AGING PARENTS

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

Daddy's birthday is in two days. we're going to have to cancel our plans to have dinner at the same restaurant we took him to two years ago, but it's ok - we can postpone and can do later, and her and I will be together on the day.

we're all getting more emotional again as the day comes. last year, he spent his birthday with us at home, and we took him to one of his fav Italian restaurants.

the other day I was trying to look up mom's medical records at AdventHealth, looking for bloodwork, and I pulled it up, but it was dad's account, registered under her name. i saw his last order releasing him to hospice, but the thing I wasn't ready for was the profile pic.

Advent started taking pics of the patients upon admission, which they never previously did, for the in-room tablet. so in the account was his frail face with the tubes under his nose.

that's not how I remember you Dad. I'll always remember your face being full of life even as shit collapsed all around you. thank you for everything. i'll always be your boy

Mom seriously fucked me over and i'm livid. I know she didn't do it on purpose but i'm still upset.

bottom line on top, I can claim her as a dependent for last year, which I only discovered last September. I told her I was going to do this 5 or 6 times. she was fine with it (especially since I loan her money on occasion, so this would put me in a better position to do so). Because I waited so long to do it, I was still going to get approximately a $550 refund this year. Mom is getting no refund, owes no taxes, and isn't even legally required to file due to low income.

however, she has been convinced all year that she has to. I've clarified her 5 to 6 times she does not have to and even showed her the IRS regulations on this. Every time, she believes me for a little while, then two weeks later convince herself she has to file again, just because she got tax forms in the mail, so we have the conversation again. I also told her point blank - if you file jointly w/ dad for last year, and you're not claiming a refund, I *can't* claim you - so don't do it as it will cost me a lot of money!

The only thing we were unclear about is that PPL fucked up her caretaker payment tax form, not properly labeling the payments as Difficulty of Care. You can recharacterize these monies on the tax form itself, but since mom wasn't required to file, I wasn't sure if she actually had to do this or not, and whether it'd impact my ability to claim her. Mom said she'd go on her Turbotax and ask them in the help chat, so I wrote out the question for her in detail.

She not only never asked it, but she also secretly filed her taxes and didn't mention it to me at all. as a result, I went to file mine, and it was rejected, telling me she was already claimed. now I go from $550 refund to owing almost $1000, unless she files an amended return, and I file mine by paper. meaning a 2+ month delay, AND the possibility I don't get the money at all, and having no idea until they decide whether I'm getting $550 or owing close to $1000.

I'm trying not to be mad because I know she didn't do it on purpose but it's the principle of not listening to me when I said not to do this thing that would harm me financially and her doing it anyway. and then acting the aggrieved one when I got upset when I found out tonight.

oh it's actually even dumber now, she is apparently getting a $5 refund (no idea how), but she deliberately left the box indicating she could be claimed as a dependent unchecked. which makes even less sense because we talked about that at length.

when I talked to her about it she immediately apologized in a way that was meant to make me feel sorry for her, how she's going through a lot, and I asked "am I not allowed to be upset?", like...why is it that anytime I'm rightfully upset about something it gets turned around on me?

going for a drive.....fuck this

Hoo boy, trying to get my parents moved about 900 miles to be close to me. It took me and my siblings a few months of effort to persuade them that they need to move now to be close to one of us, because they are developing and will continue to develop needs that will make it hard for them to stay where they are — in a semi-rural setting with all of us hours (and in my case several states) away. For assorted reasons it makes most sense for them to move to where I am rather than where my siblings are. So my 79-yr-old dad has been packing boxes maniacally for a few months now and the strain of it all is overwhelming both of them. My job is to find the moving company and set all that up; find them a rental house to move into in the short term until they can sell their current house and then buy one down here; find them a doctor and start working on getting them a Medicare plan here; and then probably make multiple trips up and back to supervise the move and drive both of their cars down here. And all of that is supposed to happen by like June.

If we all survive, they should end up in a better situation. But whooee the next few months are gonna be fun.

congrats on getting them to listen/agree to move. i failed at that w my mom because she is the most stubborn person ever born and i am but one human being she doesn't actually want to be closer to.

lol I thought my dad was the most stubborn person ever born, but I guess he's second-most.

We moved more local a few years back for my in-laws as this thing does as time does. 3 years in and we (me and my wife) are intensely frustrated. All the passive aggressive "be near" has been for nothing, her (divorced parents) dad has basically decided to be resistant to any action to help him keep living. He is a Viet Vet, now blind and continues to insist living in a tiny old house with minimal support.

We are at the point that we have done what we did and live with it. Everything could be a lot worse but we gave up a lot that worked for us to try and help with them (very much my wife's ethos than mine). It is going to keep hurting for a good few more years and that is before we have to try and sort their shit out.

