Good luck with the visit today. It might be worth having your dad's hearing checked out, but it could be a sign of a slight decline in cognative ability. Certainly before my hearing got a lot worse, I'd be fine with one to one conversations, but not so good in groups. I noticed a few years back mum seemed to struggle with any conversation that wasn't based on her and her interests, and I put it down to her egoism, but maybe it was the start of her cognative impairment. Her hearing was really good at the time.
How about giving your dad your fitbit and seeing how far he can walk in ten minutes or soemthing else that will get him out of his chair and moving?
I tried to talk him into a fitbit last visit (before my SIL came round) and he said that he thought he'd find statistical confirmation of how little he is walking depressing. I think he might be right; I think that he would set his goals too high, based on how much he was walking in 2014, and it would just re-emphasise that he's unlikely to be that fit again. I think he's still fitter than the average man of his age, but he was extremely fit 3 1/2 years ago , and he misses that. I'll try again today.
Mum's been dead for 18 months and it's still not all sorted out. Solicitor is using the provisions of her Will to protect her half of the shared accounts and house now that Dad's in permanent residential care. He thinks it's so that he can still leave my sister and me an inheritance; in reality, it's so that when his savings run out in about a year we can top up what the LA will be willing to pay for his care. We might just manage to hold on to half of the house.
Anyway, you didn't want to know about that really.
So what was I going to say that was relevant - oh yes, a few thoughts prompted by reading on here and my experiences over the last year or so.
1. Don't live for your partner. If they die first, you will have no idea what your purpose actually is. This can have profound psychological effects.
2. Live whilst you can, for tomorrow you may be needing someone to get you out of bed and wipe your arse.
3. Lay not treasure up on earth where the moth eats and rust decays, or whatever it is. Spend the bugger. Be generous. If you're generous whilst you have capacity, your attorney can continue to be generous once you don't. If you're not, he can't. If you don't, then the Local Authority will only spend it on paying for someone to wipe your arse.
4. Appoint a solictor as executor. Otherwise the executor you do appoint will think that it's their responsibility to do probate themselves to save your money from fees and will Not Enjoy This At All. Making them spend the money having it done professionally is a kindness, honest it is, unless your Will is very, very simple. If you're setting up discretionary trusts and stuff in it, this goes triple.
5. Consider the possibility that your will die first. Everyone thinks about how their partner will manage once they're gone, but they don't seem to think about how they'll manage if they're the surviving one.
6. Keeping bank statements from thirty years ago from banks you've not banked with for twenty years is not "record keeping", it's a "pain in the arse" for your executor.
7. When your children say "do you not think it might be an idea to move somewhere easier to maintain and nearer us" consider the possibility that they might actually have a point. That bungalow with massive gardens and mature trees (now rather maturer trees) was lovely when you were thinking what you wanted to do for your 60th, but now as your 8th decade gets underway you may not be noticing the tree roots lifting the paths and the ivy lifting the roof tiles.
8. Don't make your partner make promises about what they'll do or not do when you're gone. It may be a great comfort to you as you depart this vale of tears to know that your grieving husband won't feel he has to sell the house, because you made him promise not to, but what if he wants to and it's in his best interest?
9. Don't die. You may think being dead is a bit of a downer but believe me you mess it up for everyone else as well.
Sarasa, this is just a thought but you might consider making a poster for the door. It could say something like, "The neighbours did not come in here. Don't speak to them if you have lost something." Or just have it say, "Call Sarasa if something is missing - the neighbours don't have it."
When I do visiting in the nursing home, there are signs for specific people who do specific things repeatedly. The signs are where they do the behaviour. So, if someone is pouring out the dish washing liquid, the sign by the sink says, "Lucy, don't pour the soap." And the sign by the tv says, "John, don't touch the tv." Apparently, it can interrupt the behaviour. I'm not sure if it would work for your mom but you could try it. Having it say what she should do when something is missing could be quite important.
This sounds like something that is too hard to manage from a distance but it may give you a break if it works.
Thanks KarlLB - that made me laugh as well as providing some good advice.
LilyPad - Mum has extremely poor eyesight, and I think any message would have to be very big. She'd only tear it down anyway, as she is convinced its the rest of us that are wrong. I can see for the right situation it might work though.
I've just had a message from my brother. Mum has phoned him to say she'll walk out if the doctor's appointment tomorrow mentions mental capacity. Going to be an interesting day.
