reversed is depressing, because it just reinforces that these helpful ppl have not witnessed the cruel decline in person

mr veg's dad continues to decline. seeing him slowly fade is the hardest thing i have faced. it's like watching dandelion seeds blow away one at a time

each time there's just a little bit less of him, and a little more fog

when I was small my mom was POA for her mother, who had non-Alzheimer's senile dementia and must have been a mighty challenge to deal with. It was many years before the phone in her room was taken away and until then my mom would regularly have frustrating phone calls with her that ended in shouting, which was naturally upsetting and confusing to small-me. Thinking about it now as a young adult and my folks on the edge of retirement makes me anxious sometimes. I don't know what they might need in 10 or 20 or 30 years, or if they have advance directives, or anything.

I highly recommend "5 Wishes" for advance directive planning:

http://www.agingwithdignity.org/five-wishes.php

It's actually pretty cheesy in places, but has the advantages of 1) being very straightforward and accessible and 2) recognized and honored as a legal document across most states (so you don't necessarily have to do a state-specific directive) and 3) no lawyer required

The palliative care team at my hospital uses it and it is pretty much the "go to" document for hospitals and hospices. I'm doing one myself.

this is relevant to the discussion, tangentially:

http://loudwire.com/megadeth-dave-mustaine-help-find-missing-mother-in-law/

http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/glen-campbells-battle-alzheimers-last-recorded-song-n220031

there should maybe be a 'fuck dementia/alzheimer's' thread. it is a terrible, terrifying thing.

The fact that Alzheimer's is a thing that is happening to ppl every day irl is utterly intolerable to me, one hates to scale dissimilar horrors but I abhor it even more than C.

Not to start some sort of suffering Olympics, but Alzheimer's takes the gold for absolute worst fucking disease.

like i've said before we're dealing with my wife's mom going through it, she's towards the end of stage 6. she seems to be where glen campbell is at, recognizing people and able to have happy moments, but also on the cusp of going into a care facility. she's had these plateaus that last for months and months, then there's a sudden decline, then another plateau. so much of it is being aware that another decline is inevitable, but knowing just when it will occur is impossible. w/r/t my previous story a few weeks ago, my wife was at her parents' house for a week while her dad was in the hospital and they've had caregivers for most of that time since. it's just devastating stuff, going over there and seeing how bad it is.

My mother's 90th birthday was on November 1. The hospice folks (she's on hospice now) brought in a big cake and had a party. She loved it. Her current med combination is working out well and her dementia state has advanced along to whatever counts as Stage Five Acceptance.

Meanwhile, we hit the wall at 18 tons of crap hauled out of the house. There were dishes in the crawlspace, under all the sinks, everywhere... the woman who's handling the estate sale (my life in the the hoarder estate sale voyeur underground deserves another post) has seen all the obsessions: dolls, penguins, radios, but apparently my mom earns the "I've never seen so many dishes before!"award.

The sale is happening this Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday. Here's what's left.

I hope it's to some extent gratifying that after all of this heartache your mom was able to enjoy a birthday party and you've unearthed enough of value from the home to have an extravaganza.

Best of luck and congrats on all the progress ET.

Good luck with the sale! It's encouraging to hear how much you've accomplished.

I should never click on those things because it's always "Wow, I had that toy airplane! Is that a Snoopy sno-cone maker? Here, let me get my billfold…"

Yes, I see a Cathrineholm bowl in there and a lot of the kind of stuff my grandma left to my mother that's now considered sentimental family loot.

Basically we'll be right over.

I like knowing that many of those items are going to go on to be much-loved by other folks. I'm glad your mom is feeling better and had a great birthday. You are a great person and I really admire your grace and humor and humanity in dealing with this most difficult of situations. I hope I can be half as good with my dad as things progress.

Sounds like you're getting to a (relatively) good place - really happy to hear

sending good thoughts your way Elvis

same, i am sincerely in awe of the enormous task you took on and of how gracious and respectful and loving you have been throughout. and i'm glad your mom had a nice birthday.

ILX gets first dibs on whatever's left from the sale. The only catch is that you have to come here to get it. I take Square.

Dishes and bowls are a hard sell in the current estate sale market. Read as much sociology into this as you want, but it's difficult to liquidate those kinds of family inheritance. Sterling silver is only worth the melt value. Dishes, china, etc. that aren't microwaveable just aren't desirable except for other folks of that generation. OTOH, I've been told that a lot of dish patterns are desirable in China and that it's relatively common for liquidators to buy up all the dishes from a sale, repeat until one container unit is filled, and then ship it off across the Pacific. 2014 economy: go figure.

I recognize at least two china patterns. I don't know if it's worth seeing if Replacements Ltd would buy anything.

"Ooh, it's a special family dinner taking place in our house? Liao, make sure we set out the fine California."

Er, is a joke my granddad would have made, that silly guy.

aaargh

four hospital trips in two weeks for my father in law, he refuses to cooperate in any way when he's back at home, won't take meds, won't eat, but is of sound mind and lies to everybody so they can't do anything just yet.

L is near Hudson NY on FMLA time (Family Medical Leave Act) and it is slammed w/snow as well, she has been driving him back and forth from the Albany hospitals in hellish road conditions while he yells at her.

her dad doesn't want her there. everybody (family, medical folks) is telling her that it's time to let go.

what is up with these WW2 guys who just fuck with/abuse everybody and treat serious issues like they are jokes, it's like they live inside their own personal mythology.

she's been reading "Being Mortal" and I guess it helps, a little, in the abstract sense.

I wish I had gone with her now, we didn't think it was gonna turn out this badly when she first left.

aaand now he's in the ICU

sometimes people just want to die

I guess

i'm sorry. that sounds really rough.
this thread totally freaks me out but i am trying to steel myself for the future so i read it anyway

yeah that's what's going on xp

he's been clear with her that he wants to die at home if possible, has signed over power of attorney, no heroic measures, all that good stuff. so at least the paperwork is in order, there's a will and a trust, all that.

I just wish he could ease up on her a bit

Have you talked with hospital's palliative care team? ICU docs can be dicks about not a palliative consult unless you demand it. Hospice is good at helping with family dynamics stuff. You can ask for the hospital social worker for referrals.

I'm so sorry you're both having to deal with this, her up close and you long distance. Being Mortal doesn't address cantankerousness enough or how to deal with people you care for behaving badly toward you. I get reminded of the nasty old racist lady trying to kick her morphine addiction in To Kill a Morningside whenever I hear my MIL let fly. Not that it helps.

will forward to L, she's the one there right now, thanks xp

thanks Jaq

the VA hospital person dryly described him as "fiercely independent"

her dad doesn't want her there. everybody (family, medical folks) is telling her that it's time to let go.

This is not advice nor bear any reflection on your situation.

But those two sentences describe the very similar situation I watched my dad go through with his mother. He would drive back and forth 300 miles roundtrip to take her to the doctor, to go through her bills, to get her groceries, etc. Sounds very noble except that you have to keep in mind that he has four siblings who also lived in the same city as my grandmother, including a son who lived with her.

He said it was his duty, that he had to, that the other siblings wouldn't or couldn't handle running errands or have the know-how to wrangle a head nurse to get grandma her medication. He was also an overweight diabetic in his late 50s, doing all of this driving through the worst stretch of I-40 in America. Once, he told me on the side, something had happened and his car spun around in a 360 before he stopped in the median.

Sometimes, I'd go over there by myself to visit. Grandma would tell me how she didn't know why my Dad did all that. She'd complain about how angry he'd get at her. She appreciated it, she told me, but it seemed like too much to her at times.

I'm not doing any of that. I love my parents, but no.

thanks pp

I should clarify here that my wife is an RN and works in a hospital, so she is familiar with the systems in general.

and although she does have some of that overachiever/wounded healer stuff going on (by her own admission), I know she wouldn't hang on as long as your dad did in that case.

an interesting side note here is that the family uber-Republicans she argues with on FB have stepped up the most, helped the most, given the best advice, and generally just been awesome and supportive.

if he makes it out of the hospital this time, there is a small army of assorted cousins and uncles who will be checking in on him, they are the ones who are telling her it is OK to let go.

diagnosis is bacterial endocarditis

they think they caught it early enough that antibiotics will take care of it

but their next level is, like, bowel removal and open heart surgery, for an 84-yo guy who has emphysema, is medically/legally "frail" (I did not know this was a thing), and weighs 115 lbs. utter Western medicine head-up-its-ass insanity.

quincie, L says thank you and she is ready to demand palliative care if necessary. if her dad demands the surgery, she may break out the big guns and have a mental health evaluation (which he will almost certainly fail, right now he is also "confused" in the medical sense) so that she can nix the extreme heroic measures.

aargh.

so sorry sleeve, please can you give l. my kindest and best wishes.

thanks estela

antibiotics appear to have done the trick. from L:

At the hospital waiting to talk to a doctor. He is better and plans are being made for transfer to a rehab place for IV meds and physical therapy! He's agreeing. I have a few more things to tie up but think I will be able to swing a ticket for Wednesday. Much of what may be needed of me could be done by phone and fax...

(she's stayed about ten days longer than her initial plan was for)

Phew, sleeve, that's so rough. I hope she has the chance for some self-care when she gets back home.

I think my mom is showing early signs of dementia but she denies it and won't get a screening. :(

xp thanx carl.

self-care and pampering are definitely on the agenda :)

this whole situation plays in to a lot of the old Italian patriarchal expectations - that the women of the family drop everything and devote their lives to the men when duty calls. L doesn't play that game and never has, fortunately she only had to argue her case with one relative (a woman). I know in orbit and others have written eloquently about this in ILX before, the expectation of total self-sacrifice.

Frobisher, is there a will, advance medical directives, that sort of stuff? it's a tough subject but having some of that in place definitely makes it easier down the road, speaking from experience.

Not to link dump, but I saw this story on NPR about a residential care home that has phased out anti-psychotics for dementia. This approach seems like it has some common ground with certain approaches to child rearing or cat ownership. Like, our kid loves to open a specific desk drawer and pull out the checkbook. Rather than try to stop her (she's one, so it's not like reasoning is an option here), we just took the checks out of the cover, and also put a toy she likes in the drawer, so now she can open it and pull things out until her heart's content. Or giving the cat something acceptable to scratch next to the chair we don't want her to scratch (thank you Jackson Galaxy). Basically adapting the environment to the people living in it instead of adapting the people to the environment.

