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My husband's parents live with us, and I am going a little nuts dealing with his mother. She is 81, obese, and can barely walk at this point. She sleeps about 16 hours a day, and there are many days that will go by without her coming upstairs (their bedroom and tv room are in the basement). And yet, I can see her going on like this for another 10 years or so. Hooray for modern medicine!
I have to remind myself to detach emotionally and not get frustrated with her. But what particularly bothers me is how it limits the life of my father-in-law. He used to have a job at the grocery store that he loved, but she didn't like being alone, so he quit and now just sits and watches tv with her all day. We're trying to plan a trip to Spain (where he's from), but have to figure out what to do with her because she refuses to go.
I guess I'm struggling to figure out how much of this is coming from her body not working anymore, and how much is just depression (she did spend some time in a mental hospital about 15 years ago and is on Lexapro, which doesn't seem to be doing much). And what do you do when somebody is unwilling to make any moves to help themselves get something out of life? She's just waiting around to die at this point and I hate watching it.
My experience has been that it's generally a fool's errand to try to change someone's behaviour whom you're not in a position of power over (heck, I find changing my own behaviour difficult enough, at least our daughter listens for the time being). Also, sleeping 16 hours a day is not really something people do for fun, does it really matter whether it's the depression or just physical? She is 81 and clearly very unhealthy, at that point it's kinda understandable to just wait for death with minimal discomfort, even if that sounds sad. It does not seem clear to me that "just become more active and healthy again" is actually an option on the table for her.
For your father-in-law, I would consider a serious talk about wasting away since he is clearly in a better shape and would benefit more from more activity, but in the end it's also up to him. We have a somewhat similar situation with my wife's grandfather, who was struck by the unexpected death of his wife. Before, he was unusually healthy for his age both physically and psychologically, since then he has started to explicitly say he's now just waiting for his time to come to an end. He stopped almost all physical activity and he has started to show signs of a rapidly deteriorating dementia. Despite all his children constantly trying to to talk him into becoming more active again, with varying angles. It's unclear (though not unlikely) whether he will actually die anytime soon - they're certainly not letting him.
In general, I'm happy that we have the options of modern technology and medicine, but it seems to me we're culturally failing pretty hard at gracefully taking advantage of them. Though I guess that is now going beyond the scope of this thread.
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That's a lot to handle, wow. Did you and your now-husband discuss taking care of elderly/infirm parents to this degree early on (i.e. before marriage)? Either way, was it a difficult decision to let your husband's parents move in?
I'd prefer to end up with someone who wouldn't want us to do this for either set of our parents. I'm not saying I don't care if they rot in a shitty retirement home, I'm just saying I don't care enough to make it my problem. It's unclear to me how unpalatable a statement that would be for someone to hear on a date, or how much it'd actually prevent this kind of scenario in our future.
I was quite eager to bring them in because his father is a huge help to us, helping with the childcare and doing our cooking. It's just the mother slug that bothers me on a conceptual level, but I don't have to do anything to take care of her.
When we first had our son we lived several states away from any family, and it's really hard to do child-rearing without any family support. I'm sure it will become more difficult as they get older, but for now it's actually a pretty great situation. I just hate to watch somebody waste their life!
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My grandmother had Alzheimer’s and my grandfather spent the final six years of his life taking care of her. We hired help, but he wanted to be there for her. It ruined him. He practically starved himself to death, lost the will to live even though he had previously been a remarkably healthy man in his early 90s. He watched his wife grow to hate him, shout, yell, turn into a horrible person (through no fault of her own, she had been a very loving and caring wife, mother and grandmother before her condition set in) and it destroyed him. He had been set on living to 100, had planned a long retirement of reading and walking, traveling, playing poker which was his great joy and so on. He was independent until a few months before he died. Everyone in my family (including the doctors) believes wholeheartedly that if my grandmother had been hit by a bus a few months after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s he would have made it to three figures, might even still be around today. His mother lived to 103 and his father to 94, so he had the genes for it.
