Sorry bro. Not much else I can say.
I am always surprised by the depth of your trauma, and the strength of your resilience.
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Hey, speak English here.
Btw, was phenetic a bastardization of phonetic and frenetic?
Love it.
Wish I knew the proper way to use Yinzer.
Or is it yinzer?
Inquiring minds.
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It’s yinz. As in “hey, what are yinz doin tonight?”
No. Just my poor spelling I guess. Lol
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A moment of genius - it is now phrenetic when you sound things out but are in a frenzy.
Should come in handy for yinz.
My sister in law asked me one of the first times I met her, “What are youse guys doing tonight?”
I about choked and my wife hit me and whispered - “that’s really how she talks.”
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Lol. Go to Southwestern PA. There is a whole language there. Dippy eggs, chipped ham, gum bands , yinz.
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Seems more harmless than gobba goo, fidgerator, and mozz.
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When I started reading T-Nation I saw you post about dippy eggs and I told my husband " He’s talking about dippy eggs! He’s from Pittsburgh!!!" Like I had just won some weird treasure hunt. 
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I arrived home on Tuesday to find my mother alive and well, which was good news/bad news. Glad she was well, bad that she doesn’t need me as much as I thought - jk.
I want to emphasize that my intent is to document and to share what I consider a gift - walking my mom home - and provide others an opportunity to learn from my experience and to share theirs.
I tell my mom all the time that she has another twenty years left in her, but she doesn’t seem to believe me. Nor do I think she wants another twenty. I have a friend that is a musician, older cat like me, and he and his buddy were playing a gig at a used record store last night. I invited my mom and she was up for it. We had dinner, got cleaned up, and when I got done filling my coffee up and went to leave, she was leaning on the dining room table with her coat and told me she was wobbly, didn’t think she could go. This is not the first time that she her spirit has been willing but her flesh has been weak. It’s a complicated dance to time her Parkinson’s meds with her meals so she is 100%. She likes to walk with me but often doesn’t feel physically capable when the time comes. Same with some of her PT exercises. Apparently the meds need to be taken on an empty stomach about an hour before eating, but she is up to every four hours now, so timing food and medication is a challenge that we have not solved yet.
We waffle on the senior living, and when I got back she was iffy - the next day it was a go. I am careful to balance helping without pushing.
We did have a win this week - went back to the same place she fell for breakfast and managed to get through the trip without any falls, lol. She was a very confident woman but has become fearful in the last few years. Keeping her spirits up is a goal. I have not always been a steady hand and this experience is helping me to focus on being even keeled.
So, a few wins, no losses - a good week.
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I fly in a few hours and am a little too amped to sleep so I figured I would update the walk. Things have been mostly good, but I am getting an education on estates and taxes. It seems the government has its hand in all things death related. In order to settle my father’s estate, my mother has a tone of documents to chase down and provide to the estate lawyer - receipts from cremation, statement from brokerage accounts at the time of death, house title, etcetera - including a valuation of my father’s personal effects, like clothes and watches and stuff.
It seems heartless to have an 86 year old woman with Parkinson’s to hunt all of these items down while dealing with the loss of her lifetime partner - married for 66 years.
Throw on top of that trying to clean out a home you have owned for 58 years while finding senior living - it’s a load.
But, they are first world problems. I am getting a crash course on capital gains and ordinary income, asset allocation, tax avoidance, revocable and irrevocable trusts, spendthrift clauses, and a few other things I never wanted to know about.
A few wins. A doctor’s appointment a few weeks ago yielded new strategies on her meds that have helped - chew the carbidopa levadopa and take them with orange juice - and timing, take them before meals.
I got her some walking sticks for her birthday and we were able to go for a walk, but the strategy with walking sticks is different for people with Parkinson’s, so we got to learn that as well - use them more like outriggers behind you than out in front.
My mother is reflective but stoic - neither of us has cried over the recent losses. For me, they were gifts. For her, a little more mixed. My dad was a load for her to take care of, and my brother was not the kid she raised. At dinner the other night, she told me, I miss the kid I raised. She plugs through the tasks with intent and tenacity.