Anyway, here's the story - http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/12/09/368539057/this-nursing-home-calms-troubling-behavior-without-risky-drugs.

I saw that story and the harsh truth is that long-term care facilities that are for-profit are not willing to pay for the staff necessary to create individualized therapy plans that are not strictly medical (the one in the story above is non-profit). I worked part-time at a place that wouldn't even pay for an extra nursing aide in the evenings to help get people to bed--even though we were able to show that falls among residents decreased when one extra aide was on shift.

Yeah somebody brought that up in the comments. It's monstrous.

Being rich is nowhere more useful than when it comes to elder care. The place I'd choose for my father is 12 grand a month.

Twelve. Grand. Per. Month.

jfc

O_o

It's nice but it ain't the Ritz, y'know? Medicare does not cover long term care, and the nicer places don't take Medicaid, which you'd have to get really fucking poor to qualify for anyway.

I am going to manage my own dottage (lol no kids) by moving to Finland and/or Taiwan, where they take good care of old people on the cheap.

Or the Netherlands where I can just smoke a nice joint before being euthanized in a dignified manner.

Holy shit that's insane. TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS? What the fuck is wrong with this country.

Or the Netherlands where I can just smoke a nice joint before being euthanized in a dignified manner.

By the time the Baby Boomer cohort goes through old age, I expect someone to create real-world suicide booths.

Wow, those nursing homes are expensive!! I moved in with Dad to watch over him after heart surgery, thankfully between the two of us we (barely) had enough for that.

I guess it is sexist that I'd be expected to drop everything for Dad (now deceased), but I was closest to him and I loved him that much. I try not to be bitter about no one else putting up much of an effort. That's just how I was raised.

Of course I'm still having trouble recovering from that economically. But at least Dad had a real roof over his head in his last years.

Also when Dad was recovering in the hospital, the doctor called us all in a meeting so we could learn what an artificial heart does, what it's like living with a person who has one.

Thankfully that was a decision we never had to make as the doctor decided he didn't need one. It was terrifying, though, having to sit through the presentation.

Before my mother switched over to hospice care, her monthly cost was pushing $9000/month once you accounted for the medications and everything else. There's a reason why the Walmarts and Costcos around the retirement clusters in Orange County all heavily stock adult diapers.

so my dad died last week after more than a year of extreme Parkinson agony. A relief for him, in a way, but man this is tough.
Now I need to figure out what to do with my mom who thinks she's autonomous but really isn't, especially considering her severe alcoholism.
My dad being sick justified the presence of a lot of home care and now that he's gone I don't really know how I can convince my mom to have someone at home who could discreetly watch over her for me.

My condolences Baaderonixx, that's tough.

Don't have a lot of advice to offer, though when my nan became a widow, she too had to 'warm up' to accepting help for quite some time. In her case it was trying to be strong, and not admit incapabilities or weaknesses. It didn't take too long for her to see she actually needed help though. But your mother is probably younger.

In any case, all the best man.

I know this is "aging parents" and not "aging grandparents" but my parents are about to the point of throwing up their hands. I have two grandfathers, 88 and 91 years of age, who are stubborn old men who live alone and refuse to change their ways. My parents check on my mom's dad every week or two, steal his clothes to launder them, make sure there aren't too many mice and that the house is livable (he lives in an old farmhouse).

Apparently some people driving by saw him next to the mailbox down by the road, fallen over, sometime in the last day and helped him to the house but he refused to be taken to the hospital. The neighbors checked on him later, and he'd made it no further than the chair inside the front door and accepted the fact he needed to go seek treatment. He had a bladder infection that apparently led to sepsis, is responding to treatment in the hospital, but apparently might lose some fingers from having been out in the cold. My uncle is apparently who was called first, so my parents aren't even heading out to see him for now. They do more than they could be expected to, and I think having him safely in the hospital, and with my uncle as the first point of contact, is actually an improvement in some ways even if his current condition is bad.

My other grandfather, my dad's dad, is the 91 year old and very much the stubborn obnoxious WW2 veteran type. He fell over in his kitchen the other day and my dad had to drive over to lift him off the floor, since he was stuck there. He's fallen before and he has one of those medic alert bracelets and has seriously had paramedics come just to get him off the floor.

I am emotionally supportive of my parents but there's not a lot I can do other than moral support.

This is very hard on the people like your parents who see their job as keeping your grandfathers healthy and alive, but as I age further and have watched my parents' generation age and die I could definitely see myself going in this direction, too.

Unless you are a prodigy of longevity, at 89 and 91 the idea of 'health' has lost most of the meaning it had for you earlier in life and its place is now occupied by something wholly nebulous and indeterminate. You scarcely recall what 'health' is any more or how to pursue it. otoh, death has also changed meaning in fundamental ways, and seems like something very close and quotidian, a presence so familiar you could almost draw its face without looking at the paper.

What looks like pure obstinacy, and a kind of fatalism that would be very inappropriate in a younger person, is a somewhat realistic reaction to being so close to the end of life. They know it's a fight they can't win.

My parents have vowed to move into a community-based living situation at a certain age threshold and have been strongly contemplating moves past that. They see it as incredibly self-centered, afaik, and are kind of resigned to letting this play out since they were unable to force many issues earlier in life, partially due to my uncles not really agreeing to having productive talks.

I guess what I'm saying is that every time I have the idea "I could definitely see myself going in this direction" I shudder and add things on to my living will. This is a really bad direction.

xp: Yeah, that bridge was crossed a while back when your grandfathers chose to continue to live alone, and didn't put an adequate support structure around themselves to let them die in place without calling on your parents for constant help in their final year(s). Americans don't do death very well.

added: My wife and I know we can't lean on children to bail us out, so we are planning what supports we'll need past age 70 to 75, as best we can.

I don't see why you can't talk about caring for other elders, such as grandparents, here.

Recently lost my grandma, who was 98. She drove a car until she was 96. Frankly, I was shocked when she passed. She was still walking on her own. Don't smoke and eat a lot of grapefruit.

Hospice folks are the best.

Also, that "death smell" that everyone talks about on AllNurses.com is a very real thing.
http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/does-death-have-452535.html

I guess what I'm saying is that we're in the endgame

Oh, ET.

Hi there - long time reader, first time caller. My mom is 70. She had emergency surgery yesterday because of a bowel obstruction, which turned out to be NOT CANCER (phew) but rather a huge but exploded benign ovarian cyst made of pus. Apparently she had polycystic ovaries when much, much younger and one just stuck around, growing to the size of a softball until a week ago, when it went BOOM and she started to feel unwell. She's a total stubborn Minnesota Swede don't-bother-the-doctor type, so am relieved she got help and will get better.

Exactly one week ago we got the "you better stick around - don't make any plans" message. The hospice nurse noticed "the smell" (see link upthread) and irrespective of age, gender, nationality, etc. that distinct smell is the early signal that the body is closing up shop. You've probably heard the stories about cats and dogs being present around the dying and that smell what they zero in on. I'd describe it as an odd hybrid of old mushrooms and burnt sugar. Hospice folks are trained to detect it.

I visited my mom on Christmas day and given her overall situation (she's 90) - she was doing pretty good. We opened up cards (she remembered who they were all from), had a conversation, and she could still manage to eat and drink. One week later and you could obviously feel that master fader steadily being lowered. On Monday she managed a "Happy new year!" By Thursday she wasn't noticeably responding at all.

Last night we'd been playing for a couple hours last night when I just stopped, put my guitar down, and turned off my amps. Nothing alarmist, just a "I need to stop" and my gf and I were talking for a few minutes when I said "the phone could ring anytime." No more than twenty seconds later my sister calls: "It's over."

I was in Trader Joe's earlier in the day and impulsively bought a bouquet of sunflowers for the house. I don't really do that and I had no clue that my mom was going to pass a couple hours later, but they're sure brightening the place up.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8654/15635602014_a115d578b9_z.jpg

sorry man.

sorry elvis

My condolences - its been a long road for you.

RIP and wishing you the best

I'm very sorry for your loss Chris. Wishing you the very best.

That photo is wonderful by the way. A treasure.

Ive been following but too scared to pipe up. Now's the time - first, my condolences, and sympathies.

My dad just told me he has a serious neurological disease, made me promise not to tell anyone (aside from partner, who I had to negotiate for) and a week after my trip home I'm kinda quietly freaking out. Handling it, but I can tell I'm not feeling right.

I'm glad your mom is at peace, Elvis. I believe in premonitions too, that part was beautiful.

<3 LL, that is so hard

Not even close to what you all are going through, but the partner of a close older relative of ours was diagnosed with a pretty bad case of prostate cancer. Our side of the family was sworn to secrecy while he waited to tell his side of the family after the holidays were over.

That made for some weird gatherings.

i'm sorry for your loss, chris, but also relieved for both you and your mother - the suffering is now hopefully over.

Hugs to you, Elvis, and to you, LL.

I hope you're able to find some peace in her passing, Elvis.

<3 LL!

My maternal grandfather is going to be in the hospital for at least a couple weeks, and my uncle is checking around for a spot at assisted living facilities, which is excellent.

sorry Elvis - went through this exactly one month ago, hope you can stay strong, focus on all the things your mother did and saw and come to the conclusion that it's been a good life. I know that thought helped me realise that to some extent there was nothing to be sad about my dad's passing.

my father-in-law is out of the hospital!

now he gets two weeks in a nursing home for rehab, and hopefully goes back home after that.

so my dad died last week after more than a year of extreme Parkinson agony. A relief for him, in a way, but man this is tough.
Now I need to figure out what to do with my mom who thinks she's autonomous but really isn't, especially considering her severe alcoholism.
My dad being sick justified the presence of a lot of home care and now that he's gone I don't really know how I can convince my mom to have someone at home who could discreetly watch over her for me.

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Friday, 19 December 2014 19:46 (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So eventually I stayed with my mom for a bit more than a month to sort out all the paperwork, inheritance, etc.
I thought that after a month of complete abstinence my mom would manage to stay sober for a bit, but now, barely three days after me leaving, she's back to heavy drinking.
This is really the nighmare scenario since, as I posted a month ago, now ther'e really no-one to watch over her (I live a 4-5 hour drive away). When drinkinh she's prone to falling over at home and in the street, epilepsy, getting robbed, etc.
Pondering what to do - I don't really have space to have her stay with me at present and paying somebody just to watch over her seems a bit crazy and unaffordable.
I've just bought a new flat in which I haven't even moved into yet but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't already re-sell it, use the inheritance money and buy a big suburban house in which my mom could live with me and my wife. Seems a bit crazy to have my mom live with me permanently at this age (me in my thirties and her in her sixties) but I'm at my wit's end really...