I think in your case it will depend on what your father in law wants to do. If he is truly committed and sees it as part of his marriage vows, it will be hard to shake him out of it, and you will bear witness to a tragedy (albeit hopefully much less bad in your case). If he would in any way accept someone else (perhaps a sister or brother in law, maybe your children or nieces/nephews if you have any) looking after her for a while, then I would take him as soon as possible. I know my dad wishes he had spent more time traveling with his father.
Oh, that is so sad. Alzheimers is an absolute nightmare.
We are currently planning to send her to my sister-in-law, which we have done in the past when my father-in-law goes to Spain (he tries to go once a year). For the first time though, she is putting up a fuss about going and I can't get a clear answer why.
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You are a great person for doing this. My grandad is 91 now and still works but has issues (hearing, digestion, bp, heart, gout,cannot walk properly, cant use any tech, can get annoyed at times, moody etc etc). It is super difficult to deal with ageing people. My grandad actually wanted to die far earlier but he felt that being productive in his later life would help my family out financially even though my dad and mom outearn him by a lot. He just continued to want to live because of us, his grandsons.
It gets worse, invariably you get to points where elders need surgeries or medical procedures that require people to assist them with daily tasks. Having good insurance might help (I am not in the US so cant comment.). If possible, help her find something to do, a hobby of sorts. My grandad and grandmom (maternal, she lives with my ma's brothers) are alive and somewhat happy because they have a bunch of things they do regularly and have a lot of family around always. If your husband has any siblings or nieces and nephews, having them over sometimes is a good idea but her getting a hobby would help her a lot.
My parents deal with trips by having my dad's sisters come stay in our house when we are away as you cannot leave an elderly person alone. My dad at times would even ask his friends to stay over sometimes, the ones he trusted since we do not go out a lot. My family has always had full-time house help who stay with us and it is a difficult task to deal with the elderly even with them around.
Again, I commend you for doing what you are doing. Please take care of yourself too.
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I did not watch my parents die. Well, I did watch my father die, or I got real close to watching it--he died in the night around 3 am, and I got the call in my hotel room at the airport where I was supposed to be flying out that day (I did.) But I had slept in his room and kept vigil when we knew death was very near. We (me, whoever else who also knew but wasn't there, certainly the hospice nurses, probably my brother) knew, we just didn't know exactly when. At the end (not the very end because as I say I did not see the very end) he had been found clutching his shirt (it was only a shirt front, it was for appearances for possible visitors--easier to maneuver him for being washed etc, explained the nurse, or caretaker, or whatever she was by training. A kind woman, or very good at faking kindness.) He had been found, anyway, clutching his shirt up almost above his chest, as if trying to tear it off, with--I was told with merciless accuracy--tears streaming down his face.
My dad had been robust. He had been neither soft nor weak as a man. He had never made a sound that suggested he was owed anything, or that the world was treating him poorly. Never uttered any complaint about anything, at least to my memory And this was a man who had nursed his wife (my mother) through the most degrading stages of cancer. When she died, finally, he once confided in me, he was grateful. He had prayed that God take her. He had said he was grateful that I had never had to see her in her final state (my mother had been an exceptionally beautiful woman in her youth). Age does its thing, though.
I write this to commend you for taking in your husband's parents in this way, for not every wife would. I also write it to hint at what no doubt you already expect, the thought that bleeds through each of your sentences here: It's going to get worse.
This isn't a warning. I am not giving advice. And true enough, I was (and am) 4,500 nautical miles from my home country's coastline, then if you just flew like a crow another 1900 miles. Then I'd be, or would have been, right there in the thick of it, scrubbing carpets out, making dinners and taking them in then taking out plates with food still on them. And the in-between time just stretches of Seinfeld reruns, or watching the frail old man who had once struck fear and respect in your heart fill books of sudoku puzzles, books you'll eventually collect in a Glad bag with every other bit of everyday flotsam and toss in the big green barrel that you'll wheel to the curb for trash pickup and burning. I don't have any high ground here. I was gone. And had I not been gone many, many things might have gone considerably better for my family (my American family, the one who had me the first part of my life.)
So what's my fucking point? You say you don't know how much of her inertia is her body's weakness, and how much depression. At risk of taking a monist stance, I'd say probably both. How can we know the dancer from the dance (apologies to Yeats).
