AGING PARENTS

glad to hear you have people <3

I'd mentioned upthread how my dad had started to show irrtional demential symptoms well, it turns out not too long ago he had some minor strokes (like they didnt even have syptoms) that have caused "vascular dementia". It got to the point where mum just couldnt be his carer anymore as he was ust getting up in the night and falling down and incontinent and all that.

So he's just gone into a home. I know my dad. He used to gruffly say "if I ever go senile or end up in a home just effing shoot me". I'm sure some part of him is still in there thinkin the same thing. Mum said this morning he quietly said "I feel like I'm in prison". :( Its a nice room with comfy chairs and a lovely view and he could go walk out in the gardens and its only a 10 min walk from their house.

But my poor mum needs the help and the break. I just dont know how to process any of this. I've never been any good at dealing with other peoples frailties and illnesses, except when it is in my direct path (like a partner).

But hearing my dad confabulate in a weirdly childlike voice, nothing like the crabby, increasingly angry man he'd been the last 10 years or so is... so weird and I dont know how to feel.

Ugh so many typos in all that sorry.

oh man, sorry. it is super rough

Sorry for the both of you and your ailing parents. It's so hard to balance the person's needs with the family's needs - and the real crime is that aged care has become such an underfunded shitshow that it's difficult to find the positives in what should be a supportive and caring decision to give someone assisted living. Please be easy on yourselves, the harm caused by these strokes is the actual problem, and you're not to blame for trying to find the best way through it.

Oh dont even start me on that part. My parents are financially able to pay for good care but apparently it isnt as simple as just calling a place and slotting in, mum says she is "drowning in paperwork" trying to get all the govt funding ducks in a row. This is just 2 week respite care I dont know what the long term plan is, but he really cant live at home easily anymore.

And I live in another state, I cant just pop up there and help - theyve asked before and I had to say no because I couldnt leave work alone at the time. My brothers are helping though. I'm just the useless black sheep who left home and never calls lol

why is my biological father texting me (which i hate, because fuck typing on a phone) about how i should be on zoom calls (which i also hate, because fuck having to supply an image when there are so many other ways to communicate)

https://gifdb.com/images/thumbnail/heathers-winona-ryder-funny-idiot-tdf05zgdoz0b58dh.gif

oh, yeah

He used to gruffly say "if I ever go senile or end up in a home just effing shoot me".

I can easily understand the source of that sentiment, but at the same time it is asking your loved ones for something that is totally beyond their ability to grant. Your mom's decision to place him in the care of others was absolutely correct, in spite of his declared wishes, because they were based in the fantasy of an easy solution to one of life's most painful dilemmas. He can't help his feelings, but your mom and you are not in a position to assuage his feelings. As matttkkkk said, you are not to blame. This is a matter of necessity far more than it is a matter of choice.

My mom said the same as your dad, Trayce. Almost verbatim.And now she’s in a home and happy as a clam. Some regrets in my part, but mostly that I didn’t get her to assisted living sooner.

My mom, the person who advocated for being effing shot, was a chanfing person projecting herself into a quality of life she didn’t know and was frightened of. My decision to send her to a facility in the present, is based on a person she is now. And I believe the same is likely true for your father.

Thanks for the good thoughts, tipsy and LL! Sorry to hear that, Trayce... it's difficult, you can't settle down because you don't know how to feel or move forward.

My father isn't the gruffest guy around but after a lifetime of having him be able to handle pretty much anything life has thrown at him without ever needing to lean on me that hard, suddenly having to be the one looking after him is like an earthquake... it reverberates all through every aspect of your own life. Familiar lines are all askew, the animals are unsettled, and my compass needle is pointing towards a black void instead of north.

He's improving a little bit day by day, and as noted he has the means for quality care, but whatever the new normal is, it doesn't feel normal at all yet.

(also thanks to matttkkkk!)

I don't speak about it much but my dad's physical state has been getting worse these past few years -- he can walk very slowly but steadily with a cane, with a deep stoop, while neuropathy means he's almost having to will his feet and legs forward. He's still 'here' in essence, though my mom says there have been some moments of late. I predict nothing beyond hoping this is where he stays at for as long as possible -- can't unwind the past, not at this point. He's long outlived how long his dad was around in comparison, and we're coming up on ten years since his only sibling -- his younger brother, even -- passed on. We can't predict, we just have to see.

My sis and a good friend of hers and I are all going with my dad on a trip to Yosemite in a couple of weeks -- the four of us did this trip five years back pre-pandemic, right around this time of year, and we were all happily able to hike some pretty notable and sometimes steep trails, my dad using hiking poles but still able to keep on a good pace. It won't happen now, so he'll stay at the hotel as we do similar, I guess, and just enjoy being there, though I'm sure we'll do plenty of visits around to spots he can get to as well. He's being going to Yosemite one way or another for many years, ever since he was a small boy, and also hiked, over the course of a few years, the full John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada, and all this not that long ago even. This will, I'm guessing, be his final trip there. It'll be good to be part of that.