Oh Baad I'm so sorry. That's really my biggest fear - my dad passing before my mom and me not knowing what the hell to do with her. Is there anyone that lives near her that you can enlist to maybe check up on her regularly? Not a carer but a friend or something?

thx ENBB - not really, my mom lives in a big condo in the big city but is pretty isolated - her friends are old, frail and scattered. I think the only solution is to have her live with me or a

oops
... or at least close to me, but I realise that, to some extent, I'm procrastinating in starting this process (ie. sell her house, drive her back with me kicking and screaming) because sub-consciously i'm still hoping/expecting validation from her, that she'd wake up sober one day and say "sure, you're right, I'll come with you". Clearly taht's never gonna happen. Everyone around me is telling me that I'm past the stage where I need worry about her agreeemnt and her comfort and that I should force things through. Pretty difficult to accept though.

Respectfully, rearranging your whole life in order to care for an addict doesn't seem like a good long-term strategy.

well I can't imagine that said addict will live that long tbh - but you're right, problem though is I don't see any alternatives...
My mom is clearly not fit to live on her own but otoh legally I am in no position to impose anything on her (eg. if I dragged her and put her in a elderly home, she'd escape immediately).
Some people tell me that I should resign myself to accept the situation and let her drink herself to death but, besides the moral aspect, I know that I'd just be in a state of constant panic which would prevent me from living my life all the same
Anyway sorry for hijacking this thread with my freak-outs.

I get it. I mean it wasn't my mom but it was someone I cared about, and I've seen other ppl go through similar.

"besides the moral aspect" -- do you think it's immoral to let someone choose addiction/accept that people sometimes choose addiction?

That's very similar to what my parents are going through with my grandfathers. I think, luckily, that my mom's dad is going to end up in an assisted living place after his release from the hospital, which is really what he's needed for years.

I think the addiction part in b's story there is an extenuating circumstance, but it's just another factor that makes someone unable to care for him/herself. If you can't convince someone that it's in their best interest to change their life, you kind of have to wait until their life changes to the extent it's no longer viable. It doesn't mean that you don't want them to have some help or at least compassion, and cutting off all help is really difficult. I think it's a matter of finding the balance where you feel like a decent person without being an enabler.

Also there's something about the end of life that makes me want to throw all the usual things I think are true about addiction/addicts -- extra so when it's a parent. Addiction may be involved but it's just not the primary thing. I totally understand the impulse to house mom under these circumstances.

my main goal atm is getting my parents out of their crumbling house and into a place they are safe and comfortable

do you think it's immoral to let someone choose addiction/accept that people sometimes choose addiction?

Tricky question - not sure where exactly I stand on this on principle, but I get your drift of course.
In the case of aging parents, I still think there is I have some kind of moral responsibility to protect them from themselves (be it from addiction or anything really).
In my mom's specific case, decades of drinking and a pretty horrific accident 4 years ago have significantly affected her intellectual abilities, so I'm not sure I would ever think of her as "choosing" addiction.

People who -choose- addiction can be VERY controlling, even if they are not physically strong.

People suffering from dementia and aging/ illness-related tantrums can also be so manipulative that if you seek therapy for it - as I did - they will tell you to quit feeling guilty and get the hell out. This is what I went through with Dad, but he was so sick I decided to stick with him until he died. My brother and sister bailed on him, though. Can't say I blame them.

problem though is I don't see any alternatives...

When every choice open to you comes with deeply undesirable consequences, the only thing you can do is make the least bad choice that seems most manageable and get on with it. It sounds like you understand this already.

btw, it is ok to feel wretched about the whole thing. that's just one more lousy piece of the situation you'll have to manage as best you can -- and while it may be tempting to shove those feelings aside as unproductive, my experience has been that it works better to find at least a small slice of brain space and time to acknowledge them on a somewhat regular basis.

good luck. I'm sure you're going to do about as well as anyone could in the circumstances.

tbh - I think my mom would probably be diagnosed with mild alcoholic dementia at this point. I guess I've been denying it for a while because dementia seems to imply "CRAY-ZAY!", but it's clear that her short term memory is shot and complex reasoning, planning or decision-making are all out of reach. I don't know to which extent psychiatric help would be of help

Wouldn't that be actual physical damage from alcohol? I'm not sure what is done about that. Epithets like "crazy" aren't helpful.

"dementia" is just a term that means a loss of mental ability, not insanity. psychiatric help is unlikely to restore her mental abilities. even quitting drinking would be more in the nature of slowing the damage rather than reversing it.

An acquaintance of mine drank heavily for twenty years, and now he permanently slurs his words. He can't remember my name half the time, either. It's a waste of faculties that makes me cry.

My maternal grandfather, following his disastrous fall next to his mailbox and hospitalization, is now in a nursing/assisted living facility! We now know he's safe, forced to change clothes on a regular basis, and they bathe him twice per week. My mom had his mail forwarded to her and she can now handle his finances from home, and visit him less regularly, and no longer feels obligated to do his laundry.

Grandfather #2 is still being obnoxious, but my parents already seem like a burden has been lifted.

That must be a huge relief. How is he adjusting?

Slowly but surely, it sounds like. He enjoys talking to people, so I'm sure he'll grow to like it. I think he's currently telling people about his mean daughter who won't let him go home, but that'll pass.

It seems like bitching about your ungrateful damn kids to the other residents of a senior center would offer good opportunity for bonding through shared misery.

Lord knows I would never say the same about my ungrateful damn parents.

My dad has advancing Alzheimer's and has finally become unmoored enough that his constant agitation and anxiety seem to have disappeared. My mom is so relieved. "He's really so nice and pleasant, he's much more like the person he was when we got married!" Because my dad could be very difficult and hard on her, I'm actually happy for her (along with the soup of other emotions I feel).

The Biggest Threat To Your Retirement Portfolio: Mild Dementia

(follow-up discussion on MetaFilter: http://www.metafilter.com/150240/The-Biggest-Threat-To-Your-Retirement-Portfolio-Mild-Dementia)

I'm fairly certain my mom now has dementia. I'm in the process of trying to get my dad to take her to the doc specifically for this but he's reluctant as he doesn't think they can do anything for it. Apparently she sleeps most of the day but when she's up it's like she's far away and often confused. She starts sentences and stops mid-way forgetting what she was going to say and a lot of the time it's mixed up or incoherent anyway. I'm so unbelievably sad over it. While she hasn't been the mother I grew up with in many many years this is something entirely different. I miss my mom and the fact that I'm now near certain I'll never have her back is something I don't know how to process.

oh enbb, i'm so sorry, that’s pain beyond words

Aw thank you, Drash. I'm sure I'll figure out how to handle
It but it's tough especially since I'm far away. If it's any indication of my mental state rn I just started crying on the T when I read your tweet because I was touched.

very sorry to hear ENBB. This sounds awfully familiar :-/
After denying it through false hopes and what-ifs, I've been grieving over the fact that I'll never have a chat with my "real" mom for a couple of years now.
You'll come to accept it I'm sure but it is indeed a very painful process (after a while it gets even difficult to remember the person when they were healthy, which is yet another kind of sad).

Hang in there, cherish the past but stay invested in your own present and future.

I'm your sister in grief, ENBB. I don't know whether it is helpful or not helpful that my dad has a diagnosis (Alzheimer's) and, as fate would have it, I care for hospice patients with AD pretty much every day. There are many heartbreaking ways to lose a loved one, but dementia is a special kind of heartbreak. Sending you as much strength and peace as can be mustered in difficult times :(

ENBB, quincie I'm so sorry you're both dealing with this. Love to you both.

Elvis that's an interesting and scary article. I regularly participate in a clinic my firm offers where we help seniors put together powers of attorney for medical and financial concerns and I'm pretty evangelical about getting your POA/medical directive paperwork ducks in a row ASAP, as in once you have kids or when you hit 40, whichever comes first.

ENBB that sounds incredibly hard.
That article has me sightly worried about my dad. I don't think he's got dementia at all but he is prone to believing everything he reads about finances and it wouldn't take much in his old age to get him to make awful decisions. I can't count the number of (legit but pointless) 'schemes' he's tried to partake in already.

My mum never really talks about finances with him but does work with elderly and dementia patients so I guess it's a conversation worth having.

visited parents for all of last week. it was bizarre explaining to my dad who his brother is, while at the same time he was sufficiently oriented to know me, my wife, our kids, and what we all had been doing all day. crazy transient memory holes.

more usual was his being able to give addresses and describe the streets in Pittsburgh where each of his granddads had lived in 1944, but not recall where he had lived between 1992 and 2014.

There is a lot of good advice in that article, which reminded me of a few situations I've seen IRL. A friend of my wife only discovered the extent of her father's dementia when she happened to find out he was paying his mortgage several times a month.

When my father asked me to start helping him manage his finances, my first problem was figuring out where all his assets were and how to get access to those accounts. His memory is erratic now, to say the least, and it was not until I had been shuffling through paper statements for a few weeks that I was able to track down everything.

I had always imagined he kept this information in a few orderly files ... he did, but by the time I saw them, the files were about 15 years out of date.

Thanks Quincie and Carl and Kinder and Bad <3

The thing with my mom is that she's on some sedatives and SRRIs and stuff that I think are making everything worse. Even if my dad is right and that a diagnosis wouldn't mean much, maybe it would change what she's being prescribed? I don't know.

My dad is her sole caretaker and pretty much waits on her hand and foot and he's a really young and active 71 year old but has no life and I just feel horrible for him. Being so far away makes it worse and I feel guilty that I can't help. I've even wondered if I should move down there but they're the ones who moved to Florida, not me! :(

She definitely needs a neuro appointment and get her meds looked at.

