Am I a Slow Learner?

My mother is turning 91 today, and is now living with us. I Facebooked this (is that a verb?) and got an astonishing number of comments, ranging from ARE YOU NUTS? to I'LL PRAY FOR YOU! Kidding aside, it is so wonderful to be connected to old and new friends and to know they care. But I thought I'd use this venue to explain why we moved Mom back in here, and why I think it's going to be okay. It's too complex for FB posts.

To begin, we bought this house four years ago because we thought it would be a good idea to move my mom in with us. She wasn't paying her bills, her driving was scaring people, and she seemed to be lonely and depressed. IT WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA. She tried to run my household, picked on Mikey (then 7), fawned over Sami (then 11), and irritated David by refusing to contribute to home improvements. She refused to see that she was benefiting financially--I found a renter for her house to more than cover the mortgage, and hounded him every month for the rent, she wasn't paying for lawn mowing, shoveling, etc.. Her bank account rose every month, while ours shrank.

Anyway, after 12 hideous months, I threw out her renter, and moved her and her (I'm not kidding) hundreds of boxes of stuff back to her house, and found her a companionm, Kathy, to come in the afternoons and keep her life organized.

We moved MIL Betty in to help pay the mortgage because the housing crisis was in full swing, and we knew we'd never sell this place fast enough to stay out of bankruptcy. We also took in a Korean high school student, for a monthly fee, who turned out to be clinically depressed and possibly suicidal. Lots of material for future novels, yes, but no fun to live with.

FAST FORWARD.

We move my mom into a very fancy Assisted Living Center two years ago, which seemed like the best solution for her diminishing life skills. It was 10 minutes away, so I could keep an eye on things, but when my mother started falling frequently, and I asked to install an internet camera so I could monitor her from my home, I ran into a BRICK CORPORATE WALL. Then the place was sold, and the new owners made lots of stupid changes to increase profits. Most of the best nurses and caregivers left, and the ones who remained were told not to communicate directly with families, but to run information through a chain of command. So if I called and asked, "How's the new medicine working?" or "Is she eating better?" it might take 48 hours to get a now outdated answer, IF they called back at all.

And then my mother started refusing to get out of bed. Sleeping pills to cure her chronic insomnia were implicated in her falling, and strategies we came up with to monitor her sleeping at night were ignored by the overnight staff. I was supposed to be called if she slept through two meals in a day, but this rarely happened. I'd get a call from Kathy at 4pm, telling me that my mom was still sound asleep in bed, having missed breakfast and lunch. No matter how much hell I raised about this--and I think I'm pretty good at this--nothing changed.

So I've moved her back in with us three days ago. Stupid, maybe, but she has lost much of her "edge" in the last few years. So far she's not bothered by how Mikey chews his food, where he drops his socks, or any of the other things that she felt compelled to bring to my attention last time. She and Betty enjoy each other's company, and my mother's cat, Benny, 15, is integrating into our feline community.

It's nearly impossible to get my mother out of bed before noon, but her doctor says it's not that important, as long as she doesn't completely switch day/night cycles. So I have lots of private time in the morning for writing, shopping, etc., and when my mother does get up, she's staying awake all day. We talk, she reads, she helps set the table, fill the dishwasher, etc. I can give her simple food prep tasks, which she enjoys, and she's not sitting alone in her $4,000/month room at the Assisted Living center, with nothing to do and no one to talk to. They had lots of activities, but she refused to participate in most of them, and I now see that the whole concept of Assisted Living, where she had no responsibilities for doing anything for herself contributed toher decline. Kathy still comes in the afternoons and takes her shopping, walking, etc., so I'm not constantly "on duty."

Best of all, I'm not feeling guilty that I dumped her in a fancy institution. I'm back to feeling like A GOOD DAUGHTER, which makes up for a lot.

And if it turns to crap again, there's always antidepressants, right?