The other weekend, when I was visiting home, he surprised me in a lovely way. "Ned, do you know what I'm most proud about you?" I couldn't guess, nor did I guess what prompted it. His answer: "That you're a good human being." Frankly, inside, I demurred. I'm well aware of my faults and mistakes, I try to keep them in check. But I am glad of those words, and as I told him and my mom, any good qualities I exhibit, as I do, all came from them. Whatever the future holds next, that happened and he said that. I am grateful.

I'm pretty sure "well aware of my faults and mistakes, I try to keep them in check" is the gold standard for "a good human being".

I'm well aware of my faults and mistakes, I try to keep them in check.

This is practically the definition of how to be a good human being, Ned!

Well, thank you kindly. I view it a little differently but that’s another conversation.

Not knowing your your family history, that was a well handled situation. Take their best and plant some hardier roots.

That's a good story, Ned. Having lived (ehh, sorta) through the implosion of my parents' lives, I feel quite differently about aging than I did before.

It's had to puzzle out all the dimensions of the perceptual change, since it's sort of a wobbly ball of slow-processing emotion, but the gist of it is that I'm now more attuned to letting people die on their own terms. I don't think that's a sad or dark thought, even, but I definitely would have felt that way a few years ago.

When I look back on photos of the year before my father's life ended, I can barely recognize him. He was a pale shell. He was tired and ready to go, and he was only holding on because it was habit, and he loved us, and his body hadn't given out. We gifted him strength, and in our minds improved his appearance and cognition, and didn't see what he really was, at that moment. We made excuses for him, and he didn't necessarily want excuses. We talked about little plans, and acted like he'd be around forever. How tedious it must've been for him to live through our phony optimism! He absolutely knew that he was dying!

I wish – like you're writing about – we'd just taken him for one nice weekend somewhere, and then said to him something like 'We always want you here. And we'll be okay without you, eventually, because you made us into the people that could do this, and the kind of people that can take of each other. But you don't have to stay." I wish we'd done that, because he was ready to go.

When my mom was still verbal and mostly articulate, before the Alzheimers really set in, she said "Just drive me into the ocean when I can't play tennis or walk with my dog." At the time, I thought "that's good, at least she knows what she wants." But looking back, it occurs to me how arrogant those thoughts were on both our parts. Billions of people can't play tennis and walk their dog and they're just fucking peachy. I was ablist, classist, and narrow, and a whole host of other privileges we didn't know we were perpetuating. And while that's who she was (and I was) back then, it's not who we are now. She's actually got a good life in a memory care facility, and (although she's no longer verbal) she's got friends and activities and three meals, lots of Lawrence Welk on YouTube, and family to visit every week. In an inversion of the way that I regret trying to prolong my father's suffering, I am proud to have extended my mother's happiness – even over her expressed wishes. I am glad I didn't drive her into the ocean.

I'm glad for you indeed. And for her.

spent the day at a memorial for my 88-year-old uncle with my 89-year-old father. here he is with his two 80-something little sisters. it was a full house in westport, new york. it was a very mortality-heavy day. but also very nice in a lot of ways. living with an oldster gives you a lot to think about.

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/461570424_10162229082967137_6718198183618362164_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg&_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=w48Y9cS12a4Q7kNvgGLqV7e&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&_nc_gid=ATWyzwzprqL9vBg7wLqHLYt&oh=00_AYArRtpahaq5Z0EnSgTG80WTtyTlh1eMm1FQjPE2UuEWSg&oe=66FE9FCF

hail the elders

my parents got married 50 years ago this evening. it is my earliest memory.

i wore a clip-on bow tie and at dinner was seated between my two grandmothers (neither of whom, in retrospect, was too happy about the proceedings). my wee cousin eric was in a basket on the table.

i did not remind my mom of this lest she become sad : /

xxp that's a great pic!

My mother must have accidentally clicked on "try the new Outlook" and it replaced her Windows Mail - this was apparently the end of her public life and her contact with everyone just because the layout is a little bit different (I really don't see the difference that much: menu on the left, list of mails in the middle, opened mail on the right) and my conviction that it was easily explained by just showing her how to use it was WRONG and INSENSITIVE. I was still able to uninstall outlook & return to her familiar Windows Mail but I won't be able to do that forever, Microsoft is going to replace Mail with Outlook this year definitively. Sigh.

