Talking to My Mother

[canyonwalker]

I caught up with my mom today about my retirement. Yes, it took days to talk to her about it. Though she might have heard it a few days ago from my sister.

My mom's not the most in-touch person anymore. She lives with my youngest sister, which is probably also the only reason, short of moving to a managed care home, she doesn't perish of self-neglect. She keeps odd hours and doesn't like to answer the phone.

Nobody else in the house answers the phone, either. The landline phone, that is. Everyone else has a mobile phone and views the landline as a laughable anachronism. The landline's there for my mom, who doesn't have a mobile phone and doesn't want one. And despite being the only person in the house who'll use it, she almost never answer it when it rings.

Getting in touch with my mom often involves several steps:

1. Call the landline phone. Nobody answers.
2. Often try step #1 again a few hours later, or earlier the next day, with the same result.
3. Text my sister to ask if they're at home and when mom's even up. Ask her to tell mom to answer the phone.
4. Sister texts me back a few days later to say mom has tried calling me but keeps getting a busy signal. NOTE: my phone is a cell phone with call-waiting and digital voicemail. Aside from when a system wide failure occurs, callers will not get a busy signal. Mom's dialing the wrong number.
5. Sister writes my number on a piece of paper for Mom and makes sure she can read it. It's the same number I've had since 2005. It is not one of the older numbers Mom might still have in her address book.
6. We finally get in touch.

So, we finally chatted today. She's happy for me but also feels old that her kids are now retiring. I get that. I suggested she look at the positive side of it: she's lived long enough to see the first of her kids retire. My dad didn't live that long. He was older than her, but she's now 2 years old than his age at death. I didn't remind her of that. But I did I remind her she's lived long enough to see her first great-grandchild. Of course, that great-grandchild's grandma is my sister. My younger sister.

Comments

[crazy_yet_fun]

It's so difficult dealing with older parents. Sad to see the decline. That's great that she lives with your sister!
My mom has the beginnings (or middlings) of dementia and my dad takes care of her. What an endless, tiring job. My mom has fun with the phone too. She does have a smart phone and wants to do Wordle on it but she can't understand it, so she calls every day to ask me how to play it. Or she calls me and says hi, then has to leave to go to the bathroom. Maybe it's good your mom doesn't have a smart phone! ;)

[canyonwalker]

Decline? It's been like this for at least 20 years.

One of my sisters confided in me last year, "I think Mom's getting dementia."

"You think it's dementia, now?" I shot back. "She's been living increasingly in a world of make-believe since 1985."

[crazy_yet_fun]

I guess it's been a very looooooong time. I'm sorry. That's worse than a "short" one in so many ways. I guess at the end of the day, it's just depressing when our parents become so different than they have always been. My dad has always been so much of a go-getter and very physically active, and now that he is taking up so much time with my mom, he has kind of given up on everything he likes to take care of her.

[canyonwalker]

Yeah, it's sad to see how much time it takes to be an adult care-giver. When my dad was taking care of my grandma her last few years of life, even after placing her in an overall excellent care home he was still having to visit her or run errands on her behalf almost every day of the week. More recently a friend of mine cared for his spouse with stage 4 cancer at home right up until the last few days. That was like a full-time job. Fortunately the military came through with benefits for veterans' care-givers.

[crazy_yet_fun]

A friend of mine who is my age (mid-50's) is the full-time care giver for her mom who has Alzheimer's. She went to a caregiver's class and they told her that for each year you take full-time care of someone like that, it takes 5 years off your life. I don't know if that is true, but it is very eye-opening on what a toll it takes on you, and how important it is to have a support sytem.

[canyonwalker]

Speaking with authority limited to observing a few real-life examples, it seems to me that caring for an older adult has elements of both give and take.

On the positive side, it gives a person who otherwise might struggle with aimlessness being an empty nester/widower/etc. a sense of purpose. I saw that with my dad, who actually did it twice, and with one of my grandparents.

On the downside, where I see caring for an adult "taking away 5 years" is that it consumes your younger, more productive years. You don't get that time back. For example, your later 50s are when you might still be guiding your younger kids through school, seeing your older kids start families of their own, and/or launch your own retirement. You miss those things, or short-shrift them, or delay them until you're older, less energetic, and less able. What you missed, you missed.

[crazy_yet_fun]

I can see both points. In my dad's case, he is about to be 82, and thinks he has nothing left to forward to, and is concentrating 100% on my mom. He looks back and regrets the few things he wanted to do, and I really hope that when my mom passes (God forbid he goes first!) he will get little pep back and we might be able to take him to do some things. On the downside, he gets frailer and frailer, and refuses to use a walker. So there is that.

As far as my friend, I think she cherishes that she is able to give, but it just takes so much form her. Unfortunately (or fortunately- I don't know which way to go with that) her mom is in her 70's and healthy as a horse, whereas my mom is declining quickly. So hopefully Esther will have tine left to go and do with her husband. Also, they do have some assistance to give her time to breathe a little.

Funny how this time, returning to journaling, my subject matter has so drastically changes. It ued to be all about my children's antics, playdates, parenting advice and socializing, and now we are down to...this.

[canyonwalker]

Your dad's attitude of "nothing left to look forward to" sounds heart-breaking... yet also not completely unfamiliar. My grandmother who lived to 101 groused for years "Everyone I know is gone". She meant her own generation: her brother, her sister, the neighbors who were raising families at the same time as her, people at her church who shared the same life experiences (Great Depression, WWII). Moving to a care home at 96 was actually a great improvement for her, after she resisted it for 20+ years, because suddenly she found friends again who did share those life experiences. And she always loved seeing, or even just getting a phone call from, her kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, etc. I hope your dad is able to rediscover meaning in his life beyond just caring for your mom.

[crazy_yet_fun]

Thank you. I really do too. He has done some amazing things in his life, and I don't want to have him just give up. I think he would do well in an assisted living center. Find some peers, remember when's, just generally be a sociable person again.