That's what I said!! :(

my mom turned 72 today, upon which i learned that she's part of an experimental drug trial because she has alzheimer's markers.

she seems remarkably chill about it, after a period of being not chill/not telling me. she also seems to not be totally following the (admittedly complex) series of historical novels that i gave her and she's claimed to have read.

she's already talking about maybe having to move; some years ago she said she wouldn't survive without her garden.

as an only child i always knew this was coming, but that doesn't mean i'm going to be good at it

ugh, that is my greatest fear about my parents (mom turns 70 next month). so far the aging parents' maladies have been arthritis, prostate cancer, cataracts, and high blood pressure. I know it's gonna get worse though.

oh and type 2 diabetes

Mine will be 76 this year. The tumor in her lung has gotten bigger and she says she doesn't want to treat it. She had a PET scan yesterday to see if the cancer has spread anywhere else. I guess we'll get the results next week and go from there.

spent the last two years m/l helping both my parents deal with the decline of theirs which ultimately has caused a Faulknerian dissolution of extended family relationships (such as they were anyway) on my mom's side. dads estranged dad passed and he wasn't invited to the funeral, not sure if his likewise estranged mom is still alive. All the battles over driving and getting help with daily basic tasks converted to a scramble to find a suitable assisted living/hospice for my mom's mom (she won a spot at an exclusive joint because my dad's beloved grandmother passed there in the 80s and they still remembered her).

It brought my immediate family much closer together and put the issue into perspective for when my parents advance in age, but it has been a hard 18 months or so and my heart goes out to you folks

sorry to hear about everyone's aging parents :(
we have some recently diagnosed issues in my family that i don't feel like typing about but i am pretty into the idea of finding a support group locally where i can talk about it off the record
are there things like that? for only children of aging parents?

Thanks, Elvis. The follow-up discussion is even better, with comments and links.

my mom turned 72 today, upon which i learned that she's part of an experimental drug trial because she has alzheimer's markers.

heyo your mom and my dad may very well be in the same clinical trial, tho my dad is beyond MCI markers and definitely AD :(

xxpost La Lechera idk if these are in your area but there's a number to call, they may have more info to help u find a group

http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/fss/supp_info/caregiving_support.html

Thank you. Honestly I can't bear to google for it. I'll look into it at some point but srsly there's a huge feeling of betrayal about typing (on or off record) about my parents. I'm more comfortable talking aloud and letting the words float away instead of seeing them.

I never got to see my father age. Cancer took him away from my mother and me before he turned sixty, so it was illness that robbed us of him, though in helping take care of him I got my first lessons in caregiving, something that proved invaluable when it came time for me to step up and become my mother's caregiver. I was a sort of caregiver to her beginning as soon as my dad passed away in 2003, but when I really became my mom's caregiver was in the middle of 2006, when I stayed with her in the hospital for the very direct time. From that moment on I was with her at practically every doctor's appiintment, during every hospitalization, I drove her everywhere, made all her meals, and so on. I also balanced that with work and ended up paying someone to be a professional caregiver to her for a couple of hours a day while I was at work, just so she could have some time in that time period when I didn't have to worry about her and she could do stuff she couldn't do by herself, such as go to the bathroom or take a shower. But when she had to go on dialysis it provided one setback for me and when she had to do hemodialysis I had to either work part-time to accommodate two of the three times a week she had dialysis into my schedule (and she really needed someone else there to get her stuff from her bag or readjust her or what have you), but when she went on peritoneal dialysis, after a period of time when I had to be off work so she could get through the all-manual treatment period of that type of dialysis, when we finally got to the "cycler" or machine stage, I could go back to work and only worry about rushing home from work to do the one manual treatment for the day and something called the "exit site care" (where you clean the site where the dialysis catheter is -- it's something that has to be done once a day), so I could hook her up to the dialysis machine in time for me to be able to disconnect her before I went to work. That and a host of appointments every Friday was our life from March of 2014 to May 30 of this year, when she was hospitalized for what ended up being her final time. I lost her on July 2 and have aged considerably on the inside as a result. I feel like I'm a sixty-year-old in a thirtysomething's body, and while I have a wealth of hard-earned caregiver wisdom inside me, I also have a giant hole inside me too and it's been very tough trying to recover from losing the one parent I had in this world. But I am relying on some good friends and am eternally grateful for that, as well as a local amputee support group my mom and I had joined in March 2010, several months after she became a right, below the knee amputee (rbka). In fact, I'm typing this message out while at one of their meetings, because they've welcomed me to be a permanent part of the community even after my mom's passing. I am also blessed to have a wonderful primary care physician who saw me two and a half weeks ago and diagnosed me with major depression as a result of grief, and after a little over two weeks of being on some antidepressants I am finally ready to go back to work. But it's going to take me a very long time to recover from this loss, and I'm not going to try to rush it like I did when my dad passed away, which caused me to be a terrible person to be around for a good long while, which is something some of you will remember from the last time I was here around these parts. I have done a whole lot of growing up since then and am jot the same person I used to be, and I am going to let the grief flow through naturally. And then I'll continue to live my life, because that's what Mom would've wanted from me, and I want to honor her with my life for as long as I live.

So... hello again.

Sorry, "very first time", not "very direct time". And sorry for the super long paragraph. I'm typing this while paying attention to the other people's testimonials.

LL, you can also call an area hospital that may offer treatment for the diagnosis and ask about support groups. In my (thankfully at this point limited) experience with Advocate Illinois Masonic, for one specific example, they have really good referral services like that. My insurance plan also comes with a nurse you can call for help with various things, so that's another possible avenue. Also, if this is something that hospice may handle, you could call Illinois Hospice and see if they can direct you somewhere.

Also: <3

mookie, sarah, art, dee - much love to you all

You're a sweetheart, carl agatha (and I don't even know who you are). Anyway, today I'm back at work for the first time since losing my mom and they have been so accommodating to me. But it feels odd not getting those phone calls I always used to get from Mom or knowing that I don't have a reason to rush home tonight. As stressful as it was being Mom's caregiver, I miss it desperately and I still feel like I need my mom, even the mom with disabilities and plenty of medical issues I had for the last six years. I need to hear her voice again and feel her hugging me.

Ok, going to stop right now because I do not like crying at work. But if anyone needs logistical advice, I can try to help.

had weekend of aging parent issues. my mother-in-law has been suffering from the beginnings of dementia for a couple of years now. she has still been living alone, and is still herself, but her short-term memory is extremely poor. she's had lots of doctor's appointments, some tests, but we've never been given any sort of diagnosis.

on thurdsay she couldn't stand because she was so dizzy, and was totally confused. her friend took her to the hospital where she was given tests, she has had multiple small strokes (though none recently, we don't have any explanation for her episode on Thursday). anyway her gp has said he thinks that she has vascular dementia. multiple small strokes and other infarcts in her brain, progressively damaging it more and more. she has high cholesterol but she has resisted her family and her gp's recommendations to eat properly (she hardly eats anything, when she does it's usually chocolate). she has high blood pressure and she refuses to attempt to quit smoking (as in still, she waited a couple of days after her bad experience but she's back smoking again).

so worrying about her health is combined, for my wife at least, with a feeling of frustration and anger that she has pursued this really reckless approach towards her health for so long and against her doctor's constant advice. she's gradually, and this may be linked to her condition, grown more apathetic and more isolated in her life, and she seems unable to take her situation seriously, or just to give a damn about her own welfare - while she remains a very generous person who constantly puts effort into trying to help the people close to her.

with a drastic change in her lifestyle she might be able to stem the deterioration, and to remain independent. but I don't think she will make that change, and so I don't think we'll have long before she's no longer with us - either literally or figuratively.

My mother (83 next month) is starting to feel the urgency to sell property and get into assisted living in the next year or two. My sister and I are for it, but I worry about my brother being an obstacle.

Good for her, imo!

jim in glasgow, you should let your wife know that there are times when her mom's dementia will make it to where she cannot listen to reason or do the right things for herself, and the solution to that is to either have her mom live with y'all and treat her like one of your children or put her in an assisted living facility for the long-term. And, if that still doesn't work, maybe just accept that the dementia is slowly claiming her, because of all the illnesses you have to deal with as a caregiver, that and cancer are by far the most fatal. But your wife shouldn't feel guilty or tie herself in knots over how her mom is acting. That's the disease taking over her mom, not her mom period. That's what my family ultimately had to accept when my maternal grandmother was in the deepest throes of Alzheimer's and making my mom and I cry with her barbs and insults and general nasty behavior. Dad reminded us that this was just the disease taking over Grandma, not my grandma herselff, and for Mom in particular to remember all the good times she had with her mom while growing up as who her real mom was.

otm

My grandmother is still mentally acute but is losing mobility fast due to arthritis and refuses to use a walker (except at night when she needs to get to the bathroom so there's that), only occasionally and reluctantly uses a cane, and refuses to undergo any kind of conservative therapies like injections or physical therapy that might ease her symptoms and give her a little more mobility. My mom gets so frustrated at this because my grandmother's (in her opinion selfish and irrational) refusal to ameliorate her symptoms makes my mother's life more difficult (they live together and my mom is my grandmother's primary caretaker).

Dee's post about the disease talking is super OTM and a good thing to remember, but also aging parents frustratingly refusing to do things to benefit their own health is also a thing (there are other posts about it in this thread iirc) so jim in glasgow, at least let your wife know that she is not alone in her frustrations.

Also, Dee, I'm so sorry for your loss. Your post about your mom was beautiful and heartbreaking.

(also hi, I'm part of the Chicago ILX crew and have posted since 2004 or so as pullapartgirl, jenny, and now carl agatha, although in the early days I mostly just stuck to the Chicago thread so I don't think we interacted too much. It's nice to meet you.)

My grandmother fell getting out of the shower and refused to call anybody for help even though she was not alone in the house because "nobody wants to see this bitch naked." :(

Also my mom says that when she takes my grandmother shopping, my grandmother refuses to bring her cane or use the little motor scooters at the grocery store and instead uses my mom as a cane. Basically Mom Mom is going to break a hip sooner rather than later and it's very distressing because I don't think she will handle hospitalization/rehab very well.

my mom was like that, refusing to use a cane while her hip deteriorated, until she got a new hip and now she talks about her bionic hip all the time and walks with ease!
from what i remember, it sounds like your mom and your grandma have a really antagonistic relationship and it's affecting your grandma's decisionmaking?
would she listen to you?

It's not like bone-deep antagonism. More like antagonism that has developed over the last couple of years due to proximity. I actually think it's going to get a little easier once my mom retires in October because she won't be so stressed out by work and her long-ass commute. But right now my mom is definitely annoyed by most things my grandmother does, even if they are rational (like not wanting to go out to dinner because her knees hurt. Totally rational, but my grandmother didn't say "I don't want to go because my knees hurt." Instead she said, "I don't want to go because you want to spend more time with Jenny and the baby, and I'll just get in the way." Only later when I went to tell her that she's not in the way did she admit it was pain keeping her in the chair watching TCM).