Oh my, good luck! I do hope you can figure out something.
And yes, some of the signs at the nursing home are in huge letters. If she won't deal with it, you could always have a discussion and then put up a sign that reminds her of the consequences of talking to the neighbours - that the police will be called - and if the sign is down it will prove incapacity. In the long run though, it is sounding more and more like she needs a full assessment and some sort of assistance whether she likes it or not.
I had a lovely visit to my parents today. We managed to keep conversation going the whole time. I made several suggestions for things Dad could be doing, but they were all dismissed. When I said that even if Dad wasn't feeling up to walking, they could drive somewhere for coffee, Mum said that she didn't want to go out for coffee, she wanted them to stay at home so that she could look after Dad. I think it is a vicious circle - the more Mum "looks after" Dad, the less he does, the less he does, the more Mum "looks after" him.
Sarasa, my suggestion is that you get your brother (not you, because my guess is she wouldn't listen to you) to tell her that if she won't talk about mental capacity the doctor will take that to be an indication that she is lacking it. It may not work, because it sounds as if she is beyond logic, but what the heck, I think you have to try. My heart goes with you tomorrow.
The Dowager very much enjoyed seeing my brother and SiL at the weekend, but again, I feel for you, NEQ. It's all very well for APs to decree who they'd like to visit them, and when, and in what combination, but honestly - conversation can run dry! Mum said it was lovely to be able to talk just to them, but she gets tired very quickly, and driving a long way (some hours at least) for half an hour's visit just isn't on.
I also recognise the games of 'Yes, but...' that the Dowager has played for ages. I make a suggestion and she comes up with a reason why not, summed up in the 'television' 'discussion':
Mum: there's never anything on the television these days
Me: do you ever watch any of your DVD's? You have quite a few.
Mum: no, there's usually something I can watch on the telly...
<Mrs. S bangs head on wall>
KlB - thank you for that! sadly, I don't know how any of us will be able to remember it in 20 years time when we really need to know that - guess what? - our children sometimes do know things and aren't just exercising their jaws when they tell us things *sigh*
Mrs. S, vowing to trust her daughter's common sense
Oh NEQ - your parents seem to be caught in a vicious circle. Do they have any friends near by that you know that you promo to come and take onw or other of them out so they can see the advantage of doing their own thing sometimes?
The visit to the doctors went as well as we could hope today. There was a rocky start when mum said if someone told her she had dementia she'd kill herself, but after that we managed to keep it all positive. The doctor wasn't too keen to refer her to the memory clinic as she was borderline on the memory test and she said she didn't want to go. We then got her to talk to him about all the things the neighbours 'do' and he twigged there really was a problem and between the three of us (well the doctor and my brother mainly) managed to persuade her that a trip to the memory clinic would be a nice day out. Afterwards we went and sorted getting my brother and I access to her main bank account and also manged to quickly see the neighbours (who were lovely and offered us tea) to explain what we are trying to do, and assure them we know they aren't enetring mums flat to move her dressing gown or whatever.
Mum does do her own thing - she goes to get Dad's newspaper in the morning and often bumps into someone she knows. Mum is in charge of Dad's medication, because that's part of her wifely duties, so she's the one that goes to the pharmacist etc. She does some shopping for a neighbour in her nineties, she has a friend who uses a type of zimmer, and she takes her out for coffee, she's part of a sewing bee, she keeps in touch with a number of friends / relatives by phone and letter. She doesn't like doing things for fun, but she has a range of activities which fall within the ambit of "helping others". Going out for coffee with the friend with the zimmer is new - she wouldn't have gone out for coffee with her before, when she was mobile, but now her friend needs help to leave the house, Mum is providing that help. Quite often when I visit there will be a pot plant, or a vase of flowers that someone has given Mum for something she's done for someone.
It's just Dad I'm concerned about, because his life seems to be increasingly restricted to his armchair. Mum can chat happily about X's new grandchild, or Y's hip replacement, or Z's daughter's cruise, but Dad seems to be running out of conversation.
Didn't the GP's encouragement for your father to exercise go anywhere? Because shouldn't part of your Mother's care for your father include supporting his exercise programme in line with the doctor's suggestions?
Is there any way you could persuade the GP to prescribe a required, suitable exercise programme / prescription?
