For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has answered
the question: “How are you today, Gran?” with, “Oh, the same – old and
decrepit.” I still giggle. She says things like, “Oh, ooh, oh ooooh,” when she
gets up and moves slower than the tortoise in the familiar hare race tale. But,
at 88, she is doing better than most her age.
I know that as people age, caring for their older parents
becomes part of life. Our parents took care of us for so long so why shouldn’t
we return the favor? In some cultures, like those in the East, caring for
parents is more than expected – neglecting parents is absolutely illegal.
In America, I am noticing, people fall into one of three
categories: those who do whatever they can to the best of their ability to
ensure that the old ones have everything they possibly need in a convenient
manner, those who turn a blind eye and just assume the elders will manage or
die trying and those who just force the ancients into a home where they become
someone else’s responsibility. To be clear, I am the first.
It’s funny, though. I always assumed I would help my mom
take care of my grandmother and then, years later, it would be my turn.
Instead, I am learning that at my age of 30, I am taking care of all of them at
the same time – and it’s hilarious.
Just before I arrived in the U.S. in April, my mom, aged 60+,
had neck surgery to repair a bone spur. She called me high on morphine to tell
me how the surgery went, tried to explain her recovery process and then hung up
on me because she didn’t know what she was saying.
Once in town, I gladly became her chauffer, taking her to
doctor’s appointments, running errands and coming up with excuses to hang out
on a weekday.
In the meantime, I am researching senior housing options in
my area so that my grandmother will have a place to live when she finally
realizes that she can’t live in the same house anymore. She is currently living
in a three-level house where she has lived for several decades. Her bedroom and
bathroom are on the top floor, the main living area, kitchen and dining room
are on the first floor and the laundry facilities are in the basement.
Until last week, I just assumed she took everything one step
at a time. While at her physical therapy screening, I was taken aback when the
doctor asked about how she actually transported her laundry. “Oh my gosh! I was
always so concerned about the stairs but I never even had a thought about how
you carry the laundry.” “Oh, Josh got me those draw-string bags,” she said,” so
I just throw them down the stairs.” Awesome. This is not going to work.
Finding senior living options in my small town is not easy,
but I am finding more and better options than I originally anticipated. One 55
and older community has everything in one area: they have assisted living, home
health care, independent apartments, one-story houses they call villas, a
performing arts center, a lake where residents can fish, a craft room, on-site
medical care, on-site restaurants, walking paths and tons of outings. My aunt
wants to live there.
Speaking of my aunt, she also qualifies for this old and
decrepit crowd. A week after my mom regained driving and working privileges, my
aunt went in for feet surgery. While I can’t tell you exactly what she had done
(though it involved removing cysts, moving a nerve and implanting screws and a
metal plate), I can tell you that I will never complain about anything in life
ever again. Ever.
I picked up my aunt today to take her to a doctor and was
amazed at what I saw: one bulging cast from toes to knee on her left leg,
showing only swollen toes, and a swollen right food with an open gash and
stitches, one of which had popped open. She hobbled on decades-old crutches as
she attempted – against my warnings and cringes – to place her right foot with
the open wound into a flip flop.
We hobbled to the doctor and back, picking up a wheel chair
on the way home. The wheel chair testing was hilarious. First, the woman in the
store just brought out the chair and said, “Here you go.” Thank God I asked if
I needed to know anything because I later had to sign a paper stating that I
had received training on how to use the thing. Once back at the house, I
paraphrased my training as I instructed my aunt.
She swore that the wheel chair would not be an issue but I
made her test it out before I left. There were some bumps in the first five
feet, moving into the kitchen doorway; she ran over shoes twice in the process.
“Are you sure you can fit through there?” I asked as she attempted to maneuver
between a hutch and her 20-foot-long wooden table (OK, maybe it’s 10 feet; it’s
definitely longer than my husband is tall). “Yeah, it’s fi…” Stuck. I moved the
table a foot toward the door.
I watched as she moved into the kitchen, around the island
and over toward her sitting room. She rolled around, back and forth, attempting
to do some housework and test her reaching abilities. We were now getting
somewhere.
“Maybe I will just have[her husband] move some things down
here and I will just stay downstairs instead of moving between the upstairs and
the downstairs,” she said logically. “Can you sleep on one of these couches?” I
asked. “Yeah,” she replied and indicated which of the three that could
accommodate tranquil sleep.
“What about the bathroom?” I asked. “Can your wheel chair
fit through the doorway?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “This house was built for this kind of
stuff.”
Let me put it to you this way: she only made it into the
bathroom because I made her bring her elbows together in front of her while I
pushed her through the doorway after readjusting a few times. Pushing herself
into the bathroom is not an option.
My friend, Justin, also 30, was recently home to care for
his mother after she had some surgery. We connected on a day when I was
finishing at one of my mother’s doctor’s appointments.
“Is this really the age when we become our parents’
caretakers?” I asked via text. I just assumed we had a few decades to go before
all of this started. Apparently we were wrong. And now I am getting it
three-fold.