She'll listen to me a little. I told her the next time she falls naked to call whoever is home right away and have them throw a towel on her. I definitely spent a lot of time during this last visit acting as a translator between the two of them because now they just talk past each other.

yeah that's what i meant, not that they were mortal enemies or w/e
feeling like someone is annoyed at me all the time yet still requiring their assistance would be enough to turn me into a pill too, esp if they're pass-agg annoyed. that smarts. and it's no one's fault it's just not...helping, yknow?

glad your gma listens to you!

like when my dad used to get mad at me when i ordered noodles and butter at a restaurant
i knew he disapproved of my choice (i was picky, i was a little kid) and he made it clear by grumbling and grousing but he didn't SAY anything so he thought he was free and clear. really, he was making me feel extremely embarrassed about wanting/needing to eat noodles and butter.

feeling like someone is annoyed at me all the time yet still requiring their assistance would be enough to turn me into a pill too, esp if they're pass-agg annoyed. that smarts. and it's no one's fault it's just not...helping, yknow?

Oh yeah. Alas mom is not exactly open to suggestion that a different approach might work better. She feels pretty put upon (there's a younger sister who is retired but claims she's too busy to help, which heightens the aggravation) and has always had a bit of pass-agg martyr tendencies anyway.

Really Mom could use some supportive therapy but when I've suggested it she says "Sounds great and when do I have time for that?" Fingers crossed for retirement.

My mom gets the results of her blood tests/PET scan tomorrow. :( I'm scared. I don't have a great feeling about it and knowing she will likely refuse all treatment is hard.

Thank you for letting me know who you are, Carl agatha, and I do remember seeing you around these parts back in the day. You are so very kind and it is wonderful that what I wrote touched you. Any time I think about not having any of my parents around I feel lost and adrift, but it really stings when I think about my mom because we made a team for almost twelve years and we were a package deal, and even when my caregiving demands became more and more stress-inducing (something that was alleviated when Sam's aunt started a wonderful caregiver support group on Facebook that I was welcomed into), it still fit into the routine we had set up for our lives. Anyway, it sounds like your mom is leading the kind of life my mom led in the '90s, when she had to worry about my grandmother who had been rendered stubborn and mean from Alzheimer's as well as working full time, maintaining a separate household, and having me be a teenager. Although I believe my dad and I helped as much as we could and I would hope the same for your mother.

ENBB, I hope that either your suspicions aor that your presumption of your mother's actions post-diagnosis are proven wrong. But whatever happens, try to be there emotionally for her and be a good listener. She will definitely appreciate that regardless of the outcome.

Sorry for all the typos there. Sometimes I don't quite master touch typing on the phone. Anyway. I wish there was a grief support group somewhere online that was relatively easy to join, much like the caregiver one was. The only local grief support groups I can find are for widows and widowers or for children, or for people who've lost a loved one to cancer. As I said before, the amputee support group proved invaluable to my mom and me, so I really believe in the power of support groups and feel like if I could find one to help me in my post-caregiver grief process, I would feel a lot better than I do right now.

Also, I miss bathing my mom. I had to use her shower (which was converted to make it easy for her to transfer onto a shower chair and wheel in the rest of the way) last night because mine got clogged up from three months of not being deep cleaned (it was all I could take just to dash home from the hospital to take a shower, so), so I need to get some drain cleaner, but for now I'm using Mom's shower, and every time I see those walls I remember shampooing and conditioning her hair and scrubbing her body down with a loofah saturated with a special body wash. And even though it took me a good hour to clean her completely because there were so many steps to it and I had to do so much before and after the actual shower itself, and even though at the very end of it all it felt like my arms were going to fall off, I would more than happily do that for twice a week like I had been doing (I would also wipe her down with cleaning wet wipes for the body twice a week) for another decade at least if it meant I could get my mom back.

GF's father (mid-80s, highly intelligent but faltering) was just talked out of $800 by a virtual kidnapping scammer. Suspect it's time for everyone to have a "how to talk to your parents about people trying to rip them off" moment... sigh.

he's certainly not alone

my mom volunteered in the consumer protection office for the state attorney general for a few years. a depressing number of cases were about companies or individuals that prey on the elderly :/

My grandmother almost fell prey to a scam disguised as a Publisher's Clearinghouse award (a letter basically saying we want to give you the award but we need some banking info from you first so please call this number and provide it), despite many such conversations. The worst was she tried to hide it from my parents because she was afraid they would say it was a scam and not let her go through with it! Actually no the worst was she confessed the whole thing to my aunt, who is a smart woman with multiple degrees and a background in science, and who also kept it from my parents because my grandmother asked her to. I can't remember how the truth came out but she was spared any losses and we reported the situation to the AG.

Anyway, I feel you about the frustration of this. Also the serious anger at people who take advantage of old folks.

mine are at or nearing Medicare age and I'm weary being their son. I've been bailing them out financially since I was 20 years old, despite them being able bodied and both employed mostly the entire time. Short story is they're irresponsible with money, live above their means, and are entitled to the point where they buy things because they "deserve" them and say they'll figure it out later. they also managed to ruin my brother's credit for similar reasons, after which he rightfully cut them off.

they just moved back and of course are already being a huge drain on us. my dad had to live with us temporarily for 2.5 months, in which they lived rent-free (as my mom stayed with a friend), were both working, with my dad getting social security on top of that, and still have no money. he filed bankruptcy 7 years ago and then somehow amassed new, crippling debt.

apparently the move sucked them dry and they want to borrow again, as if someone forced them to move here. we've had the talk before of how I can't keep doing this, but naturally when the alternative is my mom not having food I always cave (I blame my father for most of this).

by the time I actually have to legitimately take care of them....I have no idea how I'm going to have the energy to do it.

it sucks because it makes me resent them and then I feel guilty for THAT.

my grandparents got a call from someone claiming to be their granddaughter, saying she was in jail and needed them to send money to bail her out. Thank god they called my parents first, we figured out it was a scam pretty quick (just had to, uh, call my cousin and confirm that she was indeed not in jail). and apparently my other grandparents had the same scam attempted on them a few years back, but in this case it was someone claiming to be ME calling them up asking for money!

lol i remember now that my mom actually called the scammers back and told them off. that was pretty awesome.

my mom just gave me a coupon for $1 off yogurt. she wants me to mail it back to her if i don't use it

That's like Peak Mom right there.

no matter how much it needs to happen, or how right I know I am, it never feels good telling my 62 year old mother, who is fragile and loves with her whole heart, that her and my dad are stressing me out with their insane financial dependence on me for the last fifteen years.

but I finally had to do it tonight, as I'd bottled it up too long. it was easier for me to dish the shit to my father, who has somewhat poisoned our relationship by treating me like a bank, but I feel like equal parts relieved and equal parts shit now that I've had to tell them they're cut off and I need some air.

part of it's also me seeing them and doubly wanting to make sure I don't wind up that way. if I'm that poorly off at retirement age, there will be a carbon monoxide funeral in my future.

oh well...I think deep down I keep seeing the passage of time and worrying about them getting older and frail and that's why I've held back so long.

Has anyone heard of a disease or allergy or otherwise where the eyes are constantly swollen and teary and the salt eats away at the corneas? This is some bad stuff and folks are having real trouble finding anyone that knows how to treat it or what it is really. They just got back from another appointment and the lab had somehow forgotten to do some bloodwork. They've been seeing people since June.

They said something about the immune system being responsible, that it is attacking the eyes. It is scary stuff he's laying down all day w a cloth over his eyes doing drops every 1hr. Nobody they've seen has any clue.

Sjogren's syndrome? I think that's either where you stop producing tears or the tears produced are not H2O enough?

No this is constant tears.

I will ask them about that tho, thanks.

Sjogrens is not enough tears -- my mother-in-law has it. That sounds scary as hell, Adam.

could it be this?

http://care.american-rhinologic.org/epiphora

Maybe. I'll see them tomorrow and maybe find out more.

good luck! it sounds awful, hope you get some answers/cure soon

not my aging parent but christ it is fucking horrible the way some companies go hard after elderly people. my wife's dad is 86 and he gets calls all day long from people claiming he owes money to the IRS, people telling him there's a virus on his computer and they need access to it, he gets mail from Publisher's Clearing House all the time, or other similar companies where he's won like 2 million bucks* (*just buy this set of tools and you'll be in line for the prize, you might be the lucky one!)

and now I just got off the phone with some fucking skin care company that corralled him into a trial membership for the low low price of $10 for two samples of skin cream, with monthly charges of $200 for both for the subsequent 12 months (or until he stops membership.)

i acted old on the phone, just in case. i think i did a pretty good job and jeez if you think trying to cancel cable is bad, try to cancel this shit. they at first said i couldn't cancel because i was still in the trial period, then they said they would lower the cost by 50%, then finally said i would just have to pay like $50 for the creams i already had and i doddered about and finally told them "ok."

fucking monsters, all of them. he's already throwing $5k a month at long term care for my wife's mom (bc of alzheimer's, bc of course insurance won't cover it.)

I get so upset about this ^^^^ kinda thing. I'm so glad that your FIL has ppl looking out for him to mitigate this stuff but so upset for all of the vulnerable people (not just elders) out there who are very systematically preyed upon and have no safety net if there isn't an attentive and involved loved one. Which, with the most vulnerable, there is often not.

I mentioned it upthread, but if your state has a consumer protection office, report this shit. I have no doubt it's one of those things that is getting gutted in many places, but it's often part of a state's attorney general's office and does advocacy for people like your father in law. Giving them a heads-up about new phone scams is useful.

Bump because I'm probably going to be visiting this thread a lot. My 76-year-old mother drives reasonably well and seems perfectly coherent if you talk to her, but cannot take care of the house--imagine an East Coast center-hall colonial in much the same condition as the pictures above.

Another forum recommended that I talk to the county Adult Protective Services office and seek out a lawyer to talk power of attorney. Does anyone here have any advice on this?

A related issue: my Aunt Donna (sister of my late father) has been living alone. Three weeks ago she collapsed with some sort of seizure. The good news is that she has a circle of friends who found her soon after said collapse and rushed her to the hospital. The doctors still haven't made a diagnosis, but she's made enough of a recovery to call my mother yesterday.

