Bringing Mama home and making it work.
I've decided to bring my mother home from assisted living, although several of you here on the forum advised me against it. There are several reasons for doing it, but one is that she's bored out of her skull at the only ALF she can afford, since she functions at so much higher a level than anyone else there. I'm determined to make the return home work for her, me and the whole family. May I share my experiences, free associate, and get your reactions as we advance in this adventure? I know I'll have many questions, often about the little stuff, and I'll be so grateful for your answers.
I retired a few weeks ago and returned to the family home in Florida to get it ready for her homecoming. This is hard work---the place has deteriorated during three unoccupied years and it was already old---built in 1928. My brother, I and our children and grandchildren have vowed to make repairing it a family project, although we're scattered all over the country. My nephew is here for a month from California to help get things up and running, and he's re-doing the deck; my daughter and her husband came last week from Texas and remodeled a bathroom. My son will be here this summer to deal with the "family archive"---six filing cabinets jammed with paper, photos, old financial records, to-do lists, Christmas cards. I've had in plumbers, appliance repairmen, handymen, yard men, cleaning help, furniture movers and, next, carpet layers. Mama will come home at the end of April. My nephew and I are careful to consult her about changes that we know will be very important to her. We figure if we defer to her preferences on three or four things, we can make "executive decisions" (e.g., to send something to the dump) about one or two things without upsetting her too much.
So...off to the races! And hugs to you all.
my mother died in her own home with her fully in control , my aunt is in nh strongly resenting the loss of her freedom and self determination .
different circumstances obviously require different solutions but the bottom line should be ( if possible ) " what does the elder want ? " .
Get your back-up team on board: your mother's GP, any nursing and allied professionals like PTs and OTs, your friendly local pharmacist, find a dentist who'll do domiciliary visits.
And start asking around your neighbourhood now about which caregiver agencies are professional and reliable and which less so. You may not need them, but you never know - it's not a bad plan to be on friendly terms with people you can call on in a crisis.
And ask at the ALF about respite breaks. You'll get tired, you know, and your profile says your mother did well at the ALF so she can look on it as a kind of busman's holiday. Schedule in regular, proper time off for yourself: it lengthens the tether.
And happy homecoming! May it go well for you.
CM is absolutely right about planning for respite even before she return home. It is an essential part of successful caregiving.
Respite is the thing that most concerned me when we were planning this. One friend said I'd feel less tied down if I carved out private space for myself in the house, a place to retreat to. I'll need to sleep downstairs in the bedroom next to Mama's, but plan to use an upstairs bedroom as dressing room/study/private sitting room when Mama's napping or out. I'd like to install some kind of alert system so that I can hear her if she needs me, but because of her good health, a nannycam seems invasive. Any ideas?
Also --- believe it or not! --- at almost 95, my mother still takes an annual vacation out West to visit grandchildren and friends. My brother and his wife take her. So I'll have about three weeks this summer to do my own thing, whatever it may be!
I can see that one key to making something like this work is family involvement. I feel so sorry for those of us on the forum whose siblings are unsupportive or even hostile!
I figure my mother deserves our effort. Here's some "classic Mama." As a teenager I lived in the shadow of my blonde, busty, blue eyed next door neighbor, one year older than I. Her sixteenth birthday approached and she invited me and a third neighbor to her party. "It's informal," she told us, "just wear any old thing." "Kathy" and I innocently recounted the conversation to my mother and speculated about what to wear --- bermudas? My mother briefly looked thoughtful, then bundled us both into the car, headed for the town's lone girls' clothing store
and bought each of us a crisp, pretty, feminine summer cotton dress. (This was the 1950s, folks.) On the night of the birthday we walked together up the steps at our friend's house. She threw the door open --- a blonde, busty, blue-eyed vision in pink taffeta, heels and a corsage of roses --- and exclaimed when she saw us looking pretty, "Oh, but I told you not to dress up!" As icing on the cake, the birthday girl's boyfriend paid a LOT of attention to "Kathy" that evening.