"If we all survive, they should end up in a better situation. But whooee the next few months are gonna be fun."

try and take care of yourself. its a very stressful process. drink lots of water? wait, i meant whisky...

anyway, do what you can to not go bonkers with it all. one step at a time.

i'm terrible at advice.

and i am lucky enough to be blessed with a spouse who will take my father to appointments while i work. and get his banking in order. and help with the bulk of the house selling and insurance stuff. wait, what do i do again? i must do something.

has this ever happened to you guys? you try and build a business for 15 years and work a ton and cook meals for 4 people for almost 20 years and then your two kids finally go off to school and you want to relax a little and then there is a pandemic and your mom dies and your dad looks like death so he moves in with you and then your 80-something year old aunt who you never talk to and who is the most prickly pear you will ever meet decides that SHE is going to move to your town as well because she's lonely by herself - she was near my dad before he moved in with us - and gets an apartment and is coming here in april and when the inevitable happens and my dad goes - though lord knows he might outlive me - maria and i will be her only family as far as the eye can see and will no doubt have to deal with HER long into our dotage because she is way too prickly to die.

we actually think about moving and not telling anyone. my dad will just look up from his Wall Street Journal or his CJ Box book or his episode of Blue Bloods and wonder where we went to and he will have to walk to Walgreens for all his meals. he'd manage...

just a little venting...nothing to see here.

its always nice to beth parker's name at the top of this thread. she just e-mailed me last week to rant about science fiction podcasts.

Yeah - I feel that vibe Scott (that is awful and I am sorry for you). Except we just gave up a ton of shit we liked to walk into whatever that turns out to be.

I need to meditate more.

There is that running point in the US that the generation of mass growth, success, glory and everything is also happily choosing to hand its care to their kids in a wonderful "plop" basket. Cos why wouldn't you?

Tell Beth hi from us.

Scott I hope it works better than you're fearing, it sounds like you are a generous and loyal person who feels for his family, and ultimately that makes a better life than an asshole who's able to cut people off. But it comes at a cost.

I feel these posts. My siblings and I talked and none of us wanted to move, we all like where we are (and much love to Rochester, but if I wanted to live there I wouldn’t have left). Having my folks here does still restrict us, in the sense that my wife and I were tentatively talking about moving elsewhere in a few years and now obviously that is on hold. But we do love our current home and community, so staying longer is ok.

As I grapple with these move logistics part of me is like, we shoulda just let them stay where they are. But I know that’s not good either.

best wishes to yall and yr families <3

My uncle died the night before last. Throat cancer got too hard to endure and he applied for MAID and went through with it. He was 70. He didn’t tell my mom he was sick, she just got the news after he’d passed. No funeral or service or anything.

Felt a little vindictive, but he was always the odd uncle. He wasn’t close to my mom or her other brothers. I always liked him, he was the arrested development uncle, shared his comics with me when I was 8, got me interested in Talking Heads when I was 10.

My mom isn’t showing any signs of grief, she never really got on with him. She was more piqueish herself about my health over the phone. “Smoking is how you get throat cancer.” I know, mom, I know.

Still, I’m like “wow I’m halfway between age 20 and dead at age 70.” My mom and stepfather are getting pretty old. By default I assume I’m the one who will need to live with them when they need it, I’m the gay one, my brothers all have wives and families.

I’ve had a tentative plan to move out west to be closer to my brothers and my mom, the plan is now less-tentative. I think I’m gonna be a good care-child? I’d like to be. Anyway. Sad to lose an uncle. First of my mom’s generation to go.

Sorry to hear that indeed -- and I get this sense of planning and wondering, though it's at best very vague for me still. One of my mom's siblings died of a heart attack some years back, nobody was close to him -- a classic fuckup, being blunt, but I hope wherever he was at gave him some peace. The real loss was my dad's younger brother and only sibling out of nowhere in 2015; the fact that it's almost been a decade now and my dad's the only one of his core family left is very strange to think about.

I think I’m gonna be a good care-child?

This is something I've resolved too, even tho it wasn't a role I ever particularly planned on. Not that there were really any plans, which maybe would have been good if there were, but you can't force these things. Until about 6 months ago I think my dad's plan was "We stay where we are until we die." But subsequent events persuaded him otherwise, and now we have actual moving dates on the calendar. I don't have any exact expectations of what it will be like to suddenly live near my nearly-80-year-old parents after 30-plus years of NOT living near them, but I've just kind of decided I'm willing to do whatever that is.

Sorry about your uncle. My dad's brother died a few years ago, the first one of that generation for either of my parents (they both have/had two siblings). He was the youngest of my aunts/uncles but also the unhealthiest for decades (chronically overweight, smoker, addiction issues, COPD). My parents and the rest of their siblings all seem poised at the moment to make it into their 80s, but obviously anything can happen at this point. I've become accustomed to reading lots of obituaries of people famous and otherwise who died younger than my parents are already. On one hand it can seem a little crazy to be going to so much effort and expense to get my folks moved because we all know that at a likely maximum we're looking at 10 years at the outside. If they both keeled over tomorrow, I think they'd be as relieved as anything at not having to deal with continuing to get older. But as long as they're here, we'll do what we need to.

Big love to you both

Also going to see my dad next weekend, he’s been end-of-lifing for five years now, I feel oddly like this will be my last visit. Goddammit!! Navigating age is a psychological part-time job

Good luck, hope it's good time.

Dad has made it to 97, but he’s now in hospital receiving end of life care and probably won’t make it to the end of the week. When someone you love reaches such an advanced age it feels almost greedy or selfish to wish for more - but however old, it never seems enough once the end of the road is in sight.

I'm so sorry to hear this.

97 years, that is really something to celebrate <3

Wow @ 97. I'm sorry he is reaching the end, best thoughts to your family. That's sort of inconceivable to me. My mom is 77, it's hard for me to imagine another 10 years much less 20.