Apparently my aunt's circle of friends has dealt enough with these matters to have power of attorney and related documents prepared in advance. I wish my mother had a circle of friends like that (she has a few long-distance friends; I don't think she has any face-to-face friends). I wish I had a circle of friends like that.

It might be difficult, but I'd suggest talking this over with your mother and persuading her to see a lawyer with you to prepare a will, power of attorney, and related healthcare documents. She might not agree immediately, but give her some time to think about it, keep bringing it up, and perhaps get other family members to encourage her. It's to her benefit as well as yours for her to do this while she can consider and choose the options that work best for her. Once that paperwork is done, it's one less thing for everyone to worry about.

If she's still driving safely and is rational but can't take care of her house any more, a simple option might be hiring someone to come in and do some cleaning. Everyone ages differently and loses competencies at different rates. A chaotic house doesn't necessarily mean that she can't still function independently, but it does signal she's starting to need more help and ought to observed closely in case her capacity declines in other areas (for example, not eating properly, not keeping track of medications, or forgetting or over-paying bills).

My father is 82 and last year his Alzheimer's advanced to the point where he had to move into a memory care facility. By then I was already taking care of his banking, taxes, etc. If I hadn't had power of attorney it would have been much harder to do everything that was needed for his care. According to a lawyer I met with, the alternative to his having granted me power of attorney while he was competent would have been for me to apply for a conservatorship or guardianship, which could have taken months at a time when major decisions needed to be made in a hurry.

It's strange to look back over the last 10 years and realize how completely my relationship with my father changed during that time. I had to set aside some lingering hard feelings and become the more responsible and care-giving person in our relationship. My father also had to acknowledge that his memory problems were severe and that he needed my support. Both of us had to overcome lifelong patterns of fighting with and then withdrawing from each other and instead talk much more openly than we ever had. I'm glad I took the initiative and that we got together on what to do before it was too late.

I went to my mother's house today, where I broached the subject of moving in the near future and letting my sister and I deal with the house. She didn't agree right there, but I think she was listening. I also tried talking about her eating habits (the kitchen can only be described as a "disaster area"), but she got belligerent.

One piece of good news: my mother had been talking about finding an attorney to take my late father's name off the house title. More recently she would mention maybe having a will done at the same time. I volunteered to find a lawyer and make an appointment, and when she agreed, she mentioned "power of attorney" without being prompted. It's possible that Aunt Donna's recent health issues have made it clear that it's better to prepare these things in advance, rather than scramble around after something has happened.

AGING PARENTS are a big chunk of my life both personal (father with Alzheimer's) and professional (hospice social worker). Can't echo more strongly what Brad C. and others have said about getting living will (including naming medical POA) and financial POA.

J.lu I've had to make DC APS reports on multiple occasions; ime if the person in question has decision-making capacity, APS won't do boo even if the decisions the person is making are clearly not in their best interest. And the DC guardianship process is a cluster easily avoided with medical/financial POA (these don't have to be the same person, lots of families I work with divvy it up). Those documents and living wills can be done without an attorney, let me know if you'd like me to point you to forms available online. Only the financial POA requires notarization (and I'm a notary so holler if you need one!).

Yes please point to online help! My parents have 0 documents prepared and I'm an only child. Their reason for not having anything prepared is that everything will fall to me regardless :-/

http://www.caringinfo.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3289

Another alternative is Five Wishes, a very plain-language, legalese-free advance directive that is recognized in 40+ states. There is a small cost and it is a little emo for my own personal taste, but it is very approachable and actually a lot more comprehensive than a lot of the state versions. https://www.agingwithdignity.org/

For basic financial POA documents, I just google Durable Power of Attorney + name of the state and find a .gov link. Don't pay money!

Some people use legalzoom or similar online service for after-you're-dead wills, but unless you have a very straightforward situation (which maybe your parents do), a trust and estate lawyer is a good idea. Even if you are an only child, their estate will have to go through probate if they die intestate! AVOID!

^^ everything that quincie said

ime if the person in question has decision-making capacity, APS won't do boo even if the decisions the person is making are clearly not in their best interest.

currently we are trying to convince my live-in 85-yr old FIL that it is not in his best interest to move back to New York with no support network or plan, originally he was gonna sell the (empty) house but he has gotten cold feet basically so we are in a holding pattern. hopefully he will realize that he can't fend for himself, but if he insists on going I think we can make sure he gets an apartment ahead of time...

and yeah, fortunately my wife has all that POA stuff dialed in, got that done a few years back and boy are we glad.

Thanks for the info quincie. What does intestate mean? I'm in total denial about my aging parents.

Idk want "go through probate" means either but I can tell it's something to be avoided & has to do with court.

Another thing about POA, durable POA for healthcare, etc. -- be sure you keep the originals somewhere safe and secure. I spent about two years searching for the certified original copy of my father's POA; before that I had only photocopies, which probably wouldn't have been accepted if I had tried to make changes to his financial accounts or to sell his real estate.

Knowing where important documents are is especially important if your AGING PARENTS have memory problems because eventually they will not remember which very safe place they put them in.

xp "Intestate" is the condition of not having a valid Last Will and Testament. If you die intestate, the disposition of your property is determined by state law and the judgment of the probate court rather than by the terms of your will. I don't think probate can be avoided for most people's estates. Having a will makes that process a lot smoother. Also see above about certified original copies. My only copy of my father's will is a photocopy, which might or might not be accepted at probate. The terms of his will are so simplistic that the outcome would be much the same either way, but for many families it could make a big difference.

I don't know much about how the probate process works, so I'd appreciate more info about this too.

Hi Quincie,

My mother is in Rockville, so I'd be dealing with the Montgomery County APS--do you know how responsive, effective, etc. they are?

A couple of years ago I gave my mother a copy of Five Wishes. Earlier today I found it at the house (uncompleted and insect-stained). Drafting the will and POA based on online templates is probably the best way to start. However, since my mother WANTS to talk to a lawyer about the house title, and seems to be receptive to preparing a POA and a will, I'd like a lawyer to look at the documents. A little preliminary work on Yelp identified two possible firms; does anyone have any better ideas for finding a lawyer?

I now work in MoCo, actually! I have not yet had any interaction with MoCo APS, but according to colleagues it's much the same story: person has capacity? Best of luck to you! The MoCo Office of Aging and Disability may be more helpful, but probably not by much.

Again via colleagues I've been given names of two trust&estate attys who seem to be well-liked; I'll e-mail those to you when I'm back in the office.

Idea: everyone on ILX can ship their AGING PARENTS and a buttload of money to me and I'll take care of everything!

I'm starting to lowkey freak out about the fact that I live in another country from my (somewhat rapidly) aging parents. Like How TF am I going to deal w this.

urgh - sorry J. Lu for the situation you're in - this is all terribly familiar.
These last 7 years, I've considered most of the options upthread but my mother has been very hostile and belligerent to any suggestion that she may not be 100% lucid. It is basically impossible to talk about these things with her, she will just clam up and get upset. My solution has been to bring in more and more house-help under somewhat false pretenses - ie a "cleaning lady" coming in every day for a couple of hours. It costs us a fortune but the peace of mind it's brought me in the last couple of years is, as they say, priceless.

Tracer I know the feeling. My brother still lives in the usa & even in the same city as them so he'll shoulder the physical burden at least.

It's possible for me to bring them here too if things get very bad.

I can't imagine that Tracer. Every time I've had the chance to live in another country I've avoided it because of the distance it would put between my parents and me. How long have you lived overseas now?

Every so often I see articles talking about (U.S.) citizens who retire in a country outside the U.S., because of cheaper costs of living. I hope to god for the sake of these retirees' next of kin that the retirees prepared their wills and powers of attorney BEFORE the move. Imagine trying to support an aging parent not just over a distance, but with language barriers and possibly a drastically different legal system to complicate things.

(Since the 2016 election, I've thought vaguely about emigrating to Germany. It wouldn't have been imminent anyways, but it sure won't be happening any time soon.)

In the meantime, I've downloaded templates for a will and a power of attorney, and I just spoke to my mother about drafting these documents before we go to a lawyer. She sounded reluctant but resigned.

I'm so mad at my sister right now. When we first decided we couldn't let Mom go on in her current way any longer, my sister suggested letting her stay temporarily to the currently vacant condo she owns. So when yesterday I suggested moving Mom there as a halfway house to getting her to move to Leisure World, my sister balked. Her explanation was that it would disrupt Mom's "momentum" towards moving to Leisure World.

I do not doubt that my sister is as busy with work as she says. But Mom seems alarmingly happy to live in a squalid house, spending her days watching TV and petting the cats, and buying more clothes and groceries (which tend to get lost in the clutter). If my mother has any momentum when I'm not around and trying to coax her into doing something, I see no sign of it.

I've still got my mother's cats, and have said that I really don't want to return them until the situation is "resolved." I love cats, but 1) one of them has occasionally pooped on the floor, no matter how frequently I clean the litter box, and 2) my hands and wrists are itching and irritated in a way that make me afraid I'm allergic to cats.

So my mother has had lung cancer for the past 4 ish years but she stopped treating it about two years ago and is definitely in rapid decline. She also has some form of undiagnosed (my dad doesn't see the point in taking her to see someone for that) dementia which is heartbreaking. My father won't even consider a visiting nurse even though he's at the point of pretty much doing literally everything for her because he thinks having people coming in to help would be betraying her somehow. ?! While I'm not in another country I am still quite far away (they're in FL and I'm in MA) and I'm an only child. Recently her doctor said that he can't say if it'll be next week or in six months but she'd definitely dying. That might be the weirdest part - that limbo. I'm going down there at the end of the month for a couple days and the above info is helpful. I just feel like I need to have a better handle on all of this especially since I'm the only one. My dad's six years younger than my mom (78/72) and much younger in both body and spirit thank god. Still, this shit is so hard.

The good news is that now I don't think I'm allergic to my mother's cats. The bad news is that I think one of them has scabies (which would be what's causing the rashes on my hands and wrists). Then at work I just got back a set of massive and poorly documented changes to a document I'm working on.

This is really wicked of me, but I am sorely tempted right now to just return the cats to my mother and let her go her own way, in the hope that something catastrophic will happen. I thought I couldn't hate myself any more.

The good news: My mother has signed off on a will and medical and legal powers of attorney.
The bad news: I just tried talking to her again about cleaning out the house, only to be brushed off again. These cats are going to be with me for the rest of their lives Y/Y/Y?