So, Mama deserves something for that, right?
Use a baby monitor for night times. You can keep half an ear open without waking her by switching on the light, and you'd be surprised how alert you are even in your sleep to small unfamiliar sounds that might indicate a problem (you might also find that when she's away you keep waking up because it's "too quiet").
Her regular progress to the West sounds like a lovely routine, but do have a Plan B in case of illness or accident. Suppose for example that your brother couldn't manage to have her for some reason: you'd still feel let down even if you didn't blame him, and that's where things can begin to unravel. Belt, braces and a couple of padlocks...
Today I'm face to face with a challenge I knew was coming: dealing with "stuff."
We moved everything out of her bedroom to put down new carpet and the heap of things (in the living room) is mountainous! The carpet is going in right now. Even after the bedroom set goes back in, we'll have to deal with heaps of odds and ends that were jammed into the closet, hundreds of knickknacks and souvenirs, five assorted mismatched chests and tables.... Almost everything should rightly go to a charity --- or even to the dump --- but of course I can't do that to her.
My strategy is to move only the new, smaller bedroom set in, leave the rest of the old stuff where it is, in the living room, and suggest that she decide how to arrange her things in there. I'm hoping that when she sees it all heaped up where it is now, and realizes how it will detract from her new carpet, drapes and bedroom set, she'll suggest "putting it somewhere else." ("Somewhere else" is fine with me, since once it's out of sight, I figure it's on its way to Goodwill.) You know, I "get" the souvenirs and gifts from great-grandkids and such; it's the drawer full of empty gift boxes---the sacks of old Christmas cards---the ancient briefcases and purses all dried out and going to dust! Any suggestions about prying someone loose from the accumulations of so many years?
Homes built almost 100 years ago tend to have smaller doorways for closets, if your Mom uses a walker, double check to see that it will be easy for her to use... if not, take the door off the closet to get her that extra inch.
Frequent flyer, yes, getting through doors will be an issue. She mostly walks with a cane, but uses a walker when she's tired. And yes, I'm lucky, and especially, so is Mama, that the family wants to help. Maybe we won't be able to sustain it forever, but if we can work together for even a couple of years, that's a good percentage of the rest of her life.
But my big thing right now is HOW TO GET RID OF STUFF. Singingway, I don't have a lot of leverage with her. I moved into her home, not she into mine. And both of us contribute financially to its upkeep, not just me. So she definitely has a major say in what gets done or doesn't. And it is her stuff.
Perhaps there is a local garden club that might drop in on your mom and talk flowers or a local 4H group that could use some pointers on planting and flower gardens.
We have found that the area senior center is a good place to connect to others. Often they have activities and crafts etc to do.
Perhaps your local faith community can suggest some volunteers to visit and cheer your mom.
Glad you are trying this and giving your mom a chance.
We live in a semi-rural area, on a heavily wooded acre with lots of birds and squirrels. Mama has always worried about the squirrels --- did they have enough to eat? Every winter she bought several gallons of pecans and had my father climb a ladder to hang pails of nuts in the trees. And, I learned today, she provided water for them, in a pan next to the birdbath in the back yard.
Last week, I had the yard cleaned up, including the dense thicket around the old birdbath. She looked at the recovered flower bed for awhile this afternoon and then asked me to go out and fill the birdbath with water for the birds and a pan with water for the squirrels. I protested: the mosquitoes, already bad enough, would breed there. Not if I changed the water every day, she said. Mama, I said, I'm just not going to go out every day and water the squirrels. But they'll be thirsty! she said. They managed before, I said. All right, she said, she would do it. She would enjoy doing it. She would water them daily. This is a woman who trundles around on a walker or a cane and has fallen punctually at least once a month for years.
So I went out and filled the birdbath and found a pan for the squirrels. I want to scream, but I'm not sure whether to scream at the plain silliness of her worrying about the damned squirrels or at the way she manipulated me. I wish somebody would talk me down.
Your mom fussing about the squirrels' well being gives her purpose and joy and a smidgen of familiar in a sea of changes.