Mostly wins. But, she fell on the attic steps last night. No harm other than some bruises, but it could have easily been very bad. She tripped on the third to last step - had she tripped on the first, it would have been ugly.
I would like to get all of this wrapped up and get her (and likely me) into a Senior Living facility (cruise ship on land) and have her not worry about this stuff. But that means all of the estate and tax stuff, sell the house, dispose of the contents (including a Yamaha Concert class 7 foot Grand Piano), and get moved to an acceptable facility.
We toured a place last week and it would be fine, but the two bedroom only had one bathroom. I plan to travel for six months of the year and figure why not keep a bedroom with my mom in a senior facility (I qualify myself)?
But, most people don’t realize that Parkinson’s affects your muscles and digestion uses muscles, and she often takes a significant amount of time to move her bowels and doesn’t want a single bathroom if we are both living there - TMI, I know.
We have two other places to tour, as of now, and will go see them after Thanksgiving when I get back.
So, summary - chasing documents so the government can tax us, setting up estates, searching for housing, then sell the existing and its contents, pack a bag, and move.
Simple, right?
I am still grateful to have the opportunity to walk her home.
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Thank you for sharing that. A view from the future, I suppose.
We’ve encountered estate sales run by a company that takes care of everything. Perhaps you already know about this sort of thing - I was surprised by it. They go into the home and value everything not going to the new place (if used prior to a significant downsize), then take care of advertising and managing the sale. Obviously things like the piano would be handled differently.
I so get this.
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This can make things easier, but it depends on the financial part. I think these places take somewhere around 50% of what you make.
This is a big fear for me.
Yes, there are “Senior” moving companies that will come in and take care of everything for a fee. And you pay for that service (and it is probably worth it). And we will probably take advantage of that.
But, convincing your 86 year old mother that her $25K of Ethan Allen furniture is no longer in style and should be sold for $500 is still a challenge.
Still, first world challenges that we are blessed to have.
The kid I raised will become a theme I guess. I am blessed with two of them. Arms length with my 22 year old daughter, reasonably close with my 19 year old son. But, my mother has lost two kids, both of my older brothers, and I honestly don’t know how she deals with that. The fact that her oldest became a bit of a crank must be troublesome as well.
I am interested in the difference between mothers and fathers and their relationships with their kids. My wife is close to my daughter and I love her like a father should, but we don’t connect.
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It has been a few and I figured I would update.
Mom is good. Slowing down noticeably, getting either hard of hearing or not tracking as well as she normally does, but otherwise good.
We toured four Senior Residences recently and found one that we like. I am not sure if I have shared this, but I will be moving in to the senior living with her. I am 62 and would love three meals a day, will only be there six months or so out of the year and will travel the other six. I will use the senior living as my home base, stay close to my mom.
I saw a doctor last week, first time in a while, and have some issues. PSA velocity, cholesterol, and BP. I got referrals so will take care of it. The doctor I am seeing is my mom’s doctor, was my dad’s, and was my grandmother’s, so I am third generation patient. She also went to undergrad and med school with my middle brother. She seems to be very good.
I have gotten spiritual in the last few and am totally comfortable with my death - I think it is a promotion. But - I can’t let my mom bury three sons, a husband, and die alone. So, I cut out all salt, bumped my steps, and cut way down on my candy and sweets consumption.
Anticipate moving into senior living in two or three months. That will run about $6K per month. Will have to pay someone to empty the house my parents bought in 1967. Over a thousand books, furniture, weights, ad infinitum. I’m a little bit of a buddhist/minimalist so this makes me ill.
Then sell the house, yikes. But not until we are sure we like the new place. But fast, so we are not paying for both.
The home was bought in 1967 but with taxes, electricity, water, sewer, garbages, etc, it runs about $3K per month.
Getting old sucks.
Better than the alternative.