Does your dad like gardening, and do they have a garden he could potter in? CK's suggestion is a good one. It sounds like the church of your mothers youth has a lot to answer for. I'm not at all sure I'd be happy with a friend who'd only come out for a coffee if I needed help getting to the coffee bar
Sarasa, your mother knows at some level that she is losing cognitive ability, doesn't she? At least the Dowager could just put it all down to 'memory problems' which sounds so much less threatening than dementia (of any kind). Well done, anyway, to you and your brother
According to the home (and borne out by my brother) the Dowager is doing better on the Risperidone, and the paranoia has receded. Hallelujah!
Sarasa - I'm not at all sure I'd be happy with a friend who'd only come out for a coffee if I needed help getting to the coffee bar
She won't come out for a coffee with me, unless it's an Act of Charity! I posted this on the Difficult Relatives thread in January 2014:
Mum was brought up to be self-effacing to a quite extra-ordinary degree. So if she wants to visit, she phones me up and says:
Are you coping, dear? Do you need any help? Perhaps I could come and do your laundry?
Now, I would rather crawl backwards over broken glass than tell my mother than I'm not coping, and would like her to do my laundry. So I cheerfully tell her that all is well in the North East household, and she ends the call disappointed.
Then I get The Guilt. So I phone her back and say, cheerfully:
Why don't you visit, Mum? There's a new coffee shop opened that I'd like to take you to. We could visit that wool shop you like!
But Mum can't accept an invitation to do something enjoyable with me. So she then lists the worthy things she's doing, visiting the sick and dying, baking for a charity cake stall etc. etc. and tells me she can't visit.
So, she wants to visit me, and I want her to visit me, but it can't happen. Because I can't bear the sight of her, aged 80, doing my ironing, and she can't bear the thought that someone might see us together in a coffee shop and think that we were enjoying ourselves.
I see your problem but I also think that you have the perfect solution. Invite her up to do the ironing but have it all done when she gets there. Meet her at the door with your coat on and say how lovely to see her and let's go. Poor thing won't know what hit her. Maybe she could do the washing up at the coffee shop!
You haven't seen my house! Mum will always spot something which needs doing! She goes round my house like a war correspondent surveying the site of a recent bombing. Previous attempts to have it all done before a visit have included Mum deciding that my clematis wasn't properly fixed to the trellis and (my personal favourite) the time she complained that my compost heap was a mess. But there is no possibility of coffee with Mum now; my main concern is my father.
If the neighbour's phone again I'll ask them to contact the police. At the moment they probably don't want to be seen as being nasty about a little old lady.
I think I'd have a bottle or two of nice wine sent to the neighbors just to let them know you see what they're going thru and appreciate their patience
Before next church fete or bazaar ring your mum and say "Church is holding a bazaar and its in aid of XXX I would really like to support but with the kids gone to Uni it is just me and you could bring along some of your delicious yyyy, I am sure it would go well on the baking stall"
Oh before you think I have it sussed I just need to find a reason for Dad to give me his car. Dad has really given up driving but is not wanting to admit it, so if he can give the car away this won't be admitting it.
Oh before you think I have it sussed I just need to find a reason for Dad to give me his car. Dad has really given up driving but is not wanting to admit it, so if he can give the car away this won't be admitting it.
However, she sees "looking after Dad" as her main role in life.
She doesn't visit me any more, because it would be too much for Dad and she won't leave him, but when she did she spent every visit on a non-stop whirl of cleaning my house, ironing my clothes etc, regardless of how much I begged her to stop, or to go out for a coffee or whatever. She wouldn't eat anything I cooked, but would insist on doing all the cooking. Even when I had something pre-prepared in the slow cooker, which just needed to be served, she would insist on it being frozen for "later" while she cooked something different with food she had brought with her. (head banging off wall emoticon)
<snip>
From this post from NEQ a couple of pages back, her mother isn't visiting her (I did think I was paying attention), so that isn't currently an issue. It's more how to help her father out and about, and get her mother on board with that.
Yes, I just posted the quote from 2014 as it seemed relevant to Mum brushing off my suggestion that she should try to get Dad out and about. I'm not trying to improve my own relationship with Mum, it is what it is. I am trying to get her to do a bit less for him and to encourage him to do more, rather than nursing him and running around doing everything for him.
Will he go with you if you pick him up and take him out? Could you ask for help shopping for something that he knows about or going out for something that he would like?
