Mom & Me Five Archive

...you'll note, if you visit The Dailies, she had an active night, so I'm letting her sleep in and checking on her. I'm not sure what initiated the water shed but, obviously, it was necessary, so I'm grateful for small, mysterious favors. Keeps her off meds longer.
    I've been catching up, besides the above, at Movies, Mom & Me.
    Despite the stress free visit with MPS that seemed to satisfy both of us from a relationship standpoint, and Mom, as well, some days prior to even planning this visit, through this morning, a small, still voice will well up inside my head and whisper, "Just four days, you just need four days..."
    Don't ask me where the "four days" comes from, although it could be the amount of time I would need to feel as though I was truly alone and Mom was in truly trustworthy care so that I could shut the phone off, etc., then revel a little, then begin whatever projects come to mind with abandon, eat only what and when I want, arise and retire when I want, smell my own shit more than my mother's shit, start stuff that I probably won't be able to finish for awhile but, what the hell, that's the story of my life, right now, and I look forward to the aftermath...anyway, all that, and beginning to feel as though I welcome our companionship, again would take, I think, four days, wouldn't you think? At least my internal analyzers seem to think so. Really, people, elder care should never have been allowed to get to the place where caregivers are heard to say, "Well, at my worst, I'm still better than a nursing home."
    Just shouldn't have ever been allowed to happen.
    One of the snippets from Living Old that has been haunting me is [quoted from this interview]:

... Even within the pool of success stories, it tears people apart. It tears families apart. We've cared for lots of people whose children have divorced or separated temporarily because of the need to take care of an aging mother or father and the impact on their kids and the impact on their jobs. So the stress comes from every conceivable direction.
    I don't really know what the scope of it is, but I imagine that it's huge and that as a society we've chosen to completely ignore it, just because it's easier to ignore it and pretend that it's gone away.

In Answer to the Question:  Would you feel a failure if you had to put your parents in a nursing home?
    I wouldn't do it, no matter what it took. It's easy for me to say; my wife's not sitting here. But I think she feels the same way about her parents. I can't think of a reason in the world that they would have to go live in a nursing home. I can't think of anything in our lives now that we wouldn't sacrifice for the sake of their being able to stay with us. ... For the sake of being able to stay around and stay together, and [to] send a message to my kids, there's nothing that we wouldn't sacrifice in order to have them be with us.

In Answer to the Question:  What message would your children get from that?
    The message is, people are important. Has nothing to do with being old; has nothing to do with being Grandma and Grandpa or whatever; doesn't even have anything to do with family. It's just that people are important. And the people who need help the most are the people who are the most important. But it's a hard message to sell to kids in a society that doesn't really believe in that.

    There were other snippets which I can't locate that have been haunting me, as well, but, lately, of course, it has been primarily the mention, above of how the question of what to do about Mom and Dad tears families apart, even when something is done with Mom and Dad, even when "the right thing" is done by Mom and Dad. This seems to be acknowledged over and over. I think it comes as a surprise to all of us to whom this happens. I never expected this to happen in my born-into family and I never, never expected to become the instigator of dissension and scarily expressed frustration. Once it happened, though, I looked back and thought, oh, yeah, I get it, now, I see how I got here. That's when the real hard work, begins, though. That's when you have to figure out whether being "here" is legitimate, is worth it to you and how you want to proceed from whatever your decisions are. Considering that all relationships change over time, for instance, do you see the changes percolating in your familial relationships good, bad or neither? What are some of those changes? How do they affect your identity? The identity of the family members? Be honest. BE HONEST. BE HONEST!!!
    And, anyway, what difference does it make? So we have no goddamned idea as a society what is happening to our old...I continue, everyday, to be surprised to discover new facts about those of us who are living with our old. And, somehow or another, everyone gets taken care of, "as it should", hmmm...well, you can see the predicament.
    At any rate, I didn't foresee trouble on the Family Horizon. I didn't look at long standing relationships with an eye to how they might change; not even my very long standing relationship with my mother. I figured "we" could handle anything. And, well, the motto is, we have, in our eccentric ways as a family.
    I'd still be doing this if I had been more intro- and extraspective, I'm sure, but I might not be dancing the tightrope of family volatility, either. However, I'm now philosophical about this. And contemplative. And, continually noisy, I know. About this.
    I have no idea how today is going to shake out. I'll let you know...
    ...later.