Last week, I sat with my dad in a hospice facility in Florida for 8 hours every day for 6 days and watched my mother slowly die. She was completely unresponsive the entire time and we had no idea whether or not she knew we were there. The smell as her body began to shut down was something I will never forget. Nor is sitting on the floor and holding her hands so that I could look in her eyes on the off chance that she could see me or feel my presence as I told her it was OK to go. She must have lost 20 pounds in those six days. The way she looked the finally afternoon when the nursing aides came to turn her over was probably the most frightening thing I've ever seen. We got the call from the nurse that she'd passed about two hours after we left for the night. When we got to her room they'd placed a gold butterfly on the door and a rose in her hands. Hers was the first dead body I've ever seen and she was still warm. That was one week ago and today is my first day back at work. We had a very complicated relationship and she's been ill for a very long time. That said, this is the most intense and surreal experience.

i'm sorry to hear that enbb

i know what you mean by surreal as you describe something similar to what i felt when mine passed

thoughts are with you and your family

Very sorry indeed, ENBB. Sending best in such an upsetting time.

I'm so, so sorry ENBB. I watched my dad pass away slowly in hospice; like you, his was the first dead body I had ever seen and I have never been able to characterize the experience as good or bad, just IMMENSE, like being hit with a stray moon or something. Peace to you.

Love and peace, ENBB.

i'm so sorry E. we went through some of that with Mr Veg's mom.

I remember going to see her after they'd cut off all treatment. the change was so dramatic, she looked like a ghost almost. but her final hours brought all of us together in a way that we hadnt experienced as a family in a long time... and i felt a closeness with her that was sort of reassuring at the same time as being so sad and strange.

i know it's weird to say but i am glad you had that time with her <3

a minute or so after my dad passed, my aunt (she, my mom and me had been the only ones in the room) said 'he looks like a little baby' (which is not to say that the moment of passing was peaceful harps or anything; it wasn't) and she was otm

Although it might seem like a jarring note in the circumstances, I am glad to hear you were able to spend so many hours and days with your mom as she made the passage from life to death. I am certain it helped her to have you and your dad there so much of the time, and the immediacy and intensity of it will help both you and your dad assimilate and adjust to her departure. That adjustment can take a lot of unfamiliar shapes and you'll probably feel really weird at times, but the time you spent with her will mean a tremendous amount to you as time passes. My condolences.

just want to second everything aimless wrote, i witnessed this painful process w/my mom and then my dad years ago and over time those mixed-up memories eventually helped me heal and became not a comfort exactly but a central part of what i'll always hold close about both of them. beaming love and positive energy your way enbb.

i'm so sorry E -- i can't imagine how much more intense it was knowing that you (too) are an only. <3

condolences to you and family.

Sorry E

very sorry, E. I'm glad she was with her family in her final days. take care of yourself.

sorry for your loss, ENBB

My condolences, E.

Love and thoughts E

I rememeber reading about your family predicament over the years ENBB - so similar to my own. My deepest condolences. I hope you can find, in time, some serene closure .

May she rest well , my condolences.

Just realized I never said thank you for all the nice messages. Thank you. <3

how are you holding up, E?

Hey! I kept meaning to respond. I am . . . OK. Ish. Last week and this weekend were really really hard. The weirdest part though was that I was just sad and unmotivated and teary in a way I've never been. It wasn't this specific missing of my mom or thinking about her death just this overwhelming heaviness and it hits at the weirdest times and it can be so intense. At first I was confused because I've never felt this way before and didn't know how to process it but then I realized that it is grief and that this is normal. That doesn't make it any less hard or shitty but it helps to remind myself of that that and of the fact that I won't feel this way forever.

<3 <3
over time it sorta, calcifies? like it becomes a part of you without weighing you down. everyone's different though. it takes a lot of time
bendon hugs help i'm sure :)

I realized that it is grief and that this is normal.

Yes. A thousand times yes.

The thing that strikes me the most these days is how it almost doesn't even seem real that any of this happened. I know she's gone but the whole way it all happened made the actual event pretty traumatic and the days after that were such a whirlwind. I feel like I've been a weird daze all summer but lately I've been having these moments where I think "Holy shit, my mom died" but it still feels unreal somehow. I haven't been back to see my dad since I was there in June so maybe that's why - I don't actually notice her absence every day. I feel like I haven't been doing anything except going through the motions of being a person and it's been making me feel bad like I'm not strong enough or something. I know it's only been a few months. Everything has just been so hard for such a long time. I'm tired of it. Also, I don't feel well today so I'm feeling sorry for myself.

it's been making me feel bad like I'm not strong enough or something.

Older cultures than ours understood well how the death of loved ones affected the survivors and they evolved traditions that allowed families to cope with the aftermath. They often prescribed a set of activities that lasted a full year. You're only months into this and more or less afloat and on your own to deal with it. You just experienced one of life's most powerful and disturbing events. It is no wonder your mind still feels disturbed. Just be kind to yourself. Renew that kindness constantly. It's necessary. I wish you sufficient moments of peace to find how to piece this enormous event into your life and make it normal.

In my own case, my 92 year old mother is now in hospice care. I'm back to weekly visits again. Rather than having one terminal problem, all her systems are simply slowing drastically and rather gently fading out. She's not in much pain, but her slow cessation is evident from week to week. She now spends about 22 hours a day in bed. She is losing interest in anything but the intermittent visits from her children. Even then, she only wants to look at me, hold my hand and listen to me talk, although she is mostly blind and deaf now.

I suspect she'll drift along like this, emptying out bit by bit, for five or six more weeks. But this seems like one of the gentler ways to bow out, so I am glad of that.

Thank you, Aimless. Your words are very helpful. I'm sorry to hear about your mom. It's so hard though that does sound gentle which is definitely good.

visiting my parents at the jersey shore and my dad had a stroke this morning

i think it could have been much worse? we were there, the ambulance was super fast. but it's still bad

also i apologize to paul ryan for not using the power of the free market to unlock cheaper and better health care options. we were in a rush

oh no. I'm sorry. I was just listening to a radio show emphasizing that time is of the essence - thank goodness family was around. The wait to figure out what 'bad' is going to actually mean is so hard.

i'm sorry to hear about your dad! at least you are there for your mom.

aww mooks <3 and hugs

<3 mookie

Terrible. Sending best for you all.

<3 mookie, so sorry this has happened, best wishes to you all

also my belated condolences to enbb. i've always thought you were a very good daughter to both of your parents. i hope you find peace after your enormous loss <3

Sorry about your dad! I'll be thinking of you and your family.

<3 thanks dudes

mooks <3

aging parents is hard. my dad's 69, my mom's 64. Few weeks back I told her she looked just as young as ever, made her day. It's sad when people get old and they start thinking they look "bad" in family pictures, like my Mom recently did. breaks my heart

My dad passed last Monday 9/4. He had had a bad heart for nearly 20 years, really lived years beyond what he should. After going through this, I kinda think he was on point in not having a big funeral or anything.

earlnash <3

sorry for your loss, earl

they want him to stay awake because his blood pressure falls when he falls asleep (kinda seems like this could be adjusted for, but i guess not). so he's lying there sort of half dozing and periodically raising his right arm just to show that he can still do it.

it's a lot more willpower than i have, i'm certain

i'm sorry about your dad, earlnash.

Sorry for your loss, Earlnash.

Sending good thoughts, Mookie.

Feeling for you Mookie. These periods, of fear and helplessness, can be so hard. Wishing you strength and patience.

hope you are all managing as well as possible, mookie. condolences earlnash.

John, I'm so sorry to hear this. I hope he's doing a little better and that you and your mom are doing OK.

also my belated condolences to enbb. i've always thought you were a very good daughter to both of your parents. i hope you find peace after your enormous loss <3

― estela, Sunday, September 10, 2017 9:38 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh Estela, thank you. This just made me tear up at my desk.

It's been nearly four months now and it is still so strange/hard. My dad landed in Germany this morning to visit my aunt and uncle for two months which I think will be good for him - getting out of the house they shared where he's been alone and being in a new environment and around family and all. Tyring to think of something he and I can do for Christmas together that doesn't involve being at their house without her.

Good lord this is a hard, harrowing read.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

i'm not sure i can deal with reading that.

I mean, to be blunt, I really did move to the Bay Area in part because I wanted to make sure I'm much nearer my folks in case of emergencies. Reading that makes me very glad their plan is strictly based on staying at their home with long term health coverage as needed, and California isn't Nevada. I still got jumpy.

I'll have to, later.

My mom told me the other day that she's kind of anxious waiting for the corn harvest season. My grandfather, before he moved to an assisted living facility (and started incurring all kinds of medical bills) was living off of money from tenant farming. He's too old to do work, so someone farms land he owns and he gets a share of the (hopeful) profits. As it is, she's mortgaged about 2/3 of the land to pay for his bills, and if the income doesn't cut it, will have to mortgage the last third. I don't know that selling the land would let them get that much more money.

So the money management part is relatable, but oh boy, the idea of her profiting off of being custodian of his finances sure isn't/

Oh my God. I read the whole thing and I want to throw up. Those people are pure evil.

As a court-appointed guardian for my daughter, that article was appalling. The worst thing about that NYer article is that the court itself was so spectacularly irresponsible. It did not make any attempt at an independent assessment of the couple and relied on extremely flimsy evidence to declare their incompetence, without even notifying the couple of the proceedings against them. That defines a legal process which begs to be abused.

I was just now searching to see what the status of Parks and her immediate accomplices are -- I can't determine if the trial itself is ongoing.

And yeah that judge...it's a different kind of evil but I'm content to put him right up there with that Pennsylvania jurist who got his for the scheme sending kids to prison. So this guy being shunted over TO kids' court is not so good.

ok, I assumed this was about children taking advantage of guardianship, but the person this is about is completely horrible and I'm furious

that's horrific, and heartbreaking

I have thread-appropriate tidings but I’ll wait til that article has been fully bruited

Amazing story

Some of the courtroom scenes described in the article are on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee8XnR56gow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZixHgeOzko4

no way am i reading about this

One part I'm unclear on is just what the commissioner was getting out of the scheme. I don't think he directly benefitted from funnelling people into guardianship. My guess is that the same private guardians were a constant presence in his courtroom, whereas there was a continuous stream of wards and family members whom he never had to see again and who were much less practiced in talking in front of a judge. So he sympathized with the guardians. That and contempt for elderly people.