Maybe get the doctor to tell him he needs to walk regularly. In fact have the doc make it specific (half a mile? a mile? four days a week) And then tell Mom that she has to walk with him to be sure he's okay and that it is her duty to help him do this for his health. Then see if any old friends or neighbors will form a "walking club" with them.
It seems to me that North East Dad and Mum are victims of the age and society in which they grew up. She sees it as her unassailable duty not only to do everything domestic, but not to allow him to.
There was a lady in the choir in Belfast (who at the time probably wasn't older than her 50s) who used to get in a right lather if the service went on too long, as she'd be late in putting the spuds on for Sunday lunch. I don't know that any of us had the nerve to suggest that her husband (who was the organist at another church, considerably closer to where they lived) might get home first and actually set them going, but I suspect that if we had, she'd have been horrified. Husbands didn't do that sort of thing; we also suspected that she wouldn't have let him anywhere near the kitchen even if he had offered.
Another acquaintance in Belfast was completely flummoxed when his wife died suddenly; he barely knew how to boil a kettle, let alone an egg*. He spent the rest of his life (not very long - he died equally suddenly less than a year after his wife) subsisting on Marks & Sparks ready-meals.
* He'd spent all his working life in a bank, and had probably gone straight from living at home to living in "digs" with a doting (and presumably cooking) landlady to marriage, and had never needed to cook for himself (and probably would have had no interest in it anyway).
There was an old man, a couple of years ago, who haunted the reduced aisles in the local Tesco's* buying the bread, cakes and some ready meals going out of date when his wife died, as he was subsisting on sandwiches. He wasn't able to cook or cater for himself. We supported him and made sure he was handed any packets of cold meat cuts there might be.
* with me and a few others of us trying to live on meagre funds whenever this was.
Old lady chiming in. 80 my next birthday. I feel that I can relate to North East Quine and her parents. I read this thread with interest as I do not want to be problems to my kids. Mr Image is having back problems and simply refuses to do anything as all hurts. I believe you don't use it you lose it. So it is not so much I think I need to wait on him as he simply will not be active. He use to do the dishes, help make the bed, cook now and then, and help in many other ways. Now he says he can do nothing. I would love for someone to offer to take him out for a bit. Anything to get him moving. I should add he is still a sweet, kind soul and I do not mind doing all the work but do not think it is good for him to not be moving, but I have given up on getting him to do so. I do try to think up things I can give him to do sitting down. Can you open this can? Will you draw me a picture for this poster I need to make? Would you see if you can go on line and find me a recipe for baked salmon? Old age is indeed not fun, and blessings to all of you who are helping to make it work as best you can.
Dad is getting his head around catering for himself. His initial problem was that he had learnt how to cook for two and could not think how to change that for one person. It has also helped that he has a cooker that he has been taught to use by someone (a good friend of mine) with full capabilities rather than through 'helping' Mum to cook.
'Helping' in scare quotes as it largely involved giving Mum the impression she was cooking while doing most of the work himself.
As to the car, I will have to drive it at least as far as my flat.
I have a couple of books by Louise Davies "Easy Cooking for One or Two" and "More ditto" which I bought when much younger than her target demographic - recipes had been devised when teaching groups of elderly people who had lost their partners. They might help your Dad, and are still available.
I can testify that not moving is a bad idea. I have personal experience of how it is possible to go from able to lift a mobility scooter into the back of a car to being unable to walk unaided in 18 months, mostly through not moving.
Familiarity is comforting even if not enjoyed? Because "it's what I know" and change is hard?
My father tells the same things over. I learned to introduce some of these repetitive stories because it cheers him up. Can see bits of happiness and his pleasure about it.
Jengie Jon, Can you say you need your dad's car as it's better than yours to go to the dump, transport something etc etc, take it away and then have a few excuses as to why said task hasn't quite been done yet. How prepared do you think your dad is about giving up driving? That's one thing I'm really glad I don't have to face with either my mother or mil as neither of them learned. I put my mums good fitness for a 90 year old to not ever having had one.
It's fairly quiet on tne mum front at present. She did phone more or less as soon as I got in from my weekend away, which leads me to assume she'd be trying every few minutes for a while. She's mucked up the PIN to her debit card, but as no money has gone from her account, she's not going on about the neighbours using her card too much.
No Prophet - How is your dad's sight now? I think listening tot he same stories again and again is a kindness, I just get worried when things seem to get embroidered with each retelling.