feel u on the intensity of parental stubbornness and refusal to learn how to use or do basically anything new to them. we had a whole thing that involved my dad accepting hand delivered food to his home in his f'ing bathrobe and yelling at me on the delivery girl's phone. his phone wasn't working and he couldn't figure out why (reader: it was the power cord)

part of that could have been parkinson's but not all people with parkinson's behave like he did. after this incident i basically washed my hands of trying to help with technology in particular because i do (did, in this case) not need to be yelled at.

having to reckon with modern user interfaces through my dad's new stroke-impaired mindset just makes me despair. just endless amounts of irrelevant pop-ups and "helpful" nonsense that instantly overwhelms and defeats him. like StanM notes, one aspect of this is every single tech companies' refusal to ever just pick an interface and stick with it. Apple being by far the worst.

that said, while it makes my dad withdraw in depression he doesn't yell at me. I feel like I have to stick with it since the iPhone is just too valuable a tool for him not to learn... we can see where he is, he can keep in touch with me and my sister overseas, etc. he was sad his grandkids wouldn't write him letters (lol) or reply to his emails but they'll happily message with him all day long on WhatsApp, which makes him want to keep the phone close by.

Argh @ trying to convince my folks to have their house decluttered/dehoarded before the house literally kills them

v. familiar : /

RELATABLE

i tried literally everything

I don't have this with my parents, I'm so lucky for that. But my neighbor friend has a house so full of things they don't use most of the rooms, and she laughs when she says that her son can throw it out on his own time. :( It's not GARBAGE so I guess things could be a lot worse.

A little while ago, she told me that she cleaned all the stuff off her counters once but it made her so upset that they were empty, she had to fill them back up again. O_____o

it's different when it's your parents and your childhood home and all of the memories contained therein
i can't even go inside anymore without having a panic attack :(

For sure. The last time I went inside I felt like I had to leave as soon as possible, it was so upsetting.

I have a really nice green compassionate junk cleanout place all picked out and ready to call for an estimate appointment…

I just don’t think my dad is fully grasping the reality of the situation.

I should read the rest of this thread.

iirc Elvis Telecom has some stories upthread about being in the hoarder trenches

This stuff is no joke, to clean out my in-laws home required many years of sneaking items out of the house and out to the garbage and then when they passed away, it required a junk removal service taking away three truckloads. My mom’s house is in a pretty grim state too, during the pandemic something took a turn there. And unfortunately, I’m 2000 miles away and can’t help. I really really worry about the next few years with that.

I've been getting rid of tons of stuff in my own house as a displacement activity for all the stuff my dad won't part with (but hasn't touched in 30 years)

There’s nothing that’s made me more enthusiastic about becoming a minimalist who can travel light as needed than dealing with multiple hoarder houses

my belongings would fit in a car at the moment. i love it.

ok the desk wouldn't but other than that

I’ve got 2000 records and my goal is to cut that down to 500. I really have no idea how I’m going to do that.

it's different when it's your parents and your childhood home and all of the memories contained therein

this aspect of clearing out stuff can be pretty intense, I have boxes and boxes of childhood stuff and while you know it's not worth keeping, it's like fused with your skin and you can only tear away so much at a time before you need a break

Yes it’s like seeing little pieces of oneself rotting on the floor or in a bag and knowing it’s trash but still having a hard time seeing it as such. Really painful stuff.

xxp feeling u omar, I'd like to go from 6K to 2K without basically throwing money away on a bulk store sale

I don't have this with my parents, I'm so lucky for that.

Agreed. Mine realized this when they were cleaning out my dad's mom's place after her passing -- a genial hoarder, of the sort that always had to 'buy a little something' whenever she went out on an errand. It was a big house and the whole process took months. Afterwards, my folks dedicated themselves to stripping things down to certain key and necessary things, a good but not crazy book, music and movie collection and some very nice art. I don't look forward to when my sis and I will have those duties they once did, but I rest assured on this and other points.

Yes, sleeve, the money thing is what’s holding me back for now. eBay and discogs work for selling a few at a time but at this level it’s pretty daunting. Thought about having a garage sale pop-up record shop but that also seems daunting. I don’t wanna deal with too many record guys at once, I feel like Bernard from Black books.

The difficult part with cleaning out the in-laws home for us was there was no logic to the mess, we found the label from my mother-in-law‘s crib in the hospital from the 1940s mixed in with dozens of receipts from Robinsons May dating back to the 1990s

yeah I remember Elvis talking about that upthread

like, finding the house deed in the middle of some old newspapers or something

There never is a logic to the mess. It didn’t get to be a mess because of a strong organizing principle.

grateful that my parents have moderate collections of pretty much everything, but continue to do years culls of their possessions.

“yearly”

Yeah exactly re: the mish mash. My dad just leaves his tools around and then piles of paper and shit accumulate around them. Trying to be assertive about it with my dad is hard. My mom is too far gone right now to really be involved. Feel extremely guilty for letting things get to this point. It’s not like Collier Brothers level but.. it’s really bad.