My Worst Nightmare

It’s damn hard to be a parent, and it doesn’t matter if you have one or ten. Every day is a challenge and a question—am I doing the right thing? Am I being the best parent? There’s three more hours a day not taken up by taking care of my kids-should I sleep or do laundry? Did I make enough cookies for the whole class?  Do I have enough diapers until payday? Did Joey get enough fiber today? It never ends, does it?

But what about when your children are grown and married, have provided you with the incredible joy of grandchildren. Your retirement account is great, your home is paid for and you have no debt. Could life be any better?  Ah, you can finally relax and coast, right? Not if you have ageing parents. My husband is the only child of his widowed father, and I am the caretaker of my mother who lives close by. I have three brothers but they all live several hours away.  Mom is able to live alone, but those days are numbered. Very numbered.

I have four grown children with fairly settled lives. They have provided six grandchildren which give “grampy” and I immeasurable joy. We have lived in the same (paid for) home for over 25 years and are looking forward to retirement in less than two years. Maine winters can be brutal and we look forward to spending those months someplace a whole lot warmer. But we find ourselves in a holding pattern; we put our plans on hold because we take care of our parents.

For some people it would be easy to put our parents in nursing homes and move to a warmer climate. It’s really not an option for us.  My father in law is currently in a local nursing home for rehab after a knee replacement; my mother, an Alzheimer’s victim, is at the top of the waiting list at an Alzheimer’s care unit but still at home (scaring the hell out of me). My heart breaks each and every day as I care for mom; she recently went through losing her beloved dog to a brain tumor and kept asking me what was wrong with her dog; she doesn’t understand her doctor’s orders for her care even when I spell it out (literally) and doesn’t remember to eat and drink. 

I go to sleep each night worrying about mom and I wake up every morning with an angst in my chest wondering if she remembered her meds (even though I called to remind her) the night before.  I worry constantly—is she drinking enough water? Is she eating? Did she remember to turn the coffeemaker off? Did she lock her door before she went to bed?

She won’t live with me; when she was the caretaker of my grandmother, who also had Alzheimer’s, she told me that she would never, ever want to be a burden to her children. One day, last fall, a violent storm took out her electrical system and she had to spend a night with me. She got up in the night to go to the bathroom and was completely confused; I woke up to lights flicking on and off. I got up and looked at her eyes, completely lost.

“I don’t know where to go.” She said.

I led her back to my guest room and settled her in. I kissed her forehead in the dark and immediately felt like I was years back in time, kissing and comforting my own daughter, tucking her in bed. My heart was broken. I can hardly believe that she is still home a year later.

She’s not able to follow directions now. The doctor put her on an anti-diarrhea diet yesterday; I wrote everything down for her as plainly as I could and explained it to her. Yet when I was back two hours later she hadn’t followed a single instruction.  It’s obvious that it’s no longer safe for her to be alone.

I am so torn. She can still kick my ass playing Yahtzee. She can still remember to go to the mailbox every day. She knows that she doesn’t like muffins that have poppy seeds in them.  She knows to go to bed at dark and she’s always up by eight. When we go for lunch she asks me to order for her because she doesn’t know what she likes.  She can’t get enough Hershey kisses, Swiss rolls and Oreos. She has no idea who the president is or if she took her meds the night before.  Is it time to take her out of what has been her home for fifty years? She can be in the moment enough to kick my ass at Yahtzee yet not remember if she had lunch.  She takes good care of her cat and her bird (which she hand-raised from hatching) and remembers to grab her purse even if we’re just going to visit her brother, yet can’t remember or recall what the season is.  Oh God, give me wisdom! Am I doing the right thing by waiting for the phone to ring telling me there’s a bed open at the Alzheimer’s care unit? Am I really okay with that? 

Believe me, I ask myself that about five millions times a day.