NEQ - The whole situatuon with your parents sounds very tricky. What would happen if your mum was ill, could your dad manage the house etc?
Dad will quite happily give me the car if I can find an excuse to justify it. I do not have to return it. He is making the excuse that he wants the car to go on a long run so he can trust that the battery is fully charged as a reason not to drive it. He is not wanting to drive it, it is too much trouble but he is not wanting the indignity of getting rid of it either. If he can feel generous by giving it to me that is the problem solved.
NEQ - The whole situation with your parents sounds very tricky. What would happen if your mum was ill, could your dad manage the house etc?
No idea.
Mum can't iron king size duvet covers and sheets any more, so they use a laundry service which picks up and drops off for their bedding. Presumably Dad could just extend that to his shirts etc if need be. The house is very clean and uncluttered, so keeping it tidy shouldn't be hard. I live two hours away, but could sort supermarket deliveries online. Meals would be the problem.
(I told Mum that I don't iron duvet covers properly, just give them a good shake out and iron round the edges, but Mum couldn't grasp the concept of imperfectly ironed anything. )
I've been paid to iron socks and underwear, not something I ever do for myself. It put me off ironing entirely. Same place had linen sheets and a roller iron, which is an instrument of the devil
My mum ironed sheets, but I can truthfully say that I've never ironed a piece of bedding in my own house - they come out of the tumble-dryer and straight back on the bed.
My grandmother ironed underwear and especially bra straps. In the days before thermostat controlled irons every thing was damped down after it came off line dry. Seemed stupid to me. Water shaken from bottle,item rolled and stored for a couple of hours. As to how hot it was, she would spit on a finger and gently touch iron. Heat was shown by amount of sizzle. I am not my grandma’s daughter. I do not own an iron.
Difficult to be one's grandma's daughter, Loth. I have been known to iron tea towels, because they a) are small b) are prettier when ironed and c) fit into the drawer better. But why I get a sense of satisfaction from ironing them when there is little attached to ironing clothes, is a mystery.
There is a good practical use for ironed tea towels: they are then sterilised as emergency first aid pads for burns or cuts. I don't have tea towels that can be ironed currently.
Comments
How about giving your dad your fitbit and seeing how far he can walk in ten minutes or soemthing else that will get him out of his chair and moving?
Anyway, you didn't want to know about that really.
So what was I going to say that was relevant - oh yes, a few thoughts prompted by reading on here and my experiences over the last year or so.
1. Don't live for your partner. If they die first, you will have no idea what your purpose actually is. This can have profound psychological effects.
2. Live whilst you can, for tomorrow you may be needing someone to get you out of bed and wipe your arse.
3. Lay not treasure up on earth where the moth eats and rust decays, or whatever it is. Spend the bugger. Be generous. If you're generous whilst you have capacity, your attorney can continue to be generous once you don't. If you're not, he can't. If you don't, then the Local Authority will only spend it on paying for someone to wipe your arse.
4. Appoint a solictor as executor. Otherwise the executor you do appoint will think that it's their responsibility to do probate themselves to save your money from fees and will Not Enjoy This At All. Making them spend the money having it done professionally is a kindness, honest it is, unless your Will is very, very simple. If you're setting up discretionary trusts and stuff in it, this goes triple.
5. Consider the possibility that your will die first. Everyone thinks about how their partner will manage once they're gone, but they don't seem to think about how they'll manage if they're the surviving one.
6. Keeping bank statements from thirty years ago from banks you've not banked with for twenty years is not "record keeping", it's a "pain in the arse" for your executor.
7. When your children say "do you not think it might be an idea to move somewhere easier to maintain and nearer us" consider the possibility that they might actually have a point. That bungalow with massive gardens and mature trees (now rather maturer trees) was lovely when you were thinking what you wanted to do for your 60th, but now as your 8th decade gets underway you may not be noticing the tree roots lifting the paths and the ivy lifting the roof tiles.
8. Don't make your partner make promises about what they'll do or not do when you're gone. It may be a great comfort to you as you depart this vale of tears to know that your grieving husband won't feel he has to sell the house, because you made him promise not to, but what if he wants to and it's in his best interest?