It is what it is. In an upbeat film, she'd remember something or someone from Europe, or a dream she once had of seeing Sagrada Familia, she'd take the trip, there would be many comedic scenes of family frustration bound by love, and then the film would end, or she'd die in her sleep peacefully in the hotel bed. I like movies, too. I should write one. And who knows how close your reality will be to something less dark, more optimistic. I don't, certainly.
Do you have anyone you can lay all this out to besides your husband? (It's possible you can to him, but because it's his mom the dynamic of that conversation may not be ideal.) Mind you I come from a tribe that never talked anything out, and did its best to avoid any talking of any sort that would be in line with the American therapeutic chat up. But for some that helps.
My train is here. Sorry to end abruptly. I wish you good luck.
I fear I'm making this sound worse than it is. I really don't have to do anything for her; it just annoys me that she is wasting her life while other lives are too short (my own mom died when she was 45). If things do get to the point where she requires actual physical care, I plan to bring in the professionals and give my sisters-in-law the primary responsibility.
She's actually from Utah, where we live now. We moved here a couple of years ago so she could be close to her daughters who all live here. She does get a bit misty when we visit the local steakhouse :D
Probably it was I who was channeling my experience into your own. That is very young for your mother to have died, you yourself must have been quite young also.
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How often did you visit home before your parents’ death? Mine are not yet 70 and seem in good health, but it is a subject matter I find difficult.
Every year, but only once a year. We lived, my wife and I, with them for six months once, but they were fine-ish then. Cancer was sudden for my mother, and she died far too early at 73. But you never know when shit like that will hit. I went when she was first diagnosed, but by then it was stage IV multiple myeloma.
When my wife had the boys, each time, my mom came over to Japan. This was well before her illness. She, too, seemed fine, and in much better shape than my dad, but she was 11 years younger. Then when the boys were old enough to not be screamers on the plane we took them over each Christmas. My brother lived with my parents at that point and this was something I convinced myself was a benefit, but it turned out to be quite different, as my brother is a slackass. (There's no other way to put it; in fact I'm being generous.)
My dad lived a good five or six years after she died, just past his 90th birthday. The few times we went to visit after her passing were difficult, and each time when we said goodbye I could see in his eyes he was resigned it would be the last time. Then COVID hit, and this irrefutably, escalated the speed at which he deteriorated. Support that should have been there simply wasn't. And in those days just up and flying over was not an option. Even when he died I had to go through all sorts of tedious bureaucratic cartwheeling just to fly over and back (though by then those hoops were predominantly on this side. No one in the US seemed to give a shit, including his nurses prior to hospice whose commitment to a sterile environment did not seem steadfast.)
I also found the distance difficult, as you say, particularly when my sons were their only grandchildren, but their demise seemed far off then, decades away, like my own death seems: unimaginable somehow.
Edit: Apparently MM has only stages I, II, and III, but I am sure I heard someone say stage IV. Anyway, the last stage, the end stage.
Yeah, my biggest fear in life other than death is that they won’t live to see me have kids and to be able to help with them, so it’s something I think about a lot especially because I want to benefit from their advice and wisdom as much as possible. I think it would be hard to be away from them, but if we moved back to where I’m from my partner’s parents wouldn’t be able to help or see their grandchildren often either (as in your case of course).
Trade-off. For us the money and lifestyle to which we were accustomed was here, plus safety, cleanliness, and a degree of what for lack of a better term I'll call culture. My home in Alabama had giant yards, lakes, ski boats, big Golden retrievers, and all the high protein meals one could ask for, and of course family, but beyond my parents I don't miss my extended family to any real degree with only two exceptions, and was happy to be far from them. My very close friends are still in touch, some daily thanks to LINE and Whatsapp
I think for many reasons women who have children benefit from their mother nearby, in ways that are not immediately apparent for men. My wife's family is also a plane or bullet train ride away, but that's quite close in modern terms. I mean there's no time zone difference or significant financial hit to connect. Currently flying internationally feels like being robbed at gunpoint.
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