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I spent Thanksgiving with my parents. My mother is noticably worse. She is declining relatively quickly I think. I’m not sure she knew who I was all of the time. This is new. She usually doesn’t know my name, but normally knows my face. She also repeatedly told me that she wanted to go home and sit in her own living room. This was while we were in her living room. I also noticed that she is having trouble with buttons. She spent a solid 10 minutes trying to unbutton a shirt. She also only eats if food is directly given to her. I believe my parents will have to get some kind of care for her soon. My father doesn’t take proper care of her. All he does is sleep in a chair all day. I know I should be more understanding of my father, but the intense bitterness that I feel towards him in general makes it hard for me to have sympathy for his position. He is self involved and makes little to no effort to make her environment any better. I don’t think my mother will be with us for very long. Although, she’s not really with us now. On the plus side, I sat on the couch with her holding her hand. We just watched TV and laughed and held hands.
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Solid.
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My sister called me today in tears freaking out. Apparently my mom left the house and my dad didn’t realize it. Then he figured out that she was gone and freaked out. Turns out she went for a walk. My sister was at church and got a phone explosion when she walked out with my mom being missing, then found, then my dad yelling at my mom. Sigh. So now my sister is just losing her shit. She is uber stressed taking care of my parents, has a full time job and kids. She’s got a lot. So I spent about an hour on the phone with her trying to calm her down. Near the end of the conversation she told me that she likes talking to me because I know what she’s going through. It occurred to me that I don’t. We aren’t having even remotely the same experience. I told her that we are both losing our mom and we are both dealing with that loss, but she is the daughter dealing with the day to day of actually having to watch mom disappear. She is the one there trying to take care of everything. She is the one in the middle of it all. I am the daughter who is losing her mom and dealing with the guilt of being the one who left and can’t do anything to help. She for sure got the shit end of the deal.
On a related but separate note, I was at my niece’s birthday party yesterday and had two people separately ask me how my mom is. I know they are trying to be kind, but I absolutely hate it when people ask me. There is no good way to answer that question and I usually end up crying by the time I’m done. Trying to choke it back because if I cry then people want to hug me. I don’t want to be hugged. I don’t want to be asked. My husband has been pretty good about updating his family on my behalf so that they won’t ask.
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Earth school isn’t for the weak. I think you are doing a good job. I have wanted to respond to a few of your posts in your thread but my user level prevents me from responding more than three times.
Are you interested in an ear or a response?
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I’m always open to a response. If you are speaking to my political breakdown earlier I would ask that you delete after. Those are thoughts that I would prefer to not be left open.
As far as politics, the shift is inevitable. No amount of violence, verbal or otherwise, is going to stop it. Trust in Source.
In 2001 I found my brother dead. My mother felt blessed that it was me because she would not have been able to bear it, nor would my father or older brother. So I was the lucky one and I feel blessed that I could spare them that pain. Now I feel blessed to be walking my mother home. It’s an opportunity to give back what she gave me. When my oldest brother was alive (he passed six months ago), he was seldom around, seldom spoke to my parents. And that allowed my to make amends and find forgiveness in my heart for my father. I did not resent carrying the burden.
Trust that Source/Universe/God/All That Is is doing what is best for you and yours. Your sister is in the caregiving role for a reason, and you are in a support role for your sister for a reason. In situations like that I try to figure out the reason, the message, the purpose.
Practice delusional self forgiveness. If you’re Christian, know that you are already forgiven. If not, know that the spark of divinity is within and you have the power to forgive yourself.
I can be a little awkward sometimes, and tend to give advice as a default. I am learning that my advice isn’t always received in the spirit I intended. I recognize the value of just holding space, and that is why I asked if you wanted a response or an ear - I apologize if I made it awkward.
If you’re on Social Media, check out Success Juice.
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I can’t speak to anyone else, but I’ve always taken your advice/ comments as an attempt at helping and offering advice from experience. Thank you for your kindness. Your responses are always welcome in my thread.
I’m working on it.
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