9. Don't die. You may think being dead is a bit of a downer but believe me you mess it up for everyone else as well.
When I do visiting in the nursing home, there are signs for specific people who do specific things repeatedly. The signs are where they do the behaviour. So, if someone is pouring out the dish washing liquid, the sign by the sink says, "Lucy, don't pour the soap." And the sign by the tv says, "John, don't touch the tv." Apparently, it can interrupt the behaviour. I'm not sure if it would work for your mom but you could try it. Having it say what she should do when something is missing could be quite important.
This sounds like something that is too hard to manage from a distance but it may give you a break if it works.
LilyPad - Mum has extremely poor eyesight, and I think any message would have to be very big. She'd only tear it down anyway, as she is convinced its the rest of us that are wrong. I can see for the right situation it might work though.
I've just had a message from my brother. Mum has phoned him to say she'll walk out if the doctor's appointment tomorrow mentions mental capacity. Going to be an interesting day.
And yes, some of the signs at the nursing home are in huge letters. If she won't deal with it, you could always have a discussion and then put up a sign that reminds her of the consequences of talking to the neighbours - that the police will be called - and if the sign is down it will prove incapacity. In the long run though, it is sounding more and more like she needs a full assessment and some sort of assistance whether she likes it or not.
I had a lovely visit to my parents today. We managed to keep conversation going the whole time. I made several suggestions for things Dad could be doing, but they were all dismissed. When I said that even if Dad wasn't feeling up to walking, they could drive somewhere for coffee, Mum said that she didn't want to go out for coffee, she wanted them to stay at home so that she could look after Dad. I think it is a vicious circle - the more Mum "looks after" Dad, the less he does, the less he does, the more Mum "looks after" him.
The Dowager very much enjoyed seeing my brother and SiL at the weekend, but again, I feel for you, NEQ. It's all very well for APs to decree who they'd like to visit them, and when, and in what combination, but honestly - conversation can run dry! Mum said it was lovely to be able to talk just to them, but she gets tired very quickly, and driving a long way (some hours at least) for half an hour's visit just isn't on.
I also recognise the games of 'Yes, but...' that the Dowager has played for ages. I make a suggestion and she comes up with a reason why not, summed up in the 'television' 'discussion':
Mum: there's never anything on the television these days
Me: do you ever watch any of your DVD's? You have quite a few.
Mum: no, there's usually something I can watch on the telly...
<Mrs. S bangs head on wall>
KlB - thank you for that! sadly, I don't know how any of us will be able to remember it in 20 years time when we really need to know that - guess what? - our children sometimes do know things and aren't just exercising their jaws when they tell us things *sigh*
Mrs. S, vowing to trust her daughter's common sense
The visit to the doctors went as well as we could hope today. There was a rocky start when mum said if someone told her she had dementia she'd kill herself, but after that we managed to keep it all positive. The doctor wasn't too keen to refer her to the memory clinic as she was borderline on the memory test and she said she didn't want to go. We then got her to talk to him about all the things the neighbours 'do' and he twigged there really was a problem and between the three of us (well the doctor and my brother mainly) managed to persuade her that a trip to the memory clinic would be a nice day out. Afterwards we went and sorted getting my brother and I access to her main bank account and also manged to quickly see the neighbours (who were lovely and offered us tea) to explain what we are trying to do, and assure them we know they aren't enetring mums flat to move her dressing gown or whatever.
Mum does do her own thing - she goes to get Dad's newspaper in the morning and often bumps into someone she knows. Mum is in charge of Dad's medication, because that's part of her wifely duties, so she's the one that goes to the pharmacist etc. She does some shopping for a neighbour in her nineties, she has a friend who uses a type of zimmer, and she takes her out for coffee, she's part of a sewing bee, she keeps in touch with a number of friends / relatives by phone and letter. She doesn't like doing things for fun, but she has a range of activities which fall within the ambit of "helping others". Going out for coffee with the friend with the zimmer is new - she wouldn't have gone out for coffee with her before, when she was mobile, but now her friend needs help to leave the house, Mum is providing that help. Quite often when I visit there will be a pot plant, or a vase of flowers that someone has given Mum for something she's done for someone.
It's just Dad I'm concerned about, because his life seems to be increasingly restricted to his armchair. Mum can chat happily about X's new grandchild, or Y's hip replacement, or Z's daughter's cruise, but Dad seems to be running out of conversation.
Is there any way you could persuade the GP to prescribe a required, suitable exercise programme / prescription?
