Reply to Almost 93, frail, very poor hearing ..will not move

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP I am sorry for your loss. I hope there is some peace in knowing she died where she wanted to be in her final days and on her own terms.

That said, since I have been to these rodeo a few times, both sides are making this way  more clear cut than it is. My own mother is determined to age in place and I see as her friends move away or she alienates them with her awful behavior, the isolation is making her even more nutty and unhappy. She keeps taking herself off depression meds. In assisted living she could be properly medicated and make more friends (post pandemic) and have a life. While yes the initial transition is dramatic and awful, I have found within a few months it starts to get better. There is nothing like knowing your loved one is safer and seeing them connecting with others.

Alone in her home mom will need a meal service when she cannot cook. She will need a driver because she cannot walk anywhere. She will need someone to bathe her because there is no room to put a tub on the main floor. She will not have neighbors who care about her since she occasionally treats a neighbor as terribly as she treats me. I will visit her, but I have learned for my own health I cannot subject myself to her abuse often or for very long for a visit. Forgetting the endless safety issues, just having more people involved in making sure she is properly medicated so she can function socially and get along would make a huge difference.[/quote]

Sorry I posted all this without emphasizing enough to OP, I truly hope you can feel at peace with the fact she died exactly where she wanted to be. If you had moved her there is a very good chance this would have happened within the first month and then think of how guilty you would feel and you'd be second guessing. She was where she wanted to be. She had the comfort of her home. You granted her wishes. There is no guilt there. You respected her wishes.[/quote]

Thanks. I had given up hope that anyone truly understood what it means to care for parents who work against their own interest. To worry, to be ready at a moment's notice for emergencies,  to know how to ask the right questions, to understand  that there will be lying, to understand when it's depression or just a bad mood,  to have enough care, or to back off. To make sure they eat, take their pills, etc. To take over in spite of legal ramifications or not, such as putting in cameras, to argue with siblings over what  to do, what should have happened, what's next. To worry that you will walk in their house and literally find your Mom deceased on the floor, and then that exact thing happens.

We are now the "old people" in our family, in our early 60s. We've  been through various versions of this theme with four parents, all now deceased. All of them, in the last four years of their lives, worked really hard against taking care of themselves in one way or the other.  All refused any kind of change or addition to the current situation. 
None had dementia, but it didn't matter, they  may as well have had  it. We resolve not to do it to our kids, because 
the toll it took on everyone was immeasurable. Besides our worry,  their decisions  impacted their own quality of life in such a negative way, and in two cases,  their lives ended very prematurely as a result of their actions.

We can't prevent everything,  but we can do some things differently, and we will. [/quote]

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