Reply to How to Help Aging Parent and Caregiving Sibling

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I have a sibling on the west coast, where my mother with alzheimers was. She is now near me in a care facility. My sibling has a pretty light load (unmarried, no kids, no pets, same stable job with no travel) but wasn't really prepared to deal with the reality of caring for our mother. Not that he was uncaring, but simply didn't understand what needed to happen or understand/willingness to see the reality of where she was (she was pretty good at "showtiming" every 2-3 months when he'd come visit and we had in home care for a while but only slowly did we see all the stuff that wasn't happening).

anyway, I bear the burden and have a ton on my plate otherwise, and a lot of it is stuff my brother just can't really do from afar. What he can do:

--not second guessing decisions we have made
--do her taxes (I send all the paperwork, but basically passed it off onto him this year); same with financial planning for the future
--come out for relief. we wanted to take a family vacation during a particularly bad time for my mom, he took a week out here. Worked from our home, but visited every day and took her to her doctors, etc. I also am planning to ask him to come for a few days and watch our tween/teens so DH and I can take a break. 
--call her (he should do this more). I sometimes get 4-5 plaintive calls a day, it would be nice if he called more than every 3 weeks. 
--send her things. she is bored and lonely a lot of the time (hence calling and complaining to me and expecting us to come by every night). if he sent her some novels (easy reads), a few things here and there it cheers her up. 
--deal with whatever paperwork I can't deal with. I do most things, but she has a rental property that I was also managing. I've dropped that and asked him to take over correspondence with the property manager.

Now, my mom has a lot of hands on care--in addition to assisted living, I hired someone who comes in 2x/week to help her shower, keeps her organized, runs errands for her, etc. But if your parent is home with silbing, I would suggest offering/paying for meal delivery or door dash and looking into a service like naborforce (neighborforce?), some pinch hitting relief and cleaners. Mostly, just be a little present, check in, ask how parent and sibling are doing.

I was kind of resentful of sibling at first, but i also made the decision to move mom here and if I am explicit with sibling about what I need and they do it, I'm okay with it.

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