According to the home (and borne out by my brother) the Dowager is doing better on the Risperidone, and the paranoia has receded. Hallelujah!
Mrs. S, thankful
She won't come out for a coffee with me, unless it's an Act of Charity! I posted this on the Difficult Relatives thread in January 2014:
Mum was brought up to be self-effacing to a quite extra-ordinary degree. So if she wants to visit, she phones me up and says:
Are you coping, dear? Do you need any help? Perhaps I could come and do your laundry?
Now, I would rather crawl backwards over broken glass than tell my mother than I'm not coping, and would like her to do my laundry. So I cheerfully tell her that all is well in the North East household, and she ends the call disappointed.
Then I get The Guilt. So I phone her back and say, cheerfully:
Why don't you visit, Mum? There's a new coffee shop opened that I'd like to take you to. We could visit that wool shop you like!
But Mum can't accept an invitation to do something enjoyable with me. So she then lists the worthy things she's doing, visiting the sick and dying, baking for a charity cake stall etc. etc. and tells me she can't visit.
So, she wants to visit me, and I want her to visit me, but it can't happen. Because I can't bear the sight of her, aged 80, doing my ironing, and she can't bear the thought that someone might see us together in a coffee shop and think that we were enjoying ourselves.
Families, eh??
I think I'd have a bottle or two of nice wine sent to the neighbors just to let them know you see what they're going thru and appreciate their patience
Before next church fete or bazaar ring your mum and say "Church is holding a bazaar and its in aid of XXX I would really like to support but with the kids gone to Uni it is just me and you could bring along some of your delicious yyyy, I am sure it would go well on the baking stall"
Jengie
Jengie
'lose' the keys?
There was a lady in the choir in Belfast (who at the time probably wasn't older than her 50s) who used to get in a right lather if the service went on too long, as she'd be late in putting the spuds on for Sunday lunch. I don't know that any of us had the nerve to suggest that her husband (who was the organist at another church, considerably closer to where they lived) might get home first and actually set them going, but I suspect that if we had, she'd have been horrified. Husbands didn't do that sort of thing; we also suspected that she wouldn't have let him anywhere near the kitchen even if he had offered.
Another acquaintance in Belfast was completely flummoxed when his wife died suddenly; he barely knew how to boil a kettle, let alone an egg*. He spent the rest of his life (not very long - he died equally suddenly less than a year after his wife) subsisting on Marks & Sparks ready-meals.
* He'd spent all his working life in a bank, and had probably gone straight from living at home to living in "digs" with a doting (and presumably cooking) landlady to marriage, and had never needed to cook for himself (and probably would have had no interest in it anyway).
* with me and a few others of us trying to live on meagre funds whenever this was.
'Helping' in scare quotes as it largely involved giving Mum the impression she was cooking while doing most of the work himself.
As to the car, I will have to drive it at least as far as my flat.
Jengie
My father tells the same things over. I learned to introduce some of these repetitive stories because it cheers him up. Can see bits of happiness and his pleasure about it.
"Borrow" the car, drive it to your flat and then "lose" the keys?
It's fairly quiet on tne mum front at present. She did phone more or less as soon as I got in from my weekend away, which leads me to assume she'd be trying every few minutes for a while. She's mucked up the PIN to her debit card, but as no money has gone from her account, she's not going on about the neighbours using her card too much.
No Prophet - How is your dad's sight now? I think listening tot he same stories again and again is a kindness, I just get worried when things seem to get embroidered with each retelling.
NEQ - The whole situatuon with your parents sounds very tricky. What would happen if your mum was ill, could your dad manage the house etc?
Jengie
No idea.
Mum can't iron king size duvet covers and sheets any more, so they use a laundry service which picks up and drops off for their bedding. Presumably Dad could just extend that to his shirts etc if need be. The house is very clean and uncluttered, so keeping it tidy shouldn't be hard. I live two hours away, but could sort supermarket deliveries online. Meals would be the problem.
(I told Mum that I don't iron duvet covers properly, just give them a good shake out and iron round the edges, but Mum couldn't grasp the concept of imperfectly ironed anything. )
I once teased my mother about ironing everything. She refuted, saying that she didn't iron socks - apparently she knew someone who did.
I have known people who iron socks and underwear and even dish cloths.
(I pay someone else to do ironing, which is the only reason anything is ironed in my house.)
I have decided they must be deranged.....
She’d be most disappointed that I never iron anything now.