Sorry to detract from the article under discussion. But it’s time for one of my characteristic oversharings.

My wife’s dad had a massive heart attack over a week ago (last Monday night) and has been in ICU at Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston since then. So have we - my wife and I and her sister and her sisters longtime bf - except for going to my cousin’s house to pass out at night.

Apparently this was an extraordinarily severe cardiac arrest - the director of cardiac here said it’s the worst one he’s seen in twenty years. Father in law is 80 and as long as I have known him he has literally worked out at the gym every single day. If he wasn’t so fit he would not even have survived this heart attack.

He’s basically been on life support (for three systems: impella pump for heart, continuous dialysis for kidneys, ventilator for breathing) for nine days, except for part of Wednesday when they thought he could start breathing on his own, which he did for awhile but then he started struggling to breathe and the tube had to go back in. Except for that window last Wednesday he had been sedated to the extent that he has the aspect of someone asleep, except that occasionally his eyelids part briefly. He hears what we say a lot of the time. When my wife or her sis talk to him, his blood pressure improves: you can watch it on the screen. He sometimes answers yes or no questions via hand squeezes.

Incredible thing is, Monday and Tuesday there were some signs of his heart improving, starting to heal itself. The odds were very much against this. They’ve said a large portion of his left ventricle was ‘destroyed’.

He could be in this ICU for months inching his way back to autonomy, and months more of a regular ward/rehab type thing. We kind of need to live here for awhile. The NYC friends are being incredible about looking after the dog and birds and my job is playing ball with me so far but I’m scared some of these people will lose patience, especially scared that my cousin will tire of having us in her guest room and of us having to find another free haven in this ridiculously expensive city (we can’t stay at her dad’s house. Its legit not habitable. Long story.)

Her dad was a popular guy around here! Apparently (older) people all around Boston are talking about him being in here fighting for his life.

Monday there was a 17 year old girl in one of the family hangout areas who had just found out her dad had a cerebral hemorrhage and was not gonna make it. She was such a cool kid. Gangly nerd with a nasa t-shirt and a flannel, who wants to be an environmental engineer. It was AWFUL. I held it together until she went back with her mom to her dad’s room and then I cried and cried. This morning I saw that someone different is in that girl’s dad’s room.

Her dad’s status as the sickest guy in the whole hospital, which happens to be one of the world’s best, has clearly energized the cardiac team... I think for underdog-rooting reasons and professional challenge reasons they are incredibly determined to save him.

This morning when we were here for rounds there were two things. One: director of cardiac now says his heart is ‘livable’. Yes part of it is destroyed, but there’s enough there to power him. Two: the infection they started detecting yesterday is worse now, per his white blood cell levels, and is now an emergency.

Wife and her sister fight really badly. When their mom was dying of cancer three years ago, the fighting was almost as traumatic as the situation itself. They have kept it decent these nine days but today they went at it hard. Now there’s talk of shifts so they don’t have to ever see each other. It’s partly because of that relationship that I can’t go back to nyc and leave her here on her own. Her sister drives and she doesn’t. When it’s just the two of them that leads to SIL having the ‘power’ and then really bad shit goes down.

Primarily, jeez this guy who has clawed his way back from a world-record cardiac arrest surely can’t die from an infection? NB he and I aren’t friends. He thinks I’m a schlub who doesn’t make enough money for his daughter and I think he’s a fucking asshole who ruined people’s lives. But I want him to LIVE please.

man that's rough, sending you good vibes.

infections are a huge risk with heart surgeries (my wife is an RN cardiac specialist). she was just telling me how some patient has like 15 teeth pulled, that happens a lot when people with bad teeth get surgeries cuz of infection risks. so yeah, it is probably the #1 post-op concern.

Yeah he didn’t actually have any surgery other than immediate insertion of a stent. His heart was too fucked up for surgery. They think the infection probably originated with the extended time he has been intubated.

Wishing you all the best man, that's a terrible situation. Your description of the sisters fighting... Awful esp in that situation. I've been in a similar situation twice before, going to the hospital every day for months. The odd things you cling to (staff that are good people, others in the waiting room)...

Again, all the very best.

If only this were happening in the city where we live there’d be so many additional stress factors removed (Duh)

Gosh, horrible news. Best indeed to you for sure.

JnJ, it sounds to me like you will be absolutely critical support for your wife as she deals with this and the enormous stress it will put on her family. I hope that your father-in-law's condition soon settles into moving in one clear direction, so everyone involved can begin to prepare for one relatively predictable outcome. Nothing could be more stressful than a series of crises, complications, reverses, with hopes raised and dashed. Modern medicine has a way of prolonging this shit indefinitely, in a way that is not always helpful to the patient or the family. Good luck.

good luck jon -- don't forget about your needs in the process
they are no less important than those of well-liked trooper cardiac patients or their families
like if you need to go back to work in order to support yourselves longterm, that's as valuable as being sibling intermediary/chauffeur
imo
y'all are in my thoughts!

RIP.

this was an unexpected turn of events. He was improving so much he was about to 'graduate' off the external heart impeller today. But then this afternoon he suddenly went into "v-fib", but they shocked him and he was fine again. And then about an hour and a half ago he coded again for the same reason. And then again about an hour ago and they couldn't revive him.

This is going to utterly destroy my wife and her sister. Things REALLY looked good before this afternoon.

so sorry to hear this jon, sending love

Indeed -- best for you all on the road ahead.

oh man, sorry. good luck with everything <3

sorry to hear this, also sort of glad it wasn't protracted or agonizing. good luck -- "best for you all on the road ahead" otm -- esp since it applies to the living.

I'm really hoping that his circle of friends around here will help us with the funeral planning - he has no actual family here and it's just way too fucking much. Also the legal situation is a mystery and a mess. Unpaid bills, things put up as collateral against legal costs, probably no will etc etc etc

Good lord, that all sounds like nightmare fuel waiting to happen.

It sounds like the estate will probably have to bear the cost of some legal assistance to help you sort it all out. if other potential heirs (family members) object to this expense (it isn't cheap), ask them who it is they think will be doing all that work. the best you can do right now it take each day's problems as they arise and try to stay balanced and grounded. good luck.

One of his inner circle is a prominent Boston lawyer so I think that'll help. But yeah it's gonna be hard

Very sad, Jon. I'm sorry.

so my dad killed himself thursday afternoon

so sorry to hear that mookie <3

Ugh. So sorry. How old was he? Had he been depressed? Maybe this stuff is already upthread.

oh no mookie

sorry for your loss

Good lord. Deepest condolences, sir.

he had a (easy for me to say, but relatively mild) stroke in september. then pneumonia four weeks ago, which involved a week with a breathing tube down his throat. he'd just gotten out of the rehab hospital on wednesday. the pneumonia had pretty much wiped out whatever gains he'd made since the stroke.

i mean, i understand. he was 81; it's not like he had a bright future ahead even if he regained the ability to drive/ride his bike/whatever.

but he shot himself in the fucking eye in my mom's basement while she was upstairs. so she found him gushing blood all over the floor, had to call 911, had to tell the EMTs to let him die, had to deal with the cops' initial suspicion that she'd shot him, and held on to the idea for a full day that it might somehow have been an accident.

i can't sleep because i keep thinking about her voice when she called me.

i mean he was a great guy and i love(d) him and i know it's textbook to get pissed off but that's just so fucking wrong

tbf he always hated holidays; i guess he got his revenge on thanksgiving

Sorry, man. <3 to you and your mom

i’m so sorry mookie, that is awful. <3

Oh mookie, I’m sorry.

thx guys. guess i got through denial pretty quickly

<3

jeez mook, so sorry to hear this. <3 back to you. good luck to you and your mom.

love to you, mookie. I'm so sorry to read this.

Really sorry to hear this, mookie

Sorry to hear about all of this. Death is not easy in any form.

jesus, sorry bud. i'll be thinking of you and your mom.

I'm very sorry Mookie, that is dreadful. Thinking of you and your mom.

I am so sorry, Mookie, thinking of you and your family.

really sorry to hear that - i hope that you and your family can manage to cope.

Damn, sorry Mookie.

Sorry mooks

i emailed you but am bumping this thread again just to say how sorry i am that you and your mom are going through this. i woke up thinking about your mom.

I don’t even know what to say. I’m so sorry, mookie, and have been thinking about you and your mom <3

so sorry mookie<3

Wow so sorry to hear about this.

<3 you, mookie

Mookie I can't believe you had the wherewithal to post an anti-Blackhawks link for me since this happened. Take care of yourself and your family; my deepest sympathies.

Sorry to hear this, Mookie

I'm also lost for words. All my love though <3

So sorry to hear, mookie.

I'm really sorry you and your mom are going through this, mookie.

Awful stuff, mookie. I'm so sorry.

This is just awful. I’m so sorry for you and your mom, mookie.

Mookie, I have (almost) no words either, apart from condolences to you and your mother at what must be a very confusing and sad time.

thanks ilxors <3 <3 <3

thinking of you mookie
prob don’t need to say it but obv feel free to let off steam/stress here as the days go on
i know the post-death arrangements & stuff can be p stressful

jeez, sorry man

it probably doesn't mean much but s sorry for you and your mom - truly tragic. I can only second advice upthread to try to let off steam and get some fresh air out of the house, as much as the situation allows it.

yeah i really just want to stop thinking about it, but that doesn't seem to be an option

you're carrying about as heavy a load as anyone could stagger under right now. just know it's going to take you a long time to process all the thoughts and feelings from this. and you don't always have to be the 'strong one'.

geez no kidding -- and it really does help alleviate some of the persistent thoughts to talk about it.

^^

mookie, I'm still thinking of you and your mom. LL's thought is one of the things I was thrashing around trying to say - she has pinpointed the reason.

having been there, I can only say what I hope I or somebody said at the time: squint at how desperate he must have been to do that, whether it was a sudden impulse, reaction, decision, or however long he'd thought about it--how desperate, incl. knowing on some level how he would leave y'all to deal with the consequences---but now he's beyond his desperation and misery.

But if you're to some degree angry, I don't blame you at all.

ugh... so sorry mookie.

Just saw this, mook. How awful. I'm very sorry for you and your mom.

Same here, hang in there.

complications indeed

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/postgazette/obituary.aspx?n=george-anthony-parker-tony&pid=187431859